Science

Stars behaving absurdly

For centuries, the only way in which to illuminate the mysteries of black holes was through the power of mathematics

Steve Nadis & Shing-Tung Yau

What does it look like to hunt for dark matter? Scenes from one frontier in the search

7 minutes

Imagining spacetime as a visible grid is an extraordinary journey into the unseen

12 minutes

Tiny, entangled universes that form or fizzle out – a theory of the quantum multiverse

11 minutes

The Indian astronomer whose innovative work on black holes was mocked at Cambridge

13 minutes

Seven years later, what can we make of our first confirmed interstellar visitor?

59 minutes

Panspermia

It’s possible that frozen worlds with subterranean oceans are incubators of organic life. But then how did life get here?

Balazs Bradak

What are you really seeing when you see magnificent images of space?

5 minutes

Cosmic vision

By showing us a new cosmos, the discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope will ripple through our moral universe

Claire Isabel Webb

Thriving on Mars

Dust storms, long distances and freezing temperatures make living on Mars magnificently challenging. How will we do it?

Simon Morden

Cogitating black holes

The Universe cannot always be understood through observation. Instead, physicists explore by devising thought experiments

Michael Dine

Dark horses in the cosmos

Could primordial black holes from the beginning of time explain ‘dark matter’, the mysterious missing mass in the Universe?

Briley Lewis

Revisiting ‘Powers of Ten’ – what we’ve learned about the Universe since 1977

7 minutes

The search for alien tech

There’s a new plan to find extraterrestrial civilisations by the way they live. But if we can see them, can they see us?

Corey S Powell

Building ‘bigger and better’ has pushed cosmology forward. Can it take it any further?

7 minutes

A non-Standard model

Most cosmologists say dark matter must exist. So far, it’s nowhere to be found. A widely scorned rival theory explains why

David Merritt

Contact

An alien-made artefact or just interstellar debris? What ʻOumuamua says about how science works when data is scarce

Matthew Bothwell

The cosmic chasm

Physics as we know it is elegant and exquisitely accurate. It tells almost nothing about the deepest riddles of the Universe

Pedro G Ferreira

A cyclical, forgetful Universe – Roger Penrose details an astonishing origin hypothesis

17 minutes

Big space

Our planet is a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea. Can we learn what lies beyond our own horizons of perception?

Katie Mack

Does dark matter exist?

Dark matter is the most ubiquitous thing physicists have never found: it’s time to consider alternative explanations

Ramin Skibba

As above, so below – an artist finds the cosmos in a microscopic chemical reaction

6 minutes

Naming the Universe

How the quick thinking of internationally minded astronomers avoided stamping the solar system with petty European rivalries

Stephen Case