Cosmology News

October 31, 2026

Top Headlines

NASA’s Artemis I Mission Reveals Surprising Radiation Levels Near the Moon

Oct. 28, 2026 NASA’s Artemis I mission has revealed that cosmic radiation near the Moon is higher than in Earth orbit, but not by as much as scientists might expect. Tiny experimental detectors also uncovered ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Exceeds Expectations by Nearly 30%

Oct. 17, 2026 NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has exceeded expectations after engineers made incredibly tiny adjustments to sharpen its view of the universe. By moving a mirror just one-sixteenth the width of a human hair, the team helped bring its ...

Powerful Simulations Reveal How the First Stars Changed the Universe

Oct. 3, 2026 Ultra-detailed simulations are showing how the first stars lit up the dark Universe and seeded space with elements such as carbon, oxygen, and iron. The MEGATRON project could bridge JWST observations of the earliest galaxies with chemical clues ...

This Suitcase-sized Spacecraft Could Hear the Universe Before Stars Existed

Sep. 28, 2026 CosmoCube will use the far side of the Moon as a shield from Earth’s radio noise to search for a faint signal from the universe before the first stars existed. The suitcase-sized satellite could reveal how the cosmic dark ages ended and how dark ...

A $100 Detector Can See Invisible Particles Raining Down from Space

Sep. 17, 2026 A pocket-sized, roughly $100 detector can reveal the invisible stream of cosmic particles constantly passing through Earth and even through our bodies. What began as a student physics project is now being used in major experiments, balloon missions, ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Launches to Reveal the Universe’s Darkest Secrets

Aug. 31, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has launched on a million mile journey to L2, where it will scan huge portions of the cosmos for clues about dark matter, dark energy, and distant worlds. With survey ...

NASA’s Roman Telescope Will See 100 Times More Sky Than Hubble

Aug. 28, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will combine Hubble-like detail with a field of view 100 times larger, giving astronomers a sweeping new way to explore the cosmos. Its observations could uncover hidden planets, map billions of cosmic objects, and ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Is Ready to Hunt Thousands of Alien Worlds

Aug. 26, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is now enclosed inside its Falcon Heavy fairing and nearly ready for launch. Its mission could uncover thousands of exoplanets while helping scientists investigate dark matter, dark energy, and the accelerating ...

NASA Will Test SpaceX and Blue Origin Moon Landers Before the Next Lunar Landing

July 23, 2026 NASA is preparing for future astronaut landings on the Moon with an unusually ambitious orbital rehearsal. During Artemis III in 2027, Orion astronauts will rendezvous and dock separately with ...

New AI Model Reveals How Neutron Star Mergers Forge Heavy Elements

July 8, 2026 Researchers have created an AI-based simulation that makes it much faster to model how neutron star mergers produce many of the universe's heaviest elements. The new tool could improve predictions of these powerful explosions while helping ...

Quantum Sensor Breakthrough Could Reveal Dark Matter and Ancient Gravitational Waves

July 7, 2026 Scientists have taken an important step toward building quantum detectors that could reveal some of the universe’s biggest secrets. Using a prototype device with two clouds of ultracold atoms, ...

Millions of Exploding Stars Could Soon Reveal Dark Energy's Secrets

June 29, 2026 A new AI-powered framework could transform how astronomers measure the expansion of the Universe. By analyzing images of Type Ia supernovae and modeling their environments in unprecedented detail, researchers can estimate cosmic distances with ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:54am EDT

Physicists Created a Tiny Universe and Watched Time Emerge Without a Clock

Oct. 30, 2026 Scientists have created a miniature universe in the laboratory that could help answer one of the biggest mysteries in physics: What is time, and where does it come from? Using 24,000 ultracold atoms, ...

Hubble Reveals a Stunning Twist in How the Universe Emerged from Darkness

Oct. 30, 2026 A surprising discovery by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope is challenging a leading explanation for how the early universe emerged from a dense fog of hydrogen roughly 13 billion years ...

A Mysterious Star System Just 16 Light-Years Away May Be Hiding Habitable Planets

Oct. 29, 2026 Astronomers have solved a 170-year-old planetary mystery in a nearby two-star system, discovering that a mysterious wobble was caused by stellar ...

Einstein's Equations May Explain the Universe Without Dark Energy

Oct. 29, 2026 Mathematicians have uncovered what they argue is a fundamental flaw in the standard model of the universe, potentially challenging the need for dark energy. Their calculations suggest that the ...

Smithsonian Scientists Just Recreated the First 2 Billion Years of the Universe

Oct. 27, 2026 Scientists have created one of the largest and most detailed simulations of the early universe ever made, offering an extraordinary new glimpse into ...

Three Giant Black Holes Discovered in a Galaxy from the Dawn of Time

Oct. 25, 2026 Astronomers have discovered three actively feeding black holes inside a single galaxy more than 12.5 billion light-years away, revealing a remarkable scene from the universe’s infancy. Two of the ...

Astronomers May Have Discovered the First Moon Beyond Our Solar System

Oct. 24, 2026 Astronomers have uncovered evidence of a bizarre, potentially historic discovery: the first moon ever detected beyond our Solar System. Unlike familiar moons, this mysterious object is at least as ...

NASA’s Asteroid Bennu Samples Reveal a 4.5-Billion-Year-Old Secret

Oct. 24, 2026 Tiny samples from asteroid Bennu are rewriting scientists' understanding of how our Solar System formed. New evidence suggests that Bennu was born where material from the inner and outer Solar System ...

