page 4, by: Sarah C. Williams The earliest stars in the universe might have been beasts of a different nature than modern stars, a new model suggests. While nuclear reactions between ordinary chemical elements fuel the fire of stars like Earth’s own sun, mysterious dark matter might have powered the first stars.
by: Maggie McKee Theorists believe the first stars formed in cradles of dark matter, condensing from clouds of gas until their cores became so dense that nuclear fusion ignited.
by: Eric Jaffe An intergalactic collision is providing astronomers with a giant payoff: the first direct evidence of the invisible material that theorists say holds galaxies together and accounts for most of the universe’s mass. For some 70 years, cosmologists have agreed that theories of gravity account for observations in Earth’s solar system but fail […]