Universe | featured news

Don’t get too close. Astronomers are reporting that they have taken the measure of the biggest, baddest black holes yet found in the universe, abyssal yawns 10 times the size of our solar system into which billions of Suns have vanished like a guilty thought. Such holes, they say, might be the gravitational cornerstones of galaxies and clues to the fates of the violent quasars, almost supernaturally powerful explosions in the hearts of young galaxies, that dominated the early years of the universe.

European astronomers report galaxies likely merged and churned out metal-rich stars, early in the universe. From 12 billion light years distance, the gamma ray burst, GRB 090323, was spotted by NASA satellites and then Earthly telescopes in 2009 (one light year equals 5.9 trillion miles). The blast appears to have originated in one galaxy and pierced another nearby on its way o Earth, report European Southern Observatory astronomers.

Three U.S.-born scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for their studies of exploding stars that revealed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating....

The "God particle" may have to wait. The Tevatron, a once-cutting edge Chicago-area particle accelerator run by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and played a key role in the quest for the Higgs Boson or "God particle" was shut down for the last time Friday afternoon at 3:40 p.m. EDT.

Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: The spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a swirling maw of raw power, measuring 50,000 light-years across. So why on earth do astronomers call it "fluffy"?

Aliens could conceivably live on planets illuminated by the swirling mass of photons orbiting the singularity of a special type of black hole, according to a new theory.

Science editor Alan Boyle's Weblog: Is it preposterous to consider the existence of parallel universes? Or is it preposterous not to? Physicist Brian Greene would tend toward the latter view.

Our cosmos was "bruised" in collisions with other universes. Now astronomers have found the first evidence of these impacts in the cosmic microwave background.

Researchers have developed a simple geometrical method to add weight to the idea that ours is a flat, dark-energy-rich Universe.

European researchers observe for the first time a transformation in neutrinos, evidence that they have mass. It's an important step in understanding the universe's dark matter.