Last time, we took a broad look at the history of the universe spanning approximately 13.8 billion years. The universe was ...

As near as paleontologists can tell, evolution has been proceeding apace for 3.5 billion years, give or take. From the emergence of the humble single-cell organism that served as the last universal ...

How did everything begin? It’s a question that humans have pondered for thousands of years. Over the last century or so, science has homed in on an answer: the Big Bang. This describes how the ...

This article is part of a special package on “Impossible Questions”—scientific quandaries that may never get definitive answers. Read the rest of the collection here. The big bang wasn’t a bang in the ...

Cosmic inflation tries to describe one brief but crucial phase in the Big Bang that launched the universe onto its expansion course. Credit: Christine Daniloff / MIT / ESA / Hubble / NASA Many ...