Category Astronomy/Space

The birth, growth and future of our universe are eternally fascinating. In the last decades, telescopes have been able to observe the skies with unprecedented precision and sensitivity.

Our research team on the South Pole Telescope is studying how the universe evolved and has changed over time. We have just released two years’ worth of mapping of the infant universe over 1/25th of the sky.

These observations have sharpened our understanding of the nature of dark energy and the rate at which the universe is expanding.

What is the current theory of how our universe began?
Our current model for the early universe is known as the “hot Big Bang.”

It describes the first stage of our universe as a primordial fireball...

Serendipitous discovery of djerfisherite in Ryugu grain challenges current paradigm of the nature of primitive asteroids. A surprising discovery from a tiny grain of asteroid Ryugu has rocked scientists’ understanding of how our Solar System evolved. Researchers found djerfisherite—a mineral typically born in scorching, chemically reduced conditions and never before seen in Ryugu-like meteorites—inside a sample returned by Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission...

Astronomers have uncovered a vast cloud of energetic particles—a “mini halo”—surrounding one of the most distant galaxy clusters ever observed, marking a major step forward in understanding the hidden forces that shape the cosmos.

The mini-halo is at a distance so great that it takes light 10 billion years to reach Earth, making it the most distant ever found, doubling the previous dista...

Identifying the formation period of planetary systems, such as our solar system, could be the beginning of the journey to discover the origin of life. The key to this is the unique substructures found in protoplanetary disks—the sites of planet formation.

A protoplanetary disk is composed of low-temperat...