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We spend a lot of time thinking about futurism, but the past is pretty interesting, too. In this week's "Ask a Physicist" we get extra speculative and think about what things may have been like before the beginning of time. What was there before the Big Bang? Did anything exist before our current universe? Here's what we know. More »
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Feast your eyes on this stop-motion music video by animator Kevin Parry. The short took about six months to film, and required hundreds of paper cutouts, but we think you'll agree that Parry did a pretty great job serving up a splendid depiction of Earth's past, present and (possible) future. More »
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Dark energy accounts for 70% of everything in the universe, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Now a new model meant to explain some impossibly massive galaxy clusters is here, to make dark energy even more fiendishly complex. More »
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In the first billion years after the Big Bang, the universe was a smaller, emptier place, without the huge galaxies that dominate today. But there were already supermassive black holes that had grown shockingly huge by gorging themselves on gas. More »
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While the faster-than-light neutrinos are grabbing all the physics-shattering attention, there's another strange, unexplained anomaly that might be about to rewrite our understanding of the cosmos. It's all because the universe isn't as monotonous as it should be. More »
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Four newly discovered galaxies are so dim, so dusty, so impossibly distant that even the Hubble telescope couldn't spot them. But that's not all: these galaxies are so insanely red that astronomers are declaring them a new "species" of galaxy. More »
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Located some 11 billion light-years from Earth are two clouds of gas. Just two billion years younger than the Big Bang itself, they appear to be the first known clouds that are completely unaltered since the birth of the universe. More »
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We all know that time has direction, because we've all experienced it; you will never again be as young, for example, as you are at this very second. Or this second. Or this second. The directionality of time prohibits it. More »
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Modern physics assumes the universe is the same all over... but that might not be the case. Until recently, physics held that the universe was contracting... now we're stuck with dark energy. But one moderately insane new theory could explain it all. More »
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A week ago, who among us would have guessed that light, the universe's ultimate speed demon, would be observed getting outpaced by a bunch of reckless neutrinos? Yes, these observations will obviously need to be checked and rechecked, but it just goes to show that you rarely know as much about something as you think you do. More »
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Dark energy is perhaps the most mysterious thing in the cosmos, and yet it accounts for 73% of the observable universe. What's more, the amount of dark energy seems to be increasing...and that could ultimately rip apart the entire universe. More »
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In the noir flick Big Bang, out tomorrow, Antonio Banderas is a detective trying to track down a missing stripper while the bodies pile up around him. Inexplicably, his investigation takes him to the mansion of a weirdo bazillionaire who is trying to find the Higgs Boson. This is science camp at its campiest. Love the random wig and physics crazy talk. More »
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Some black holes may be so ancient that they predate the stars themselves, forming instead in the chaotic first moments after the Big Bang. There might even be some black holes out there from the universe before the Big Bang. More »
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The early cosmos might have been full of giant stars spinning 250 times faster than our own sun rotates. These strange spinstars died out after just 30 million years, but they might well have changed the universe forever. More »
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Check out two totally noir clips The Big Bang, in which Antonio Banderas plays a private dick who stumbles onto a plot to recreate the beginning of the universe? More »
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Some scientists believe that, as the universe gets older and larger, it adds more dimensions. Cute theory. But how does this help solve pressing questions of of physics? And how can it be tested? More »
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This is a map of the entire universe, specifically of the cosmic microwave background radiation that formed as a remnant of the Big Bang. And the circled region is where the CMB is so cold that it defies easy explanation. More »
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New calculations have just been completed that show the rate of expansion for the universe. By zeroing in on the rate, the Hubble Constant, these calculations hammer another nail the casket of a quirky little idea called Void Theory. More »
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When it comes to the Big Bang, you shouldn't believe everything you hear. In this week's "Ask a Physicist," we ask whether hyperinflation of the entire universe is sensible or just plain nuts. More »
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Until recently, astronomers believed that the first stars were ultra-giants which blew themselves apart long ago. Now a new model of the universe suggests that some the first stars of the universe may still be burning today. More »
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The Hubble telescope has spotted the oldest galaxy in the universe. It's a frenetic cauldron of hot blue stars, and it's only about 480 million years younger than the Big Bang itself. More »
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Ask scientists a question, and you might get amazing answers. Consider this video, which poses three head-scratchers: what happens to electrons at absolute zero, whatever happened to the light from the Big Bang, and are you any good at sports? More »
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General relativity and quantum mechanics are the twin foundations of modern physics, but there's a problem: they're mutually exclusive, at least according to our current understanding. A new model using loop quantum gravity might have the beginnings of a solution. More »
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The world's most powerful particle accelerator smashed together lead nuclei at the highest energies possible, creating dense sub-atomic particles that reach temperatures of over ten trillion degrees. Beyond being awesome, this achievement shows the early universe was actually a liquid. More »
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The current cosmological consensus is that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang. But a legendary physicist says he's found the first evidence of an eternal, cyclic cosmos. More »
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The universe is thought to have consistently become cooler over time. But about 1.5 billion years ago, the cosmos overheated in a massive temperature spike, caused by runaway black holes that pumped tons of ultraviolet radiation into the universe. More »
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A new theory explains the accelerating universe without invoking mysterious, unseen dark energy to account for the expansion. But it also gets rid of singularities, an unchanging speed of light...and the most famous astrophysical phenomenon of all, the Big Bang. More »
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The current explanation of the universe's origins relies on clumsy assumptions and can't explain most subatomic particles. A small tweak to general relativity solves these problems - and seemingly proves the universe must have come from a black hole elsewhere. More »
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The hottest material ever created in the laboratory makes an eerie drone. A similar sound may have pervaded the universe just after the big bang, when space was a seething cauldron of matter. More »
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Most cosmologists believe that our universe emerged from a singularity during the Big Bang. But now physicists are exploring the possibility that our universe was created by the death of an earlier universe. More »
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The Large Hadron Collider at the CERN research facility near Geneva, Switzerland won't be going on a luau in Hawaii anytime soon, since the state is suing to stop the activation of the enormous research project. Yes, it's not just individual wackos who believe the LHC will unleash a cosmic ass-whooping on the planet. An actual state is suing the builders to keep them from activating it. They fear it'll let loose runaway miniature black holes, strangelets, or magnetic monopoles that will destroy the planet. The researchers at CERN have spent their precious time trying to assure people that won't happen, although it would be kind of cool if it did. We've got the strange and winding history of this project in today's Triviagasm. More »
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