Deep Dives
What’s a Nova? Inside the Chaos of Erupting and Exploding Stars
5 min read
Stars — they shimmer in the night sky, burning hot across the cosmos. But sometimes … they erupt. Enter: novae. In short, a nova is an outburst in a binary system, or system with two stars that closely orbit one…
Article
What is Dark Energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding Universe
11 min read
Some 13.8 billion years ago, the universe began with a rapid expansion we call the big bang. After this initial expansion, which lasted a fraction of a second, gravity started to slow the universe down. But the cosmos wouldn’t stay…
Article
Gamma-ray Bursts: Harvesting Knowledge From the Universe’s Most Powerful Explosions
7 min read
The most powerful events in the known universe – gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) – are short-lived outbursts of the highest-energy light. They can erupt with a quintillion (a 10 followed by 18 zeros) times the luminosity of our Sun. Now thought…
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