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Talk about making a cosmic ripple. This week’s report of gravity waves from the Big Bang is the biggest cosmological news of the century. It’s the science news equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane or F5 tornado. If the new results hold up, the understanding of the universe will have taken a bigger leap for humankind than hopping around on the moon. And the BICEP2 result will join an...

The universe is a little older and perhaps a bit stranger than previously thought, according to the best measurements ever taken of the radiation left over from just after the Big Bang. Presented March 21 at a press conference in Paris, the data from the Planck satellite combine to form a map of the remnant glow that largely affirms scientists' theories about the universe's early history. But...

Climate in flux More than half a century ago, temperature records from Antarctica and the Arctic showed data “consistent with the theory that the entire world is slowly getting warmer,” Science News Letter reported. This low-grade fever began around 1900 and was believed “to amount to some two or three degrees each century” (2/28/59, p. 131). But not until the 1990s would climate...

Hunting data

A number of instruments now operating or proposed can troll the skies or otherwise help to answer some of the most puzzling questions about the universe.