Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 24, 2021

Dark energy camera takes hyper-detailed images of nearby dwarf galaxies

New, stunningly detailed images of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds may revolutionize our understanding of the stars making up these two dwarf galaxies. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are a pair of dwarf galaxies that neighbor our Milky Way. Their proximity means these satellite galaxies allow astronomers to...

Jun 7, 2021

Did a dark energy discovery just prove Einstein wrong? Not quite.

The largest galaxy survey ever made suggests that our cosmos isn't as clumpy as it's supposed to be. That lack of clumpiness could mean there's a discrepancy with Einstein's theory of general relativity, which scientists use to understand how the structures in our universe have evolved over 13 billion years....

Jan 13, 2022

Largest dark energy map could reveal the fate of the universe

A modified telescope in Arizona has produced an interim map, which is already the largest three-dimensional map of the universe ever — and the instrument is only about a tenth of the way through its five-year mission. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), a collaboration between Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory...

Feb 16, 2023

What Is dark energy?

Dark energy is an enigmatic phenomenon that acts in opposition to gravity and is responsible for accelerating the expansion of the universe. Though dark energy constitutes up to three-fourths of the mass-energy of the cosmos, its underlying nature has eluded physicists for decades. Dark energy has no real connections to...

Feb 23, 2023

Dark energy could lead to a second (and third, and fourth) Big Bang, new research suggests

Will the universe end in a bang or a whimper? A pair of theoretical physicists have proposed a third path: perhaps the universe will never end. In a study that attempts to define the nature of dark energy — a mysterious phenomenon thought to be causing the universe to expand...

Jun 20, 2023

The expansion of the universe could be a mirage, new theoretical study suggests

The expansion of the universe could be a mirage, a potentially controversial new study suggests. This rethinking of the cosmos also suggests solutions for the puzzles of dark energy and dark matter, which scientists believe account for around 95% of the universe's total energy and matter but remain shrouded in...