For the calibration of relatively short distances the team observed Cepheid variables. These are pulsating stars which fade and brighten at rates that are proportional to their true brightness and ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it. If you want to know how something in the Universe works, all you need ...

An image of the Cepheid variable star RS Puppis. The most accurate observation to date of distant stars that periodically change in brightness may spark a rethink of the rate at which the universe ...

Look out at a distant galaxy, and you'll see it as it was in the distant past. But light arriving after, say, a billion-year journey won't come from a galaxy that's a billion light years away, but one ...

A long-running dispute about how fast our universe is expanding just became even more entrenched. New and more precise measurements of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the ...

The cosmic distance ladder could soon have another rung. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. In around 5 billion years, the sun will ...

For a while now, astronomers have been confronting a conundrum. Studies of the early universe, looking at the era just after the Big Bang, tell us that the cosmos should be expanding at one speed. But ...

ONE of the most basic facts about the universe is that it is expanding. This observation, made by Edwin Hubble (pictured) in 1929, leads to all sorts of mind-stretching ideas. That the universe is ...

The cosmic distance ladder is the world’s longest ruler, built to measure the universe. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, scientists have been constructing a cosmic measuring tape to measure the ...

It’s a bit mind-bending to realise that everything we know about the scale of the universe comes from people stuck […] ...

In 1998, two teams of cosmologists observed dozens of distant supernovas and inferred that they’re racing away from Earth faster and faster all the time. This meant that—contrary to expectations—the ...