Astronomy

Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But recent James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts.

New observations of a faraway rocky world that might have its own magnetic field could help astronomers understand the seemingly haphazard magnetic fields swaddling our solar system’s planets.

By measuring the universe’s emptiest spaces, scientists can study how matter clumps together and how fast it flies apart.

Astronomers have found a background din of exceptionally long-wavelength gravitational waves pervading the cosmos.

For the first time, mathematicians have proved that planetary orbits in a solar system will always be unstable.

There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its last surviving remnants.

Type Ia supernovas are astronomers’ best tools for measuring cosmic distances. In a first, researchers have managed to re-create one on a supercomputer, giving a boost to a leading hypothesis for how they form.

Theory has it that “Population III” stars brought light to the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope may have just glimpsed them.

Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb.