Friday, 25 May, 2012

The European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory is designed to collect long-wavelength radiation from some of the coldest and most distant objects in the universe. In this image, Herschel has photographed a previously unseen stellar nursery, where it is estimated that up to 700 newly forming stars are crowded into the dust cloud seen in [...]

Space is probably infinite, but we can see only the part that contains stars or galaxies whose light has been able to reach us, says Francis Halzen, a professor of physics. The universe originated about 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang, so light cannot have been traveling for more than 13.7 billion years. [...]

A question from a very young reader, as relayed by his mother: “Where does the future come from, mommy? I don’t understand. How does it get here?”

Feeling cramped? New measurement says the universe is bigger than you thought. Meet the astronomers’ new yardstick.

Astronomers have just seen galaxies from the first billion years of the universe. They are also racing to understand dark energy, the force that’s spreading the universe apart.