Like stretch marks left on skin that expanded too quickly or cracks embedded in freezing ice, cosmic strings are artifacts of ...

According to big bang theory, for the first 10 - 43 seconds of the universe's life, all the forces of nature existed as one superforce. The universe was all energy, no matter. Physicists call this ...

Scientists seeking the secrets of the universe would like to make a model that shows how all of nature’s forces and particles fit together. It would be nice to do it with Legos. But perhaps a better ...

A strange cosmic object described by string theory could be mistaken for an ordinary black hole from far away. If these objects do exist, they could solve a long-standing paradox about black holes.

Cosmology’s neat story of a universe driven apart by a simple, invisible “cosmic fuel” is starting to fray. A growing body of data suggests that dark energy, the ingredient thought to make up most of ...