Latest Universe Stories
'Bolshoi' supercomputer simulation provides new benchmark for cosmological studies The Bolshoi supercomputer simulation, the most accurate and detailed large cosmological simulation run to date, gives physicists and astronomers a powerful new tool for understanding such cosmic mysteries as galaxy formation, dark matter, and dark energy. The simulation traces the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe, including the evolution and distribution of the dark matter halos in...
New measurements have confirmed Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity after an experiment last week brought the theory into question. Einstein's general theory of relativity says that light emitted from stars and galaxies is slightly tugged by gravity from celestial bodies. Physicists reported last week that neutrinos can travel faster than light, which sent a blow to Einstein's theory of special relativity. The particles in the experiments conducted between the European...
The Universe wouldn’t be the same without the Higgs boson. This legendary particle plays a role in cosmology and reveals the possible existence of another closely related particle. The race to identify the Higgs boson is on at CERN. This Holy Grail of particle physics would help explain why the majority of elementary particles possess mass. The mysterious particle would also help us understand the evolution of the Universe from the moment of its birth, according to a group of EPFL...
NEW YORK, Aug. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first time ever, the Miss Universe Organization will offer a fan vote and an on-screen interactive technology to increase fan engagement worldwide during the 2011 MISS UNIVERSE® Competition. The pageant will air LIVE from Sao Paulo, Brazil on Monday, September 12th at 9 p.m. ET on NBC. Launching today is a pre-pageant fan vote built by CommerceTel (OTCBB: MFON) that will grant one of the 89 contestants automatic advancement to the...
Mr. Universe/Mr. America Rich Gaspari, the CEO of Gaspari Nutrition (http://www.GaspariNutrition.com), isn't just flexing his muscles. He's also flexing his financial muscles to help those in need. Together with his wife Liz Gaspari, Senior Vice President and Director of Global Distribution for Gaspari Nutrition, they've been giving back in a BIG way by sending soldiers stationed in Afghanistan much-needed nutrients and pregnant and nursing mothers essential pre-natal vitamins to...
Researchers have resurrected the theory that other universes lie within "bubbles" of space and time, known as the "Multiverse" theory.Studies of the low-temperature glow left from the Big Bang suggest that these "bubble universes" have left marks on our own. The theory is popular in modern physics, but experimental tests have been hard to perform. A team of scientists used data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) to help reignite this theory....
SILVER SPRING, Md., July 6, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --There is no more all-encompassing source of mystery than the universe. Since the dawn of humanity, its vastness has elicited endless wonder and questions that have consumed mankind's intellect and imagination. This summer, SCIENCE welcomes back Professor Brian Cox, the physicist whom the Los Angeles Times affectionately calls "the nerd who is cooler than you," for the four-part series WONDERS OF THE UNIVERSE. Expanding on the promise of...
If you have stayed up nights wondering about the shape of electrons, you can now sleep easier. Electrons have been found to be almost, but not quite, perfectly round, The Telegraph reports. Researchers at Imperial College London have recently measuremed the shape of the electron, finding that it is almost a perfect sphere, in a study published in the journal Nature.The decade-long experiment suggests that the electron differs from being perfectly round by less than...
NASA's Gravity Probe B (GP-B) has produced astonishing new confirmation of two key predictions derived from Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which the spacecraft was designed to assess. The satellite's observations show the Earth is very slightly warping time and space, and even pulling them around with it. The findings validate Einstein's prediction, devised nearly a century ago, that large objects in the universe distort space and time with the force of their gravity,...
Scientists outline a test for the theory, which, if proven, would address major problems in particle physicsDid the early universe have just one spatial dimension?That's the mind-boggling concept at the heart of a theory that University at Buffalo physicist Dejan Stojkovic and colleagues proposed in 2010.They suggested that the early universe -- which exploded from a single point and was very, very small at first -- was one-dimensional (like a straight line) before expanding to include two...
Latest Universe Reference Libraries
Image Caption: The Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF) was completed in September 2012 and shows the farthest galaxies ever photographed by humans. Each speck of light in the photo is an individual galaxy, some of them as old as 13.2 billion years; the observable universe is estimated to contain more than 200 billion galaxies. Credit: NASA/Wikipedia What is Cosmology? I once commented to an acquaintance that I was fascinated by the field of Cosmology, and mused that if I had more time, I...
Physics is a natural science involving the study of matter and its motion through space-time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. On a broader scale, it also involves the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy. Physics was part of natural philosophy until the Scientific Revolution in the 16th century, when the natural...
Centaurus Constellation -- Centaurus (the centaur) was one of the 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy, and counts also among the 88 modern constellations. A constellation of the southern hemisphere, mentioned by Eudoxus (4th century B.C.) and Aratus (3rd century B.C.), Ptolemy catalogued thirty-seven stars in it. It contains Proxima Centauri, the red dwarf that is the nearest known star (other than the Sun) to Earth, as well as Alpha Centauri, which is a double star to which Proxima...
Large-Scale Structure of the Cosmos -- Stars are organised into galaxies which in turn appear to form clusters and superclusters, separated by voids. Prior to 1989 it was commonly assumed that the superclusters were the largest structures in existence, and that they were distributed more-or-less uniformly throughout the universe in every direction. However, in 1989, Margaret Geller and John Huchra discovered the "Great Wall", a sheet of galaxies more than 500 million light years long...
Cosmology -- area of science that aims at a comprehensive theory of the structure and evolution of the entire physical universe. Modern Cosmological Theories Present models of the universe hold two fundamental premises: the cosmological principle and the dominant role of gravitation. Derived by Hubble, the cosmological principle holds that if a large enough sample of galaxies is considered, the universe looks the same from all positions and in all directions in space. The second point...
