Going underground in search of dark matter strikes

THE chill hits me as soon as the door shuts. Then the floor starts to rumble. The lift I've just entered feels like an original from the late 1800s, when miners made the same trip in search of iron ore. But my guide and I (pictured above) are seeking a much more elusive substance: dark matter.

Einstein was first to dream up dark energy

For geniuses, even blunders are triumphs in disguise. A dialogue between Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger, pictured, suggests the pair stumbled upon the idea of dark energy 80 years before its time, while toying with what they thought was an ugly fudge factor.

Hot DOG surprise reveals new stage in galaxy evolution

Here's a frankfurter that won't fit on a bun. Hot dust-obscured galaxies, or hot DOGs, are a new type of cosmic object that could help answer a decades-old problem: which came first, the galaxy or the black hole?

The newly discovered galaxies are among the brightest in the universe, 1000 times brighter than the Milky Way, but they are so heavily clouded by dust that they had gone entirely unnoticed until now – hence the description "hot, dust-obscured".

Black Hole 'Ingredients' Seen In Milky Way's Molecular Clouds

An artist's illustration of a newfound large star cluster near the center of the Milky Way that may be a breeding ground for intermediate black holes.

Scientists investigated our galaxy's central molecular zone, which contains the most massive, densest, and most turbulent molecular clouds in the Milky Way. These surround the heart of our galaxy, which is suspected to be home to a supermassive black hole about 4 million times the mass of the sun.