An AI-powered tool can distinguish dark matter's elusive effects from other cosmic phenomena, which could bring us closer to unlocking the secrets of dark matter ..read more

A better understanding of the inner workings of neutron stars will lead to a greater knowledge of the dynamics that underpin the workings of the universe and also could help drive future technology. A new study details how new insights into how dissipative tidal forces within double -- or binary -- neutron star systems will inform our understanding of the universe ..read more

It's 7 billion years ago, and the universe's heyday of star formation is beginning to slow. What might our Milky Way galaxy have looked like at that time? Astronomers have found clues in the form of a cosmic question mark, the result of a rare alignment across light-years of space ..read more

Over billions of years, the universe's stars and galaxies shined their light into space, leaving behind an imperceptibly faint night light known as the cosmic optical background. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has traveled to the edge of Earth's solar system and captured the most accurate measurement of this glow to date ..read more

Astronomers have spotted a pair of galaxies in the act of merging 12.8 billion years ago. The characteristics of these galaxies indicate that the merger will form a monster galaxy, one of the brightest types of objects in the Universe ..read more

Supermassive black holes typically take billions of years to form. But the James Webb Space Telescope is finding them not that long after the Big Bang -- before they should have had time to form. Astrophysicists have discovered that if dark matter decays, the photons it emits keep the hydrogen gas hot enough for gravity to gather it into giant clouds and eventually condense it into a supermassive black hole. In addition to explaining the existence of very early supermassive black holes, the finding lends support for the existence of a kind of dark matter capable of decaying into particles such ..read more

Researchers have announced a groundbreaking study using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Western Australia. The research is the first to search for signs of alien technology in galaxies beyond our own, focusing on low radio frequencies (100 MHz). This new approach looks at distant galaxies, making it one of the most detailed searches for super civilizations -- those more advanced than ours ..read more

The new estimates of the parameters that form the basis of the standard model of cosmology are far more precise than previous approaches using the same galaxy distribution data ..read more

According to a new study, some of the earliest galaxies observed with the James Webb Space Telescope are in fact much less massive than they first appeared. Black holes in some of these galaxies make them appear much brighter and bigger than they really are. This helps resolve the debate over whether the size of early galaxies requires a revision of the standard model of cosmology ..read more

A new study has found galaxies with more neighbors tend to be larger than their counterparts that have a similar shape and mass, but reside in less dense environments. The team, which used a machine-learning algorithm to analyze millions of galaxies, reports that galaxies found in denser regions of the universe are as much as 25% larger than isolated galaxies. The findings resolve a long-standing debate among astrophysicists over the relationship between a galaxy's size and its environment, but also raise new questions about how galaxies form and evolve over billions of years ..read more