Cosmology

The most powerful cosmic rays in the universe currently have no explanation. New research suggests that exotic, self-annihilating particles in our own galaxy may hold the answer.

Einstein predicted the existence of gravitationally-warped rings of light in 1915. Now, a new one has been discovered just a cosmic stone's throw from our own planet.

"This process is like a cosmic CT scan, where we can look through different slices of cosmic history and track how matter clumped together at different epochs."

A new study suggests that the explosive deaths of the universe's earliest stars created surprising quantities of water that may have sparked extraterrestrial life in the very first galaxies.

The new composite image, which combines hundreds of photos from the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the Andromeda Galaxy with more than 200 million individually resolved stars.

Astronomers have been confounded by recent evidence that the universe expanded at different rates throughout its life. New findings risk turning the tension into a crisis, scientists say.

A rare group of aligned, star-birthing dwarf galaxies resemble a cosmic string of pearls.

New research suggests that most of the atoms within the human body likely spent part of their lives drifting beyond the Milky Way on a cosmic "conveyor belt," before eventually returning to our galaxy.

Photos from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed more than 40 stars within the gravitationally lensed "Dragon Arc" galaxy, 6.5 billion light-years from Earth. It is the largest group of individually imaged stars ever seen at such a distance.

String theory remains our best candidate for a theory of everything, but where can it be tested? By studying black holes, says Marika Taylor.