Latest Big Bang Stories

Although we may believe humans know a lot about the Universe, there are still a lot of phenomena to be explained. A team of cosmologists from the University of the Basque Country are searching for the model that best explains the evolution of the Universe.We usually have an image of scientists who study the Universe doing so peering through a telescope. And, effectively, this is what astrophysicists do: gather data about the observable phenomena of the Universe. However, in order to interpret...

Using a powerful radio telescope to peer into the early universe, a team of California astronomers has obtained the first direct measurement of a nascent galaxy's magnetic field as it appeared 6.5 billion years ago.Astronomers believe the magnetic fields within our own Milky Way and other nearby galaxies"”which control the rate of star formation and the dynamics of interstellar gas--arose from a slow "dynamo effect." In this process, slowly rotating galaxies are thought to have generated...

As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered. Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow." The stuff that's pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude....

A Unique Way to Measure Dark Energy With Galaxies and QuasarsThe Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) uses a 2.5-meter telescope with a wider field of view than any other large telescope, located on a mountaintop in New Mexico called Apache Point and devoted solely to mapping the universe. We now know that some three-quarters of the universe consists of dark energy, whose very existence was unsuspected when telescope construction began in 1994 and still controversial when the first Sloan survey...

Researchers have recently sought to find evidence of antimatter in the form of large clusters of hundreds of galaxies.  Research suggests that if large amounts of antimatter exist, it may have been pushed far into the universe shortly after the big band occurred. Antimatter has the same mass as matter but contains an opposite charge. Experts hypothesize that matter and antimatter should have been created in equal amounts. However, scientists say that our universe is only made up of matter....

Breakthrough helps researchers better understand mysterious dark matterBy analyzing light from small, faint galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, UC Irvine scientists believe they have discovered the minimum mass for galaxies in the universe "“ 10 million times the mass of the sun.This mass could be the smallest known "building block" of the mysterious, invisible substance called dark matter. Stars that form within these building blocks clump together and turn into...

In the beginning, scientists say the first star to appear after the Big Bang quickly grew into a monster 100 times more massive than the sun. U.S. and Japanese researchers say the first cosmological object formed in the universe was a tiny protostar with a mass of about 1 percent of our sun. Scientists spent years developing a complex computer simulation of what it was like after the Big Bang that formed the universe."The first stars were very different from stars like the sun,"...

By Cowen, Ron Scientists propose tests of Copernican principle For all the hand wringing among physicists about the nature of dark energy, the invisible stuff that appears to be revving up the rate of cosmic expansion, a nagging possibility remains. Dark energy could be acosmic mirage - if humans live in a special place in the universe having a peculiar distribution of matter. If Earth and its environs are centered in a vast, billion-light- year-long bubble, relatively free of matter, and...

In recent studies, physicists may have not only found a new model for the creation of our universe, they may also have found an entirely new view on time altogether. The journal Physical Review Letters shares details about a recent study of the cosmic microwave background "“ light emitted when the universe was only 400,000 years old. It is relic radiation that fills the universe and acts as evidence for the Big Bang theory. In 1992 the Cobe satellite discovered tiny fluctuations on the...

Aim to produce new generation of astronomer that understands theory and observationThe future of fundamental physics research lies in observing the early universe and developing models that explain the new data obtained. The availability of much higher resolution data from closer to the start of the universe is creating the potential for further significant theoretical breakthroughs and progress resolving some of the most difficult and intractable questions in physics. But this requires much...