Gravitational Lensing
A Dragon Reveals Individual Stars From A Time When the Universe Was Half Its Present Age
It's nearly impossible to identify individual stars billions of light years away. But thanks to gravitational lensing, astronomers have identified…
Webb Weighs an Early Twin of the Milky Way
Astronomers have used JWST to weigh a galaxy in the early Universe, finding that it has roughly the same mass…
Euclid Could Find 170,000 Strong Gravitational Lenses
Gravitational lensing is a concept where dark matter distorts space revealing its presence through its interaction with light. ESA’s Euclid…
JWST Reveals Star Formation at Cosmic Noon
Understanding the star formation rate (SFR) in a galaxy is critical to understanding the galaxy itself. Some galaxies are starburst…
No Merger Needed: A Rotating Ring of Gas Creates A Hyperluminous Galaxy
Some galaxies experience rapid star formation hundreds or even thousands of times greater than the Milky Way. Astronomers think that…
Webb Sees Globular Clusters Forming in the Early Universe
Picture the Universe's ancient beginnings. In the vast darkness, light was emitted from a particular galaxy only 460 million years…
Rotation Curves of Galaxies Stay Flat Indefinitely
In his classic book On the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the philosopher Thomas Kuhn posited that, for a new scientific…
If Gravity Can Exist Without Mass, That Could Explain Dark Matter
Dark Matter is Nature's poltergeist. We can see its effects, but we can't see it, and we don't know what…
Gravitational Lenses Could Pin Down Black Hole Mergers with Unprecedented Accuracy
Gravitational wave astronomy has been one of the hottest new types of astronomy ever since the LIGO consortium officially detected…
Formation-Flying Spacecraft Could Probe the Solar System for New Physics
It's an exciting time for the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. Thanks to cutting-edge observatories, instruments, and new techniques,…