At the centers of galaxies, orbiting stars experience close interactions with the central supermassive black holes at a galaxy’s core. Stars that pass too close, particularly in multi-star systems, are at risk of receiving hypervelocity kicks and being ejected from...
When the Universe undergoes a period of cosmic inflation, the fabric of space — which has a tremendously high energy density — expands at an exponential rate, creating new space (also full of large amounts of energy) with each moment...
Our Universe, as far back as we can trace it, has been expanding at a rate that is dependent on the sum total of all the forms of energy within it. There’s one equation, the first Friedmann equation, that details...
Uranus, with its ringed system, is shown alongside its five largest moons. From left-to-right are Ariel, Miranda, Umbriel, Oberon, and Titania. In terms of orbital distance, however, the order goes Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and then Oberon. (Credit: NASA, ESA,...
When high-energy cosmic particles strike the top of Earth’s atmosphere, they produce showers of “daughter” particles that will find their way down to Earth. On the surface, we’ve built several notable detector arrays, including the Pierre Auger Observatory and the...
The largest galaxies displayed here aren’t blurry because they’re overexposed or because of atmospheric interference, but rather because JWST is outstandingly exposing their diffuse, extended stellar halos. Behind the central and lower-right galaxies are more distant, gravitationally lensed background galaxies,...
An illustration of the first stars turning on in the Universe. Without metals to cool down the clumps of gas that lead to the formation of the first stars, only the largest clumps within a large-mass cloud will wind up...
The COSMOS-Web survey, the largest cycle 1 General Observers JWST program, was proposed in 2021 (right) as a large-area survey overlapping with the COSMOS field acquired with Hubble. On the left, the full, completed COSMOS-Web field is shown. (Credit: COSMOS-Web...
This overhead image shows the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab, where powerful accelerators create muons that are guided into this electromagnetic bending ring, where a magnetic field is then applied to exquisitely measure the magnetic moment of the muon. With...
Back prior to 1923, no one knew whether Andromeda was a galaxy beyond the Milky Way or an object present within our own galaxy. With Hubble’s key observations in October of that year, we measured the distance to Andromeda, and...
