Summaries | Headlines

Cassini Is On The Trail Of A Runaway Mystery (October 9, 2007) -- NASA scientists are on the trail of Iapetus' mysterious dark side, which seems to be home to a bizarre "runaway" process that is transporting vaporized water ice from the dark areas to the white ... > full story

Shining A Light On Mysterious 'Dark Matter' (October 5, 2007) -- We've all been taught that our bodies, the Earth and in fact all matter in the universe is composed of tiny building blocks called atoms. Now imagine if this weren't the case. This mind-bending ... > full story

Dark Matter Of The Universe Has A Long Lifetime (October 4, 2007) -- The universe consists not just of visible celestial bodies, stars, planets and galaxies. It also has a mystical fellow player -- dark matter. The astronomers can measure that the dark matter exists ... > full story

Dilaton Could Affect Abundance Of Dark Matter Particles (October 2, 2007) -- The amount of dark matter left over from the early universe may be less than previously believed. The 'relic abundance' of stable dark matter particles such as the neutralino may be reduced as ... > full story

Early Star Formation In The Universe Illuminated (September 18, 2007) -- A groundbreaking study has provided new insight into the way the first stars were formed at the start of the universe, some 13 billion years ago. Cosmologists suggest that the formation of the first ... > full story

'Missing Dwarf Galaxy' Problem May Be Solved (September 17, 2007) -- Scientists may have solved a discrepancy between the number of extremely small, faint galaxies predicted to exist near the Milky Way and the number actually observed. In an attempt to resolve the ... > full story

Oldest Stars May Shed Light On Dark Matter (September 14, 2007) -- The universe's earliest stars may hold clues to the nature of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up most of the universe's matter but doesn't interact with light, cosmologists report. The ... > full story

What Is Dark Energy? 'Beyond Einstein' Program Aims To Investigate (September 10, 2007) -- NASA and the US Department of Energy should pursue the Joint Dark Energy Mission as the first mission in the "Beyond Einstein" program, according to a new report from the National Research Council. ... > full story

Stellar Firework In A Whirlwind (September 5, 2007) -- In July 2006, ESO's Very Large Telescope took images of a stellar firework in the spiral galaxy NGC 1288. The supernova -- designated SN 2006dr -- was at its peak brightness, shining as bright as the ... > full story

Astronomers Find Gaping Hole In The Universe (August 23, 2007) -- Astronomers have found an enormous hole in the Universe, nearly a billion light-years across, empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies and gas, as well as the mysterious, unseen "dark ... > full story

Dark Matter Mystery Deepens In Cosmic 'Train Wreck' (August 17, 2007) -- Astronomers have discovered a chaotic scene unlike any witnessed before in a cosmic "train wreck" between giant galaxy clusters. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes revealed a ... > full story

New NASA Office Will Study Strange Cosmic Phenomena (July 9, 2007) -- NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center will house the agency's new Einstein Probes Office, created to study the universe's exotic phenomena: dark energy, black holes and cosmic microwave background ... > full story

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Ultimate fate of the universe -- The ultimate fate of the universe is a subject of study in the field of cosmology. Vying scientific theories predict whether the life of the universe is finite or infinite. Current understanding of ... > full article

Big Bang nucleosynthesis -- In physical cosmology, Big Bang nucleosynthesis (or primordial nucleosynthesis) refers to the production of nuclei other than H-1, the normal, light hydrogen, during the early phases of the universe, ... > full article

Shape of the Universe -- The shape of the Universe is a subject of investigation within physical cosmology. Cosmologists and astronomers describe the geometry of the Universe which includes both local geometry and global ... > full article

Dark matter -- In astrophysics and cosmology, dark matter is hypothetical matter of unknown composition that does not emit or reflect enough electromagnetic radiation to be observed directly, but whose presence can ... > full article

Large-scale structure of the cosmos -- In physical cosmology, the term large-scale structure refers to the characterization of observable distributions of matter and light on the largest scales (typically on the order of billions of ... > full article

Brown dwarf -- Brown dwarfs were originally called black dwarfs, a classification for dark substellar objects floating freely in space which were too low in mass to sustain stable hydrogen ... > full article

Dark energy -- In physical cosmology, dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that permeates all of space and tends to increase the rate of expansion of the universe. Assuming the existence of dark energy is ... > full article

Physical cosmology -- Physical cosmology, as a branch of astrophysics, is the study of the large-scale structure of the universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. Cosmology ... > full article

Galaxy formation and evolution -- The formation of galaxies is still one of the most active research areas in astrophysics; and, to some extent, this is also true for galaxy evolution. Some ideas, however, are now widely accepted. ... > full article

Interstellar medium -- The interstellar medium (or ISM) is the name astronomers give to the tenuous gas and dust that pervade interstellar space. Whilst the ISM refers to the matter (interstellar matter, also abbreviated ... > full article

Astrophysics -- Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties (luminosity, density, temperature and chemical composition) of astronomical ... > full article

Neutrino -- The neutrino is an elementary particle. It has half-integer spin and is therefore a fermion. All neutrinos observed to date have left-handed chirality. Although they had been considered massless for ... > full article

Multiverse -- A multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes, including our universe, which comprise the absolute whole of physical ... > full article

Redshift -- In physics and astronomy, redshift is an observed increase in the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation received by a detector compared to that emitted by the source. For visible light, red is the ... > full article

Electromagnetic spectrum -- The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all possible electromagnetic radiation. Above infrared in frequency comes visible light. This is the range in which the sun and stars similar to it emit ... > full article

Corona -- In astronomy, a corona is the luminous plasma "atmosphere" of the Sun or other celestial body, extending millions of kilometres into space, most easily seen during a total solar eclipse, but also ... > full article

Phase (matter) -- A phase is a set of states of a macroscopic physical system that have relatively uniform chemical composition and physical properties (i.e. density, crystal structure, index of refraction, and so ... > full article

Gas giant -- A gas giant is a large planet that is not primarily composed of rock or other solid matter. Gas giants may have a rocky or metallic core—in fact, such a core is thought to be required for a gas giant ... > full article

Stellar evolution -- In astronomy, stellar evolution is the sequence of changes that a star undergoes during its lifetime; the hundreds of thousands, millions or billions of years during which it emits light and heat. ... > full article

Cosmic microwave background radiation -- In cosmology, the cosmic microwave background radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation discovered in 1965. It has a thermal black-body spectrum which peaks in the microwave range. Most ... > full article