Dark matter may be smoother than expected

Analysis of a giant new galaxy survey, made with ESO's VLT Survey Telescope in Chile, suggests that dark matter may be less dense and more smoothly distributed throughout space than previously thought. An international team ...

Cliches about nations govern our actions

Germans arrive at every appointment 5 hours before the scheduled time, all Indians are called Ranjid and have a red mark on their foreheads, the Japanese bow 10,000 times a day, and Americans all speak with chewing gum in ...

First stars formed even later than previously thought

ESA's Planck satellite has revealed that the first stars in the Universe started forming later than previous observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background indicated. This new analysis also shows that these stars were the ...

Important milestone reached on road to a redefined kilogram

In a secure vault in the suburbs of Paris, an egg-sized cylinder of metal sits in a climate-controlled room under three glass bell jars. It is the mass against which all other masses in the world are measured - by definition ...

Image: A mysterious ring of celestial microwaves

Fifty years ago, astronomers discovered a mystery. They called it Loop I. Today, we still have not fully resolved the mystery of how this giant celestial structure formed but we do now have the best image of it, thanks to ...

The universe, where space-time becomes discrete

In quantum gravity, classical physics and quantum mechanics are at odds: scientists are still uncertain how to reconcile the quantum "granularity" of space-time at the Planck scale with the theory of special relativity. In ...

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