Nearly 3,000 Exploding Stars Challenge Our Understanding of the Universe

Oct. 22, 2026 A massive analysis of 2,884 exploding stars has uncovered new evidence that dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the universe’s expansion, may change over time. The findings challenge a ...

Astronomers Uncover New Secrets of the Universe’s First Five Minutes

Oct. 20, 2026 Scientists have achieved a major breakthrough in understanding the Universe’s earliest moments, measuring the amount of helium formed in the first five minutes after the Big Bang with unprecedented ...

James Webb Reveals a Strange Bulge in an Alien Planet's Atmosphere

Oct. 16, 2026 Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered that a distant alien planet's atmosphere is surprisingly lopsided. Located 1,300 light-years away, the scorching gas giant ...

MIT Astronomers Catch a Star in a Feast That Could Last Billions of Years

Oct. 10, 2026 Astronomers have discovered a bizarre star system about 300 light-years from Earth where a small star is slowly devouring a nearby brown dwarf, an object too massive to be a planet but too small to ...

Hubble Space Telescope May Have Found a Planet Born After Its Star Died

Oct. 9, 2026 A strange chemical signature in old Hubble observations may point to a planet that formed after its star had already died. Astronomers found unusually high levels of niobium around the white dwarf HS ...

NASA’s Webb Finds Signs of Mars-Sized Worlds Smashing Together

Oct. 7, 2026 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving astronomers a glimpse of the kinds of violent collisions that may have shaped our own solar system, including the giant impact thought to have created ...

Scientists Find a Surprising Clue to Why the Universe’s Expansion Doesn’t Add Up

Oct. 4, 2026 Tiny magnetic fields created shortly after the Big Bang may help explain the long-running disagreement over how fast the universe is expanding. Detailed simulations show that these primordial fields ...

A 9-Billion-Year-Old Signal Could Help Explain Dark Energy

Oct. 9, 2026 A Canadian radio telescope has detected the faint glow of hydrogen from billions of years ago using only its own observations, proving a long-awaited way to map the distant universe can actually ...

The Early Universe Wasn’t Nearly as Pristine as Scientists Thought

Oct. 2, 2026 JWST has revealed that galaxies were spreading carbon, oxygen, and other heavy elements through space just 500 million years after the Big Bang. The surprising discovery suggests the young universe ...

Black Hole Jets May Decide the Fate of Entire Galaxies

Sep. 30, 2026 Powerful jets from supermassive black holes can disturb star-forming gas far beyond a galaxy’s visible edge, leaving a glowing trail hundreds of thousands of light-years long. By keeping this gas ...

These Massive Stars Could Explain Webb’s Strangest Galaxies

Sep. 24, 2026 Hubble observations of massive stars in metal-poor dwarf galaxies are revealing clues to why the early universe looks so unusual. Researchers found that stellar winds weaken sharply at extremely low ...

The LHC Just Ruled out Another Hiding Place for Quantum Black Holes

Sep. 22, 2026 Physicists searching through Large Hadron Collider data found no evidence that the machine has been producing microscopic quantum black holes, but the result sharply narrows where such exotic physics ...

NASA’s Webb Reveals the Wild Weather of a Mysterious World 20 Light-Years Away

Oct. 17, 2026 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed that a turbulent world 20 light-years away has a surprisingly orderly weather system, with three recurring atmospheric states driven by temperature ...

JWST’s Mysterious Little Red Dots May Be Black Holes Growing at Incredible Speeds

Sep. 17, 2026 New supercomputer simulations suggest JWST’s puzzling Little Red Dots are rapidly growing black holes from the early Universe. Extreme radiation may have helped create unusually massive black hole ...

NASA Reveals 16 Stunning Galaxies Hiding Cosmic Chaos

Oct. 20, 2026 NASA's stunning new gallery of 16 galaxies reveals colossal black hole jets, explosive star formation, and spectacular cosmic collisions through the combined power of Chandra, James Webb, ...

James Webb Reveals Chariklo’s Mysterious Rings Are Changing Faster Than Expected

Sep. 15, 2026 The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed surprising changes in the rings around Chariklo, a small object orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. Over just a few years, its inner ring became more ...

The Moon May Have Formed Intact Just Hours After a Giant Collision

Sep. 9, 2026 Scientists have discovered that the Moon-forming collision may have depended heavily on how hot and physically strong early Earth and Theia were. New simulations found that some impacts create the ...

Astronomers Detect Ancient Hydrogen Signal That Could Help Map the Universe

Sep. 8, 2026 Astronomers have detected an exceptionally faint hydrogen radio signal from billions of light-years away using South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope. Instead of finding galaxies one at a time, the ...

The Universe Has Plenty of Hydrogen. So Why Is Star Formation Collapsing?

Sep. 3, 2026 Star formation across the universe has fallen dramatically over the past 4.5 billion years, but astronomers have uncovered a surprising twist: the supply of neutral hydrogen, a key ingredient for ...

James Webb Reveals Why Planet Formation Is a Race Against Time

Sep. 28, 2026 JWST has revealed that young planetary systems lose their planet-building gas through a changing mix of powerful jets, molecular winds, and radiation-driven outflows. As the disks age and their gas ...

Earth May Have Lost the Sun’s Protective Shield Millions of Years Ago

Sep. 2, 2026 NASA-funded studies suggest Earth’s climate has been influenced by both the Sun’s travels through dense regions of the Milky Way and the violent superflares of its youth. Those events may help ...

JWST Finds Early Galaxies May Be 4 Times More Massive Than Thought

Aug. 22, 2026 Astronomers using JWST have discovered that massive early galaxies contain far more small, faint stars than expected. That hidden population could make some of these galaxies three to four times more ...