Astronomy/cosmology Archives - Attention to the Unseen

A dark dimension could link two of the universe’s great unknowns

From elsewhere — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 01:46:24 +0000

Steve Nadis writes: For those who see the world as a dark place, the universe seems to offer little solace. According to current estimates, approximately 70% of the stuff that makes up the cosmos consists of dark energy, an unknown force that pushes space to expand. And another 25% consists of dark matter, a mysterious material that holds galaxies together. But semantically speaking, dark energy and dark matter are not so much “dark” as they are invisible. They do not...

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How Thomas Paine spelled out astronomical expectations for a new nation

From elsewhere — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 23:33:54 +0000

Jo Marchant writes: In politics, as in nature, tensions can take years to build, but it takes just one stone to unleash an avalanche, one spark to ignite a wildfire. For many historians of the American Revolution, that spark was a pamphlet of fewer than 100 pages written by a newly arrived English immigrant named Thomas Paine. Throughout 1775, violent clashes between British troops and colonist rebels protesting onerous taxes inspired little talk of outright revolution. Most rebels aimed to...

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Could the oldest human story really be 100,000 years old?

From elsewhere — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 01:10:57 +0000

Mihai Andrei writes: For as long as humans have existed, they have looked to the sky. There are thousands and thousands of different myths and legends linked to stars and constellations, but one radical new idea says that one such story could be incredibly old. The legend is linked to the Pleiades, a set of stars that many cultures call the “Seven Sisters”. But look at them with the naked eye and you’ll only see six; so where’s the seventh...

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Apollo vs Artemis: How the Earth changed in 58 years

From elsewhere — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 23:44:02 +0000

Richard Hollingham writes: After the Apollo 8 crew captured the iconic Earthrise photo in 1968, Artemis astronauts have recreated the image, revealing changes to our fragile blue planet. When the commander of Apollo 8, Frank Borman, first saw the far side of the Moon from his spacecraft window in 1968 he was struck by its desolate appearance. “The lunar surface was terribly distressed with meteorite craters and volcanic residue,” he told me during a BBC interview in 2018. “It was...

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Universe’s expansion rate cannot be explained by current physics

From elsewhere — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:21:22 +0000

Live Science reports: There’s a central crisis in cosmology: Different measurements yield different values for the expansion rate of the universe. Now, a comprehensive analysis combining decades of independent measurements suggests that this discrepancy is not due to error or uncertainty; instead, it’s a potential pathway to new physics beyond the standard cosmological model. Astronomers calculate the universe’s expansion rate, or Hubble constant, in two ways. One method is to use measurements of the distance to the cosmic microwave background...

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Ancient star opens window to early days of the universe

From elsewhere — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:37:56 +0000

UChicago News reports: Not all archaeologists study ancient pottery and arrowheads. If you’re a stellar archeologist, you seek the oldest stars in the universe—those born long before our own sun and planet came into being. A group led by University of Chicago scientists has discovered a star that appears to date back to the second generation of stars ever formed. Still inside the tiny primordial galaxy where it was first born, it has a unique elemental makeup that can tell...

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Largest image of its kind shows hidden chemistry at the heart of the Milky Way

From elsewhere — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:50:59 +0000

European Southern Observatory (ESO): Astronomers have captured the central region of our Milky Way in a striking new image, unveiling a complex network of filaments of cosmic gas in unprecedented detail. Obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), this rich dataset — the largest ALMA image to date — will allow astronomers to probe the lives of stars in the most extreme region of our galaxy, next to the supermassive black hole at its centre. “It’s a place of...

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How astronomers are unveiling the ‘skeleton’ of the universe

From elsewhere — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 23:58:54 +0000

Paul Sutter writes: The universe is a vast, unseen loom, weaving galaxies into an intricate cosmic web through invisible threads of matter. This cosmic web is the fundamental scaffolding of everything we see, dictating where galaxies form and how they evolve. Much of this architecture remains a mystery, its delicate pathways hidden, and uncovering these cosmic threads requires new eyes and persistent effort. But a new observation has helped us trace one in the Ursa Major Supergroup. In a preprint...

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Astronomers confirm earliest Milky Way-like galaxy in the universe, just 2 billion years after the Big Bang

From elsewhere — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 01:32:49 +0000

Live Science reports: Scientists continue to push the boundaries of astronomy and cosmology, thanks to next-generation instruments that can see farther and clearer than ever before. Through these efforts, astronomers have observed some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe. In turn, this has led to refined theories and timelines of galactic formation and evolution. In a recent study, a team of astronomers led by the University of Pittsburgh (UPitt) uncovered what could be the earliest barred spiral galaxy ever...

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The universe may be lopsided – new research

From elsewhere — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 01:05:37 +0000

By Subir Sarkar, University of Oxford The shape of the universe is not something we often think about. But my colleagues and I have published a new study suggests it could be asymmetric or lopsided, meaning not the same in every direction. Should we care about this? Well, today’s “standard cosmological model” – which describes the dynamics and structure of the entire cosmos – rests squarely on the assumption that it is isotropic (looks the same in all directions), and...

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