This portrait of astronomer John Couch Adams, drawn by J.S. Stodart after a photograph by J.E. Mayall. Adams, although initially blamed for his failure to find Neptune, found tremendous success later on by linking recurring meteor showers to periodic comets....
One of the remarkable technological developments in recent years has been that of a “learning machine,” or artificial intelligence. Although its capabilities are profound and impressive, it’s powered largely by college-level math and a large set of high-quality data. Its...
This composite view of “the Penguin and the Egg,” known as Arp 142, shows two interacting galaxies, one gas-poor elliptical and one (former) gas-rich spiral, in wavelength ranging from 0.9 to 15 microns. In infrared light, perhaps the “Penguin” looks...
Over time, the Sun loses mass through the emission of solar wind particles and the process of internal nuclear fusion. This mass loss gradually causes the planets to outspiral, and migrate farther from the Sun. However, this is not the...
For the first several billion years of our Universe’s history, the Universe’s expansion rate was decreasing and distant galaxies slow in their recession from ours, as the matter and radiation densities drop. However, for the past ~6 billion years, distant...
This artist’s conception shows an intermediate mass black hole at the center of globular cluster Omega Centauri: the largest globular cluster known within the Milky Way. Although it has been suggested that Omega Centauri contains an intermediate mass black hole...
The Bullet Cluster, the aftermath of a galaxy cluster collision that occurred 3.8 billion years ago in a region of space located ~3.7 billion light-years away, represents very strong evidence for the existence of dark matter. The separation of the...
In 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft began their pioneering journey across the Solar System to visit the giant outer planets. Now, the Voyagers are hurtling through unexplored territory on their road trip beyond our Solar System. Along the...
This photo shows the bright, naked-eye star, Albireo. To the naked eye, it appears as just a single point of light. However, a binocular or telescope view shows that it’s actually two very different colored stars separated by a substantial...
At the start of the hot Big Bang, the Universe was rapidly expanding and filled with high-energy, very densely packed, ultra-relativistic quanta. An early stage of radiation domination gave way to several later stages where radiation was sub-dominant, but still...
