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Category: cosmology – Page 3

In the 1930s, researchers first noticed oddities in how galaxies moved, suggesting something invisible exerted gravitational pull. Decades later, studies of the cosmic microwave background —the lingering radiation from the universe’s birth—confirmed dark matter’s importance in shaping cosmic evolution.

A pivotal study by the Planck Collaboration in 2018 revealed that dark matter makes up roughly 27% of the universe’s total energy. By comparison, ordinary matter—the stuff of planets, stars, and us—accounts for only 5%.

Scientists have spent decades trying to understand what dark matter might be. Supersymmetry, a popular theory in particle physics, proposes a “partner” particle for every known particle, potentially offering clues about dark matter’s identity.

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A terrifying glimpse at one potential fate of our Milky Way galaxy has come to light thanks to the discovery of a cosmic anomaly that challenges our understanding of the universe.

An international team of astronomers led by CHRIST University, Bangalore, found that a massive spiral galaxy almost 1 billion light-years away from Earth harbors a supermassive black hole billions of times the sun’s mass which is powering colossal radio jets stretching 6 million light-years across.

That is one of the largest known for any spiral galaxy and upends conventional wisdom of galaxy evolution, because such powerful jets are almost exclusively found in , not spirals.

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The universe looks a little different in mid-infrared light, a longer wavelength captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Don’t be distracted by distant stars and galaxies that look like multi-colored candies! Instead draw your attention to the “messy” blue “scoop.” This is one of two galaxies in Arp 107. The blue orb to its left is interreacting with it, making up its other “half.”

What’s remarkable about this image is that the bright diffraction spikes in the larger galaxy on the right are from its active supermassive black hole.

See a “bridge” that connects the pair in Webb’s near-infrared light observations.

Arp 107, a pair of interacting galaxies, shines brightly in high-resolution infrared light. A collision, which occurred hundreds of millions ago, created a tenuous bridge of gas and dust that connects the two galaxies, and started a new wave of star formation that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures clearly.

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At least two mass extinction events in Earth’s history were likely caused by the devastating effects of nearby supernova explosions. That’s according to a new study by researchers at Keele University in England. The researchers said these super-powerful blasts – caused by the death of a massive star – might have previously stripped our planet’s atmosphere of its ozone, sparked acid rain and exposed life to harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. They believe a supernova explosion close to Earth could be to blame for both the late Devonian and Ordovician extinction events, which occurred 372 and 445 million years ago respectively.

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In March 2025, The International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation announced its newest elected members, including CIERA Director Vicky Kalogera.

As the ISGRG Fellowship announcement explains, Prof. Kalogera was recognized “for playing a leading role in the astrophysical interpretation of gravitational wave events produced by the merger of black holes and neutron stars”

Established in 1971, the Society aims to promote the study of General Relativity and Gravitation and to exchange information in the interest of its members and the profession. Fellows are elected from among leading scientists in the society’s membership. The full list of past ISGRG fellows may be found here.

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The fate of the universe hinges on the balance between matter and dark energy: the fundamental ingredient that drives its accelerating expansion. New results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration use the largest 3D map of our universe ever made to track dark energy’s influence over the past 11 billion years. Researchers see hints that dark energy, widely thought to be a “cosmological constant,” might be evolving over time in unexpected ways.

DESI is an international experiment with more than 900 researchers from more than 70 institutions around the world and is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The collaboration shared their findings today in multiple papers that will be posted on the online repository arXiv and in a presentation at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California.

“What we are seeing is deeply intriguing,” said Alexie Leauthaud-Harnett, co-spokesperson for DESI and a professor at UC Santa Cruz. “It is exciting to think that we may be on the cusp of a major discovery about dark energy and the fundamental nature of our .”

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Using data from nearly 15 million galaxies and quasars, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has created the most detailed 3D map of the universe ever made. A new analysis combining DESI’s observations with other major cosmic datasets suggests that dark energy, the mysterious force behind

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