result

New Result Casts Doubt on ‘Cosmic Dawn’ Claim

by

The first major attempt to replicate striking evidence of the ‘cosmic dawn’—the appearance of the Universe’s first stars 180 million years after the Big Bang—has muddled the picture. Four years after radio astronomers reported finding a signature of the cosmic dawn, radio astronomer Ravi Subrahmanyan and his collaborators describe how they floated an antenna on … Read more

Physicists Just Achieved a New Smallest Measurement of a Ghost Particle’s Mass

by

Decaying isotopes of hydrogen have just given us the smallest measurement yet of the mass of a neutrino. By measuring the energy distribution of electrons released during the beta decay of tritium, physicists have determined that the upper limit for the mass of the electron antineutrino is just 0.8 electronvolts. That’s 1.6 × 10–36 kilograms … Read more

Why Discovering ‘Nothing’ in Science Can Be So Incredibly Important

by

In science, as in life, we all like to celebrate the big news. We confirmed the existence of black holes by the ripples they create in space time. We photographed the shadow of a black hole. We figured out how to edit DNA. We found the Higgs boson!   What we don’t usually hear about is … Read more