Dark-energy evidence suggests the universe will end in a “big crunch” roughly 20 billion years from now. The universe is nearing the halfway point of what may be a 33-billion-year lifespan, according ...

The birth of the universe has been a question that has puzzled scientists for centuries. In a groundbreaking study published ...

Researchers have unveiled a new model for the universe’s birth that replaces cosmic inflation with gravitational waves as the ...

Dark energy is one of the most mysterious concepts in all of the cosmos. We know very little about what it is but it just might play an overwhelming role in the death of the universe. Often referred ...

No one knows what kicked off the Big Bang that eventually allowed the stars to begin forming. Adolf Schaller for STScI, CC BY How can a Big Bang have been the start of the universe, since intense ...

IT IS ONE of the biggest mysteries in cosmology—and getting bigger all the time. Ever since Edwin Hubble, an American astronomer, published observations of distant galaxies in 1929, scientists have ...

Cosmic inflation tries to describe one brief but crucial phase in the Big Bang that launched the universe onto its expansion course. Credit: Christine Daniloff / MIT / ESA / Hubble / NASA Many ...

While it's much smaller than the largest supermassive black holes detected, it's still a whopper considering how early in the history of the universe it appeared. An enormous black hole in the early ...