Frank Kameny was barred from pursuing astronomy because of his sexual orientation. He dedicated his life to breaking down the barriers that had stood in his way, so others wouldn’t have to suffer the way he did. […]
Efforts have been made by astronomers to remove gender-based barriers for today and tomorrow’s scientists. Margaret Burbidge led the way, and Decadal Surveys now include topics for how to support the astronomy community. […]
Margaret Burbidge’s enthusiasm for astronomy led her to applying for a postdoctoral research position at Mount Wilson. However, she was turned down as women were barred from staying on the mountain and working as lead observers. […]
Predicting how the universe will end comes down to three different scenarios. First, a heat death, second, a big rip in the universe, and third, a reversal in the universe’s expansion until it collapses on itself. […]
Scientists refined the theory of the universe’s inflation time and time again for it to make sense with existing observations. Some even proposed various trigger mechanisms for the inflation. […]
Studying cosmic microwave background helps us understand what happened in the universe around 300,000 years after the Big Bang. To understand what happened in the first seconds, we need more. […]
Some questions that are asked in astronomy seem profound and absurd at the same time. Questions that deal with such topics include the how and why of the beginning and end of the universe. […]
After the big bang, when the universe had reached a temperature of about 10 billion degrees which was 100 times cooler than when the first quarks combined, interesting things began to happen. […]
We almost know everything about what happened after the big bang, but we can’t study what happened before the event because our laws of physics don’t work at the densities matter had at the time. […]
The inflation of the universe after the big bang was so rapid that in a fraction of a second, particles that were an atom’s width apart from each other were suddenly thousands of light-years away from each other. […]
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