A new study suggests that the universe may be 26.7 billion years old, nearly double the widely accepted age of 13.7 billion years. The new model, which incorporates Zwicky’s tired light theory and Dirac’s evolving coupling constants, could explain the existence of small mature galaxies that formed just 300 million years after the Big Bang … Read more
In this artist’s rendition, a pair of supermassive black holes (above left) emit gravitational waves that ripple through the fabric of space-time. Those gravitational waves compress and stretch the paths of the radio waves emitted by the (white) pulsars. By carefully measuring radio waves, a team of scientists recently detected the background gravitational waves of … Read more
Astronomers have discovered a prime strand of the universe’s cosmic web using the James Webb Space Telescope, existing just 830 million years after the big bang. The study also examined eight quasars in the young universe and revealed significant insights into the assemblage and influence of supermassive black holes on star formation. (Cosmic web artists … Read more
An international team of astrophysicists and cosmologists has presented five papers suggesting that the aggregate (S8 value) of the universe’s dark matter is 0.76, a figure that lines up with other gravitational lensing investigations but not the 0 value. 83 derived from the Cosmic Microwave Background. An international team of scientists used advanced techniques and … Read more
Smaller planets could be born as gas and dust are squeezed between larger worlds like the filling in a cosmic sandwich. The recently suggested process — dubbed “sandwich planet formation” — would occur in the massive disks of planet-birth gas and dust that swirl around stars in their infancy called “protoplanetary disks.” About 4.5 billion … Read more
The violent merger between two stars that may have formed the helium-burning giant star Baekdu is depicted. The merger debris forms a disk from which the planet Halla formed, allowing the planets an unlikely survival around the star. Credit: WM Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko 8 Ursae Minoris b, a giant planet, surprisingly survives despite the expansion … Read more
