Topic description and stories

A new map of the dark matter made by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. ̽»¨Ö±²¥orange regions show where there is more mass; purple where there is less. ̽»¨Ö±²¥typical features are hundreds of millions of light years across. ̽»¨Ö±²¥grey/white shows where contaminating light from dust in our Milky Way galaxy, measured by the Planck satellite, obscures a deeper view.

New findings that map the universe’s cosmic growth support Einstein’s theory of gravity

11 Apr 2023

A new image reveals the most detailed map of dark matter distributed across a quarter of the entire sky, reaching deep into the cosmos.

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Emily Mitchell, Didier Queloz, Kate Adamal, Carl Zimmer. Landscape with Milky way galaxy. Sunrise and Earth view from space with Milky way galaxy. (Elements of this image furnished by NASA).

Humanity’s quest to discover the origins of life in the universe

08 Mar 2023

Scientists from the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Cambridge, ETH Zurich, Harvard ̽»¨Ö±²¥, and the ̽»¨Ö±²¥ of Chicago have founded the Origins Federation, which...

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A pin being pushed into a bubble, in which there is an image of the Universe

Can cosmic inflation be ruled out?

03 Nov 2022

Astrophysicists say that cosmic inflation – a point in the Universe’s infancy when space-time expanded exponentially, and what physicists really...

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Nobel Laureates of Cambridge

30 Sep 2022

What’s it like to win a Nobel Prize? Does it always come as a surprise? How does it change your life? Professor Didier Queloz, winner of the 2019...

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̽»¨Ö±²¥Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) by night

Slow spin of early galaxy observed for the first time

01 Jul 2022

One of the most distant known galaxies, observed in the very earliest years of the Universe, appears to be rotating at less than a quarter of the...

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̽»¨Ö±²¥cosmologist modelling the Universe with maths

18 Feb 2021

Dr Tobias Baldauf likes nothing better than seeing an equation ‘cross reality’. His work is helping us to answer some of the remaining questions...

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Variations in the ‘fogginess’ of the universe identify a milestone in cosmic history

16 Apr 2019

Large differences in the ‘fogginess’ of the early universe were caused by islands of cold gas left behind when the universe heated up after the big...

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Stephen Hawking

Taming the multiverse: Stephen Hawking’s final theory about the big bang

02 May 2018

Professor Stephen Hawking’s final theory on the origin of the universe, which he worked on in collaboration with Professor Thomas Hertog from KU...

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Artist's impression of spinning galaxy

Astronomers detect ‘whirlpool’ movement in earliest galaxies

10 Jan 2018

Astronomers have looked back to a time soon after the Big Bang, and have discovered swirling gas in some of the earliest galaxies to have formed in...

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Step inside the mind of the young Stephen Hawking as his PhD thesis goes online for first time

23 Oct 2017

Stephen Hawking’s PhD thesis, ‘ Properties of expanding universes’ , has been made freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world, after being...

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First detection of gravitational waves and light produced by colliding neutron stars

16 Oct 2017

In a galaxy far away, two dead stars begin a final spiral into a massive collision. ̽»¨Ö±²¥resulting explosion unleashes a huge burst of energy, sending...

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Artist’s impression of the distant galaxy SXDF-NB1006-2

Astronomers observe most distant oxygen ever

16 Jun 2016

An international team of astronomers have detected glowing oxygen in a distant galaxy seen just 700 million years after the Big Bang. This is the...

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