In 1980, Stephen Hawking gave his first lecture as Lucasian Professor at the University of Cambridge. The lecture was called ...

The largest-ever 3D map of the cosmos hints that the dark energy that’s fueling the universe’s expansion may be weakening. One community of theoretical physicists expected as much. On the morning of ...

Recent findings suggest a potential shift in our understanding of the universe’s expansion. After decades of acceleration, ...

String theory unifies all the forces of nature. Forces that seem very different, such as gravity and electricity, are deeply ...

New hints from one of the most extensive surveys of the cosmos to date suggest that mysterious dark energy may be evolving in ways that could shift how astronomers understand the universe. Dark energy ...

Dark energy makes up about 70% of the universe and causes its expansion to accelerate. It's different from dark matter; dark energy pushes space apart, while dark matter pulls things together. We ...

Dark energy could have an accomplice that helps it slow the growth of large cosmic structures, such as vast superclusters made up of clusters of galaxies. A new analysis of astronomical data suggests ...

"Although there have been multiple efforts to understand the nature of dark energy, its composition, and its manifestation in the universe," one expert says, "we know embarrassingly little about it." ...

In the late 1990s, two teams of astronomers were out to settle a score. Cosmologists had been at odds for over a decade in their quest to measure the total amount of matter and energy in the universe.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Physicists have deduced subtle hints that the mysterious “dark” energy that drives the universe to expand faster and faster may be ...

Scientists have proposed a way that the universe could stop expanding, ending in a 'Big Crunch' that resets space and time as we know it. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an ...

“Dark energy” is a term scientists use to refer to whatever is causing the universe to expand faster over time. We don’t know exactly what dark energy is—no one has ever directly seen or measured ...