In around 5 billion years, the sun will run out of the fuel needed for nuclear fusion in its core. This will cause its inner core to collapse under the force of the sun's own gravity. At this point, ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Measuring truly astronomical distances is a challenging task, but it can be accomplished by ...

For the calibration of relatively short distances the team observed Cepheid variables. These are pulsating stars which fade and brighten at rates that are proportional to their true brightness and ...

Astronomers are closing in on a result so statistically secure that, in their language, it borders on certainty: a 99.9999999 ...

A long-running dispute about how fast our universe is expanding just became even more entrenched. New and more precise measurements of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the ...

Ever since the early 20 th century, we’ve known that the universe is expanding. Exactly how quickly it’s expanding, however, remains something of a vexed question. Until now, our theoretical ...

My adult-education auto-shop teacher promised us that we would never again have to call AAA to fix a flat. We could do it on our own, with just a jack, a wrench and a spare. Every self-respecting, ...

For a while now, astronomers have been confronting a conundrum. Studies of the early universe, looking at the era just after the Big Bang, tell us that the cosmos should be expanding at one speed. But ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. If you didn't know anything about the Universe beyond our own galaxy, ...

ONE of the most basic facts about the universe is that it is expanding. This observation, made by Edwin Hubble (pictured) in 1929, leads to all sorts of mind-stretching ideas. That the universe is ...

The cosmic distance ladder could soon have another rung. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. In around 5 billion years, the sun will ...