If the prospect of an ever-expanding universe that eventually stretches into a vast emptiness isn’t depressing enough, there’s this: the universe may have cracks in it. Cracks, called cosmic strings, ...

One of the strangest ideas about the nature of the universe could be one of the most important. Do long, thin, and incredibly dense strands of matter called cosmic strings wind their way throughout ...

COSMIC string bears little relation to its humble domestic namesake. Forming lines of energy billions of light years long, it is narrower than a proton, and so dense that a piece 1 metre long weighs ...

Remember that time in the Lord of the Rings lore when the dwarves of Moria dug too greedily and too deep, unearthing the Balrog, an ancient horror not meant to roam free in the modern age? Cosmic ...

One of today’s outstanding cosmological questions is how structure first formed in the universe. Cosmic strings certainly could have done the job. A typical string postulated in grand unification ...

Physicists in the US and Singapore are the first to use light from distant galaxies to perform a systematic search for cosmic strings — massive structures that may have been created just after the Big ...

Topology originated from the classification of geometric structures in mathematics, and have prevailed in a variety of branches of physics, ranging from the early electronic topological insulator to ...

Pictures are the key to new insights in the field of astrophysics. Such images include simulations of cosmic events, which astrophysicists at UZH use to investigate how stars, planets and galaxies ...

The biggest lesson from Einstein's general theory of relativity is that space itself isn't a flat, unchanging, absolute entity. Rather it's woven together, along with time, into a single fabric: ...

In the dog days of summer, when a gush of hot air from a Fifth Avenue subway grate can feel as real as it gets, take heart that the downtown traffic nipping at your heels may just be part of a ...