Comparison of Hubble and Webb views of a Cepheid variable star. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Riess (JHU/STScI) Understanding our universe isn’t a straightforward process. For every theory that appears to be beautifully proven out by data, there is another theory that just doesn’t work as it should.  One of the most troubling data issues today is the discrepancy between expansion rates for our universe that are measured by looking at the nearby universe and those that are measured by looking at the Cosmic Microwave Background. We have multiple things to look at in both eras, and in both...

Artist’s impression of an outflow of molecular gas from the quasar J2054-0005. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) Gas dynamics are more than a little complicated no matter where you look. The dynamics of gas in and around forming galaxies makes is particularly...

A composite of Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files from the James Webb Space Telescope. UCLA astrophysicists believe if cold dark matter theories are correct, the Webb telescope should find tiny,...

LST-1 during observations at CTAO-North, La Palma, Spain. Credit: CTAO gGmbH. Credit: CTAO gGmbH Astronomy is theoretically the study of how our universe formed, evolved, and will one day die. But to get answers to those high-concept questions, we need to start by...

FIR image of BRI 1335–0417 overlaid with our identified bar ellipses (blue ellipse) and two-armed spiral structure identified in Tsukui & Iguchi (2021, black solid line). Contours start at 2σ but are logarithmically spaced in powers of 2 (2σ, 4σ, 8σ,...)....

The image shows the distribution of matter in space (blue; the yellow dots represent individual galaxies). The Milky Way (green) lies in an area with little matter. The galaxies in the bubble move in the direction of the higher matter densities (red arrows). The...

Ralf Kaehler/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory One of the great unknowns of nearly the past one hundred years is the identity of the invisible stuff that makes up the bulk of the matter in our galaxy and others. Called dark matter, this stuff can exert...

Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Acknowledgment: PI: C. Onken (Australian National University); Image processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), J. Miller (International Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M....

Credit: Cluster image: NASA, UNCOVER (Bezanson et al., DIO: 10.48550/arXiv.2212.04026). Insets: Nasa, UNCOVER (Wang et al., 2023); Composition: Dani Zemba/Penn State Ok, I have to admit, the JWST is finding objects so exceedingly weird that my first reaction is to...