New computer simulations suggest the first magnetic fields that emerged after the Big Bang were much weaker than expected — ...

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may have detected what could be the oldest galaxy ever observed, ...

Chemistry in the first 50 million to 100 million years after the Big Bang may have been more active than we expected.

Nowadays, the dark of night is interspersed with the light of stars. But before the stars were born, did light shine at the beginning of the universe? The short answer is "no." But the long answer ...

The beginning of the cosmos is cloaked and hidden from the view of our most powerful telescopes. Yet observations we make today can give clues to the universe’s origin.

What happened before the Big Bang? And what happened before that? Stephen Hawking's answer—there was no beginning—is now the subject of intense debate.

There were two periods of exponential expansion in the Universe: one today, dark energy, and one long ago, inflation. Are they related?

This story comes from our special January 2021 issue, “The Beginning and the End of the Universe.” Click here to purchase the full issue. From a dark site on a clear winter night, the sky in ...

In the beginning, there was … well, maybe there was no beginning. Perhaps our universe has always existed — and a new theory of quantum gravity reveals how that could work. "Reality has so many things ...

This story comes from our special January 2021 issue, “The Beginning and the End of the Universe.” Click here to purchase the full issue. Some 4.6 billion years ago, our Sun was born from a ...

The Big Bang isn't the ultimate beginning, but was preceded by a phase called cosmic inflation. Here's how we're finally learning about it.