"Eighty percent of the universe is utterly invisible, but an exotic dance of mutually annihilating particles may explain it all"

Read More:

• Time Magazine: The Mystery of Dark Matter: WIMPS May Have the Answer
• CfA Press Release: ...

"Four billion years from now, our galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide with our large spiraled neighbor, Andromeda.

The galaxies as we know them will not survive.

In fact, our solar system is going to outlive our galaxy. At that point, the sun will not yet be a red giant star – but it will have grown bright enough to roast Earth’s surface. Any life forms still there, though, will be treated to some pretty spectacular cosmic choreography."

National Geographic: ...

"The landscape in Chile’s Atacama desert is Martian-like: dry, barren and flanked by volcanoes, and its high altitude and unpolluted skies make it a prime spot for stargazing. It was there, after a full night of such observation — and over a 4 p.m. breakfast — that astronomer Stefan Gillessen found himself in possession of some very special data. His observations showed a cloud of gas being stretched out, or “spaghettified,” about to be ripped apart, as it barreled toward the black hole at the center of our galaxy...

For information on BICEP2 2014 Results. Go to:

http://bicepkeck.org/

CFA Press Release: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2014-05

Selected Press:

• NY Times:...

"Black holes, the ultradense collapsed objects predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, are often depicted as voracious feeders whose extraordinary gravity acts like a one-way membrane: Everything is sucked in, even light, and virtually nothing leaks out.

Now, for the first time, astronomers may have a chance to watch as a giant black hole consumes a cosmic snack.

In March or April, a gas cloud that...

John Johnson was featured in Symmetry Magazine's "Physicists to Follow" feature: Symmetry Magazine: #FollowFriday IV: Physicists to follow on Twitter @astrojohnjohn

"It has been called an elegant solution to a difficult problem. The notion that mysterious dark matter, which holds galaxies together, is made of primordial black holes that formed when dense regions of early Universe gravitationally collapsed was laid out in 1971 by physicist Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge, UK¹. The idea has never been the mainstream...

Alicia Soderberg studies the death of stars. Often, these final moments come as violent explosions known as . They're spectacular events, but catching one as it unfolds can be tricky. "You have to be in the right place at the right time, and often we're not," says the professor in Harvard's astronomy department. "So all you can do is do a stellar autopsy and go back and try to pick up the pieces and try to figure out what happened."

NPR Story:...

Although their characteristics suggested fast radio bursts came from distant galaxies, new research points to origins from flaring stars within the Milky Way. Read Full Astronomy.com article: http://www.astronomy.com/news/2013/12/fast-radio-bursts-might-come-from-nearby-stars

Links to Articles:

• Physics.Org report: ...

"Aliens might have existed during the Universe’s infancy. A set of calculations suggests that liquid water — a pre­requisite for life — could have formed on rocky planets just 15 million years after the Big Bang..."  (Nature, Article)

Links:

• Paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.0613.pdf
• Nature: ...

A team of planet hunters estimates that about 22 percent of the Sun-like stars in our galaxy may have planets about the size of Earth that are bathed in similar amounts of sunlight — and potentially habitable. That's the conclusion of a new analysis by Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley of observations taken by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, which was launched in 2009 to hunt for potentially habitable Earth-like planets around other stars.... Read more about Galaxy Quest: Just How Many Earth-Like Planets Are Out There?

"Kepler 78b, a planet some 400 light-years away, is like hell on earth. Astronomers described it on Wednesday as the first Earth-size planet that seems to be made of the same mixture of rock and iron as Earth, and that orbits a star similar to our sun. At that close proximity, the surface of Kepler 78b is infernally hot: 3,500 to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or ... “Exoplanets are just surprising us with their diversity,” said Dimitar D. Sasselov, a professor of astronomy at Harvard and a member of Dr. Pepe’s team, using the name for planets outside our solar...