The hubble tension

As an astronomer, I collect stars. There are several hundred billion of them in our Galaxy, the Milky Way, so it’s important to find a way to categorise them. While others might rank their stars by co

An artist’s impression of Cha 1107-7626 accreting material ...

Our understanding of the Universe has revealed that its existence, and indeed our own, relies on a particular set of rules. For example, the fundamental ‘constants of nature’, such as the charge of th

Astronomers are now regularly detecting planets thousands of light years from Earth – but have we missed one in our own Solar System?

Amazing answers to your curious questions

Measuring time using the Earth’s rotation was always an imprecise business, so now we do it using the ‘tick’ of an atom