In around 5 billion years, the sun will run out of the fuel needed for nuclear fusion in its core. This will cause its inner core to collapse under the force of the sun's own gravity. At this point, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The universe is expanding; we’ve had evidence of that for about a century. But just how quickly celestial objects are receding from each other is still up for debate. It’s no small feat to measure the ...

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 ...

My adult-education auto-shop teacher promised us that we would never again have to call AAA to fix a flat. We could do it on our own, with just a jack, a wrench and a spare. Every self-respecting, ...

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 ...