Cosmology Says the Darkest Patches of Sky Between the Stars Are Not Empty - They Are Filled With Something That Outweighs All Visible Matter Combined and That Science Has Been Unable to Directly Detect for Fifty Years

Cosmology Says the Darkest Patches of Sky Between the Stars Are Not Empty – They Are Filled With Something That Outweighs All Visible Matter Combined and That Science Has Been Unable to Directly Detect for Fifty Years

Sameen David

You have probably stared up at the night sky and assumed that the black spaces between the stars are just nothingness. It feels natural to think that way: bright dots are “something,” dark patches are “empty.” But modern cosmology says you’ve got that backward. Those apparently empty regions are where most of the universe’s matter … Read more

14 Physics Discoveries From the Last Decade That Caused Theoretical Scientists to Formally Revise Models They Had Defended for Twenty Years

14 Physics Discoveries From the Last Decade That Caused Theoretical Scientists to Formally Revise Models They Had Defended for Twenty Years

Sameen David

You probably think of physics as this rock-solid monument of truth: equations carved in stone, constants that never change, and models that have been nailed down for generations. But if you look closely at the last decade or so, you see something a lot more dramatic. You see Nobel-level surprises, thousand-person collaborations, and quiet revolutions … Read more

Physics Says Empty Space Is Not Empty - It Seethes With Particles Flicking In and Out of Existence and the Energy Contained in a Cubic Centimeter May Be Immeasurable

Physics Says Empty Space Is Not Empty – It Seethes With Particles Flicking In and Out of Existence and the Energy Contained in a Cubic Centimeter May Be Immeasurable

Sameen David

If you could somehow scoop up a tiny cube of what you call “empty space” and put it under a cosmic microscope, you wouldn’t find nothing. You’d see a boiling, restless foam of activity, with fields fluctuating and particles flashing into existence and then vanishing again before you could blink. It sounds like science fiction, … Read more

The Dugong Is a Sea Cow With a Mustache and Deep Thoughts

The Dugong Is a Sea Cow With a Mustache and Deep Thoughts

Annette Uy

Imagine gliding through turquoise waters and suddenly spotting a gentle giant with a bristly mustache grazing on the seafloor. It’s not a character from a children’s storybook, but a real animal—the dugong. With its soulful eyes, walrus-like whiskers, and unhurried pace, the dugong stirs something deep inside us. This creature, often called the “sea cow,” … Read more

Marine Biology Says Roughly Half the Oxygen You Are Breathing Right Now Was Produced by Ocean Organisms Too Small to See - Unknown to Most of the People Who Depend on Them to Survive

Marine Biology Says Roughly Half the Oxygen You Are Breathing Right Now Was Produced by Ocean Organisms Too Small to See – Unknown to Most of the People Who Depend on Them to Survive

Sameen David

Right now, as you breathe in, about every second lungful owes its existence to living things you will never see with your naked eye. You probably picture forests, big trees, and lush green leaves when you think about oxygen, but behind the scenes, countless microscopic ocean organisms are quietly doing as much of the work … Read more

a dead fish on a rock surface

66 Million Years Ago, the Skies Belonged to Giant Predators on Stilts

Suhail Ahmed

Picture a horizon trembling under the shadow of wings as wide as a small plane and legs as tall as a person, stepping through river flats like a silent metronome. That was the late Cretaceous stage set for the giant azhdarchid pterosaurs – apex flyers with stilt-like limbs and a talent for surprise. Fossils say … Read more

Astrophysics Says the Andromeda Galaxy Is Already Gravitationally Interacting With the Milky Way - and the Merger That Will Reshape Both Has Been in Progress Since Long Before Humans Existed

Astrophysics Says the Andromeda Galaxy Is Already Gravitationally Interacting With the Milky Way – and the Merger That Will Reshape Both Has Been in Progress Since Long Before Humans Existed

Sameen David

You tend to imagine cosmic disasters as sudden, explosive events: a star going supernova, an asteroid slamming into a planet, a black hole tearing something apart. But the biggest transformation facing your home galaxy is almost painfully slow. Long before humans walked the Earth, before the dinosaurs, even before complex life crawled out of ancient … Read more

Most normal matter in the universe isn't found in planets, stars or galaxies – an astronomer explains where it's distributed

Hunting the Hidden Universe: Where Ordinary Matter Hides in Space

Sumi

The Enigma of Baryonic Matter (Image Credits: Cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net) Astronomers have long puzzled over the whereabouts of the universe’s ordinary building blocks, revealing that much of this matter drifts far from the familiar glow of stars and galaxies. The Enigma of Baryonic Matter Scientists faced a longstanding riddle in cosmology: the Big Bang theory predicted a … Read more

Cosmology Says the Universe Has a Sound Recorded From the Oldest Light in Existence - and the Note It Is Playing Is 57 Octaves Below Anything the Human Ear Can Detect

Cosmology Says the Universe Has a Sound Recorded From the Oldest Light in Existence – and the Note It Is Playing Is 57 Octaves Below Anything the Human Ear Can Detect

Sameen David

You live in a universe that, long before there were stars, planets, or people, literally rang like a gigantic bell. That cosmic ringing left ripples in the oldest light you can see, and from those ripples, scientists have figured out that the universe has a “note” – an unimaginably deep tone, fifty‑seven octaves below anything … Read more