We finally know exactly how dark deep space is
Illustration showing NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in deep spaceNASA, APL, SwRI, Serge Brunier (ESO), Marc Postman (STScI), Dan Durda We finally know just how dark it is in deep space.…
Illustration showing NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in deep spaceNASA, APL, SwRI, Serge Brunier (ESO), Marc Postman (STScI), Dan Durda We finally know just how dark it is in deep space.…
Gravitational waves are vibrations in space-time itselfPeter Jurik/Alamy The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we hand over the keyboard to a physicist or…
ESO/VVV Survey/D. Minniti. Ackno Since the opening act of the universe 13.8 billion years ago, a diverse set of characters have trod the boards – stars, planets, moons, quasars. But…
Hector Vivas/Getty Images This story is part of our Cosmic Perspective special, in which we confront the staggering vastness of the cosmos and our place in it. Read the rest…
This story is part of our Cosmic Perspective series, in which we confront the staggering vastness of the cosmos and our place in it. Read the rest of the series…
An astrophysicist and a surgeon walk into a bar. No, this isn’t the start of a bad joke. A few years ago, astrophysicist Franco Vazza met his childhood friend Alberto…
Shutterstock/Dr. Norbert Lange This story is part of our Cosmic Perspective series, in which we confront the staggering vastness of the cosmos and our place in it. Read the rest…
Adobe Stock/Erika Eros/Alamy/Collage: Ryan Wills Deep inside a black hole, the cosmos gets twisted beyond comprehension. Here, at some infinitesimal point of infinite density, the fabric of the universe gets…
It can be hard to wrap our minds round the very large and the very small. Ron Koeberer/Millennium Images, UK Imagine setting off on a spacecraft that can travel at…
Did you hear the one about the star that died twice? In 2014, astronomers saw the explosion of the Refsdal supernova. Then, 360 days later, it went bang again. This…