The Universe

Six Ways Supercomputing Advances Our Understanding of the Universe

September 28, 2025

At NASA, high-end computing is essential for many agency missions. This technology helps us advance our understanding of…

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A wide view of a region of space filled with stars and clumps of orange clouds.

September 25, 2025

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a colorful array of massive stars and glowing cosmic dust in…

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An artist's concept of a supermassive black hole, a surrounding disk of material falling towards the black hole and a jet containing particles moving away at close to the speed of light. This black hole represents a recently-discovered quasar powered by a black hole. New Chandra observations indicate that the black hole is growing at a rate that exceeds the usual limit for black holes, called the Eddington Limit. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss

September 18, 2025

A black hole is growing at one of the fastest rates ever recorded, according to a team of…

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$Gaseous yellow-orange filaments look like a rose seen from the side and tilted slightly from upper left to lower right, slightly higher than the center of the frame. Extending from the rose to upper left and lower right are gaseous outflows that appear as red lobes that have an overall shape of tall, narrow triangles with rounded tips. Each red triangle is made up of wavy, irregular lines. Dozens of stars are scattered across the field. One particularly bright white star with eight diffraction spikes is located at the top of the yellow rose. Another bright blue star with even more prominent diffraction spikes is to its lower left. The background of space is black.$

September 10, 2025

A blowtorch of seething gasses erupting from a volcanically growing monster star has been captured by NASA’s James…

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A sample of simulations showing a model of the expanding universe (left) and a zoomed-in view of tracer particles (right).

September 8, 2025

Last month, a team of researchers put the then-fastest supercomputer in the world to work on a rather…

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NASA Webb Looks at Earth-Sized, Habitable-Zone Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 e

September 8, 2025

Scientists are in the midst of observing the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 e with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Careful…

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August 29, 2025

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Cosmologists…

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This graphic features data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of the Cassiopeia A (Cas A) supernova remnant that reveals that the star’s interior violently rearranged itself mere hours before it exploded. The main panel of this graphic is Chandra data that shows the location of different elements in the remains of the explosion: silicon (represented in red), sulfur (yellow), calcium (green) and iron (purple). The blue color reveals the highest-energy X-ray emission detected by Chandra in Cas A and an expanding blast wave. The inset reveals regions with wide ranges of relative abundances of silicon and neon. This data, plus computer modeling, reveal new insight into how massive stars like Cas A end their lives.

August 28, 2025

The inside of a star turned on itself before it spectacularly exploded, according to a new study from…

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Near the center of these images lies the pulsar B1509-58, a rapidly spinning neutron star that is only about 12 miles in diameter. This tiny object is responsible for producing an intricate nebula (called MSH 15-52) that spans over 150 light-years, or about 900 trillion miles. The nebula, which is produced by energetic particles, resembles a human hand with a palm and extended fingers pointing to the upper right in a view from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Radio data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) provides new information about this exploded star and its environment. This image also contains optical data of hydrogen gas. The bright red and gold areas near the top of the image show the remains of the supernova that formed the pulsar.

August 20, 2025

In 2009, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory released a captivating image: a pulsar and its surrounding nebula that is…

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August 13, 2025

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be a discovery machine, thanks to its wide field of view…

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A colorful nebula. The image’s top-left is filled with layers of fluffy pink and greenish clouds. Long strands of green clouds stretch out from here; a faint layer of translucent blue dust combines with them to create a three-dimensional scene. A sparse network of dark dust clouds in the foreground adds reddish-black patches atop the nebula. Blue-white and orange stars, from our galaxy and beyond, are spread throughout the clouds.

August 8, 2025

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures incredible details in the dusty clouds of a star-forming factory called…

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August 4, 2025

Scientists have recreated the first molecule ever to form and found that it likely played a much bigger…

Six Ways Supercomputing Advances Our Understanding of the Universe

NASA’s Webb Explores Largest Star-Forming Cloud in Milky Way

NASA’s Chandra Finds Black Hole With Tremendous Growth

NASA’s Webb Observes Immense Stellar Jet on Outskirts of Our Milky Way

A Supercomputer Just Created the Largest Universe Simulation Ever

NASA Webb Looks at Earth-Sized, Habitable-Zone Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 e

Ripples from the Big Bang could transform our understanding of the universe — and we may be close to detecting them

NASA’s Chandra Reveals Star’s Inner Conflict Before Explosion

X-ray and Radio go ‘Hand in Hand’ in New Image

NASA Roman Core Survey Will Trace Cosmic Expansion Over Time

Hubble Captures a Tarantula – NASA Science

Scientists recreate universe’s first molecule to crack 13-billion-year-old mystery