cosmology

In November of last year, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory switched on Roadrunner, the world's fastest computer. IBM and the Department of Energy built the machine to model nuclear explosions, but two new studies, both released today, are proof that the computer's massive power has been at least as devoted to peaceful science as to simulating thermonuclear weapons.

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As it turns out, the end is not near after all. While you can't keep a good doomsday rumor down, NASA Senior Scientist David Morrison is trying to dispel widely circulated rumors that cosmic events will lead to the end of life on Earth, if not outright destroy the planet, on Dec. 21, 2012.

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Dark energy is a mysterious force that cosmologists use to fill gaps in our model of why our universe continues its ever-faster expansion. But now two mathematicians have found a way to explain those baffling observations of the universe without the dark energy question mark hanging overhead.

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For decades, astronomers have known that the vast regions of intergalactic gas and dust known as nebulae served as the womb of stars. They theorized that under the relentless pull of gravity, the gas of a nebula condenses until critical mass ignites the gas and sparks the birth of a new sun. But while that theory explained the general genesis of stars, no one ventured a guess at which nebula would become a new star when.

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Of all the subatomic particles that make up matter, neutrinos are the smallest. So small, in fact, that a billion neutrinos pass through your body every second without hitting a single atom. However, a new study postulates that some ancient neutrinos, born shortly after the Big Bang, may now be as large as some galaxies.

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In an attempt to explain why the light emitted from distant galaxies appears dimmer than predicted, some astronomers may have inadvertently provided the first evidence of dark energy.

Dark energy is the theoretical force behind the expansion of time and space. Dark energy has yet to be experimentally observed, despite the fact that it may represent the vast majority of all the material universe.

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When astronauts pay a final visit to the Hubble Space Telescope next week, one upgrade in particular will illuminate the darkness like never before -- and it involves taking out the corrective lenses that let Hubble see clearly for the past decade and a half.

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What's cooler than a black hole? Two of them, rotating around and then crashing into one another. And what could be more entertaining than that cataclysmic cosmic dance? Why, one more, of course.

A team of scientists at the Rochester Institute of Technology has simulated the merger of three black holes.

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