If the prospect of an ever-expanding universe that eventually stretches into a vast emptiness isn’t depressing enough, there’s this: the universe may have cracks in it. Cracks, called cosmic strings, ...

Remember that time in the Lord of the Rings lore when the dwarves of Moria dug too greedily and too deep, unearthing the Balrog, an ancient horror not meant to roam free in the modern age? Cosmic ...

Topology originated from the classification of geometric structures in mathematics, and have prevailed in a variety of branches of physics, ranging from the early electronic topological insulator to ...

The universe began with a bang—an explosion so intense, it forged the fabric of space and time itself. This pivotal moment, known as the Big Bang, marked the birth of everything we see, know, and are.

One of today’s outstanding cosmological questions is how structure first formed in the universe. Cosmic strings certainly could have done the job. A typical string postulated in grand unification ...

Cosmic strings are hypothetical topological defects, often described as “cracks” in the universe, that theoretically formed during the quantum chaos immediately following the Big Bang. Although the ...

Physicists in the US and Singapore are the first to use light from distant galaxies to perform a systematic search for cosmic strings — massive structures that may have been created just after the Big ...

Cold gas does not look dramatic at first glance. Neither does dust. Yet those two quiet ingredients sit at the center of a new effort to build a far more realistic picture of how galaxies formed. They ...