The 21st Century is sure to be full of insights about the origin of the Universe, its eventual fate, and the journey between the two.

A century ago, mankind believed itself to live in a static, eternal universe of stars.  Today we realise that our universe is was born in fire 13.8 billion years ago, that we live in its heyday, and that a protracted heat death may be its eventual demise, countless trillion years into the future. 

This section of the web site will be updated with a new article each month (or so) on what we know about cosmology, and how we've discovered it; what's solid science, and what belongs down the corridor in Speculation Patio.

  • (31/May/2017)
    Many WDAS Members will have heard Sean Paling’s talk about hunting for Dark Matter in Boulby Mine, and followed updates of how successive experiments are progressing.  So let’s take another look at Dark Matter: why we think it’s there and what it is. In our own solar system Mercury is moving faster...
  • (31/Mar/2017)
    It all started in 1924, when Edwin Hubble proved galaxies are very distant objects, each containing millions or billions of stars, bound together by gravity.  Within a few years, he set up a system to classify these galaxies by shape; a system which is still pretty much the system we use today...
  • (31/Jan/2017)
    Betelgeuse is a star constallation of Orion, which is well known for being very unstable and possibly exploding in a supanova at any point.  It's a star that is often studied by astronomers, but before they can understand how a star goes supanova, they need to understand what the steady state of a...
  • (30/Nov/2016)
    In theory, a moon can have a moon.  The region of space around a satellite where a sub-satellite can exist is called a hillsphere.  Outside the hillsphere the sub-satellite would be lost around the satellite, and therefore orbiting the planet or the sun instead of the moon itself.
  • (07/Apr/2014)
    On the 18th February, Peter Higgs gave an in-depth interview to Jim Al-Khalili on Radio 4'
  • (29/Nov/2013)
    This year, discovery of the "Higgs Particle" has rocketed into mainstream news in a big way, as journalists struggled to explain an obscure part of fundamental physics.  But what do you know about it?