This overhead shot shows the start of the finals of the men’s 100 meter race during the Tokyo Olympics. Although Usain Bolt’s world record of 9.58 seconds has stood since 2009, it does not approach the limits of human possibility....
Time is normally something we measure with clocks: devices that record its passage from one moment to the next. While there is an interesting philosophical case to be made that time is an illusion, the fact that we can measure,...
This region of space, viewed first iconically by Hubble and later by JWST, shows an animation that switches between the two. Both images still have fundamental limitations, as they were acquired from within our inner Solar System, where the presence...
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...
