In the space of a heartbeat, a radio telescope can catch a shout from billions of light-years away – and then silence. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are among astronomy’s most electrifying puzzles: millisecond flashes that can outshine entire galaxies in radio light before vanishing again. Each new detection deepens the intrigue, sketching a ...
The universe isn’t quiet; it rumbles in slow motion. When two galaxies drift close, gravity turns a gentle approach into an epic, multi‑billion‑year embrace. Astronomers have watched this drama unfold in snapshots – arcs of starlight, shredded gas, and ghostly streams that look like ripples frozen in time. The mystery is simple to ask and ...
Every time we point a better telescope at the sky, the universe seems to quietly rewrite the rules we thought were settled. Over the past few years, a string of deep space discoveries has exposed cracks in our neat cosmic story, from how galaxies form to what, exactly, dark matter might be. Some of ...
Somewhere far beyond the planets, where the Sun’s influence thins and the galaxy’s weather begins, two aging craft are eavesdropping on a cosmic choir. Those listeners – Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 – don’t hear with microphones; they sense ripples of charged particles and translate them into sound we can play through speakers. The ...
It starts like a heartbeat where there shouldn’t be one – an electric thump from the dark that returns, vanishes, and then returns again. Astronomers call them repeating fast radio bursts, and they are among the most puzzling signals we’ve ever caught. Each pulse lasts a blink, yet carries the energy of days of ...
