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The Early Universe Ran in Slow Motion

One of Einstein’s predictions is that we should see time moving at different rates at different ages of the Universe. Researchers have confirmed this prediction out to half the age of the Universe using Type 1a supernovae as standard candles. Astronomers have gone much further back in time, observing quasars that sent out their light 12 billion years ago. Over this vast distance, time has slowed to a crawl, with every second experienced by those quasars taking five seconds from our perspective.

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Black Holes Might be Defects in Spacetime

A team of theoretical physicists have discovered a strange structure in space-time that to an outside observer would look exactly like a black hole, but upon closer inspection would be anything but: they would be defects in the very fabric of the universe.

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The Mass of a Single Star (other than the Sun) has Been Directly Measured for the First Time

How do you measure an object’s weight from a distance? You could guess at its distance and therefore derive its size. Maybe you could further speculate about its density, which would eventually lead to an estimated weight. But these are far from the exact empirical studies that astrophysicists would like to have when trying to …

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New Measurements of Galaxy Rotation Lean Towards Modified Gravity as an Explanation for Dark Matter

Although dark matter is a central part of the standard cosmological model, it’s not without its issues. There continue to be nagging mysteries about the stuff, not the least of which is the fact that scientists have found no direct particle evidence of it. Despite numerous searches, we have yet to detect dark matter particles. …

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