Dark-energy evidence suggests the universe will end in a “big crunch” roughly 20 billion years from now. The universe is nearing the halfway point of what may be a 33-billion-year lifespan, according ...

The birth of the universe has been a question that has puzzled scientists for centuries. In a groundbreaking study published ...

No one knows what kicked off the Big Bang that eventually allowed the stars to begin forming. Adolf Schaller for STScI, CC BY How can a Big Bang have been the start of the universe, since intense ...

Researchers have unveiled a new model for the universe’s birth that replaces cosmic inflation with gravitational waves as the ...

IT IS ONE of the biggest mysteries in cosmology—and getting bigger all the time. Ever since Edwin Hubble, an American astronomer, published observations of distant galaxies in 1929, scientists have ...

Cosmic inflation tries to describe one brief but crucial phase in the Big Bang that launched the universe onto its expansion course. Credit: Christine Daniloff / MIT / ESA / Hubble / NASA Many ...

While it's much smaller than the largest supermassive black holes detected, it's still a whopper considering how early in the history of the universe it appeared. An enormous black hole in the early ...

From mysterious dark matter to the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei, the past 12 months have reiterated just how strange particle physics can be. When you purchase through links on our site, we may ...