Paul Sutter

Every so often, astronomers detect a supernova explosion that's 100 times brighter than it should be. A new paper may reveal the strange source of these "superluminous" supernovas.

A tiny fraction of known black holes emit X-ray signals that resemble a human "heartbeat." Now, new research may finally explain the strange phenomenon.

While headlines around the world claimed that ancient galaxies discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope were "breaking" our understanding of the Big Bang, the truth is much more nuanced — and much more interesting.

Do dead stars glow? A strange gravitational phenomenon could be generating enormous amounts of light around neutron stars, new research suggests.

A strange class of space rock known as a "dark comet" has qualities of both asteroids and comets — and the hard-to-spot objects may pose a larger threat to Earth than we thought, according to new research.

Scientists recently identified seven stars in the Milky Way that could potentially be gigantic alien structures called Dyson spheres. New research proposes an alternative explanation: Those are just cosmic "hot DOGs" in disguise.

Mysterious dark matter could slosh over our planet like a wave. If it does, it may produce telltale radio waves in Earth's atmosphere, new theoretical research suggests.

New research shows how disruptions to binary star systems could be the key to detecting space's most confounding substance — dark matter.

When there are multiple supernovas in the same galaxy, they can leave enormous voids that tamper with the balance between dark matter and regular matter. Over time, this can throw entire galaxies into chaos.

The moon controls the tides, impacts marine ecosystems, and subtly influences time on Earth. So what would happen if the moon suddenly disappeared?

A fringe theory called "panspermia" suggests that lifeforms can spread to new planets by hitching rides on meteors. New research lays out a roadmap for finding where these hypothetical, planet-hopping aliens may reside.

With the nature of the universe's two most elusive components up for debate, physicists have proposed a radical idea: Invisible particles called tachyons, which break causality and move faster than light, may dominate the cosmos.

The idea of emergent gravity is still new and requires a lot of assumptions in its calculations to make it work. But if experimental evidence ever proves it real, we would need to totally rewrite the laws of physics.

The invisible substance called dark matter remains one of the biggest mysteries in cosmology. Perhaps, a new study suggests, this strange substance arises from a 'dark mirror universe' that's been linked to ours since the dawn of time.

A new study combining two of Albert Einstein's famous predictions suggests that ripples in space-time can combine into 'gravitational lasers', firing out of black holes in random directions across the cosmos.

The presence of supermassive black holes in the earliest epochs of the universe has scientists stumped — but repeated explosions from tiny black holes may offer an explanation.

Many models of the universe predict the existence of countless invisible strings stretching across space. New research finds a way these strings might snap — and how we could feel the fallout.

Scientists modeled how black holes and neutron stars form after dying stars collapse, and explained why some get a hard 'kick' into interstellar space.

An entire universe made of 'dark' particles could exist within our own, and astronomers may know the first place to look: In the mysterious hearts of supposed 'mirror stars'.

The first life-forms capable of evolution could have appeared just moments after the Big Bang, a physicist explains.

Far from any galaxy, icy grains of dust in deep space may be able to form organic molecules, a new preprint study finds.

Dark matter may come in multiple particles and weights, similar to the ordinary elements on the periodic table, a new theory suggests.

The hellish super-Earth '55 Cancri e' may be constantly losing and re-growing its atmosphere, a new study of the planet's strange transit signals suggests.

Stars could be sliced in half by "relativistic blades," or ultra-powerful outflows of plasma shaped by extremely strong magnetic fields, an unpublished paper claims.