#cosmology
3 posts
Cosmic Inflation and the Multiverse: What Happened in the First Second
The Big Bang model explains almost everything we observe about the universe — except why it is so uniform, flat, and devoid of magnetic monopoles. Cosmic inflation solves all three problems, and uncomfortably implies the existence of other universes.
Dark Matter Direct Detection: The Search for the Invisible Universe
About 27% of the universe is made of dark matter — something that has mass and gravity but does not emit, absorb, or reflect light. We know it is there. We have never detected a single dark matter particle. The hunt is one of the most important unsolved problems in physics.
The Hubble Tension: A Crisis at the Heart of Modern Cosmology
Two independent ways of measuring how fast the universe is expanding give two incompatible answers. The discrepancy has sharpened over the past decade as the measurements have grown more precise. Astronomers call it the Hubble tension, but a more accurate name might be a crisis: it suggests either a systematic error somewhere or that our standard model of cosmology is incomplete.