Mashable Selects Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Creator Playbook Look Up Back to School Say More Trending Now Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Switch Off Mashable Voices Safety Net Versus All Series Check out the cosmic sprawl. Elisha Sauers writes about space for Mashable, taking deep dives into NASA's moon and Mars missions, chatting up astronauts and history-making discoverers, and jetting above the clouds . Through 17 years of reporting, she's covered a variety of topics, including health, business, and government, with a penchant for public records requests. She previously worked for in Norfolk, Virginia, and in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has earned numerous state awards, including the Virginia Press Association's top honor, Best in Show, and national recognition for narrative storytelling.

Before reentering our atmosphere, the telescopes onboard NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have been restarted to take their last observations. After 21 years in space, NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory will soon return to our atmosphere. NASA has carried out some notable rescue missions over the past few years, including bringing home the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station last year. More recently, the agency sent up a probe in hopes of saving the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a satellite first launched in 2004 that began falling out of our planet's orbit. The plan was for robotic arms on the probe, known as LINK, to grab onto the aging satellite and--with a powerful set of thrusters--drag the observatory back into position.

Astronomers Have Completed the Largest Map of Space. The intricate, 5.6 trillion-pixel map covers approximately 75 percent of the sky and includes about 4 billion celestial objects. The new DESI map contains some of the highest resolution images of galaxies, like this one in the constellation Leo over 35 million light years from earth. The driving force behind our universe's accelerated expansion remains one of the greatest mysteries in astronomy. While this force, which scientists refer to as dark energy, pervades our universe, we know almost nothing about it.

Is It Even Possible to Understand Quantum Mechanics? Common sense is of no help in studying reality at the atomic scale. A big problem with physics is that it's invented by humans. We see stuff around us and use our observations to build a mental model of the world. Children do this, and of course physicists keep right on doing it.

NASA launches $4.3bn Roman Telescope to uncover universe's hidden secrets Share NASA launches $4.3bn Roman Telescope to uncover universe's hidden secrets on social media NASA's newest flagship astronomical observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, has been launched on a quest to solve some of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics and cosmology, including hunting for planets around other stars, exploring dark energy and scanning the cosmos. SpaceX, the aerospace company run by Elon Musk, launched the $4.3bn space telescope on a triple-the-fire-power Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in the US state of Florida just after dawn on Sunday. It will take more than three months to get there. Its mission is planned for five years although the United States space agency said the telescope may have enough fuel for five additional years, given that the telescope is designed to be refuelled. If a robotic tanker becomes available in the coming decade, that could extend the Roman Telescope's life.

Scientists Create the Littlest Big Bang to Study the Universe's Origins The discovery redefines how large atoms need to be to produce the extreme state of matter found in the early universe. In the very first moments of the universe, matter didn't exist as we know today. A millionth of a second or so after the big bang, the universe was a dense, hot soup scientists call quark-gluon plasma (QGP). For several years, particle colliders --which smash molecules together at nearly the speed of light--have been able to replicate this state, but often using heavy elements like lead. Now, a recent experiment by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN from its French acronym) has demonstrated this plasma can be produced by much smaller collisions. Since there's no longer an accessible natural source of this primordial sludge, these micro big bangs can help reveal what happened in the first few minutes of our universe.

Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Say More Mashable Selects Mashable Voices Safety Net Creator Hub Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag All Series NASA's Roman telescope is built to find what Hubble and Webb miss Elisha Sauers writes about space for Mashable, taking deep dives into NASA's moon and Mars missions, chatting up astronauts and history-making discoverers, and jetting above the clouds . Through 17 years of reporting, she's covered a variety of topics, including health, business, and government, with a penchant for public records requests. She previously worked for in Norfolk, Virginia, and in Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has earned numerous state awards, including the Virginia Press Association's top honor, Best in Show, and national recognition for narrative storytelling. For each year she has covered space, Sauers has won National Headliner Awards, including first place for her Sex in Space series.

Science Physics Particle Physics Scientists smash atoms together to create'little' big bangs Recreating the universe's earliest moments could help us learn more about the elusive quark-gluon plasma. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Oxygen and neon nuclei created different particle patterns after colliding with each other. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

The universe may never tell you if your choices mattered. A main theme of the nine-book sci-fi series is that sometimes you may never know the consequences of a choice you made. The universe, utterly indifferent black box that it is, "never tells us if we did right or wrong," as the character Naomi Nagata puts it in TV show. That's the line the developer of the upcoming Expanse video game has adopted as its own slogan. It's being developed by Owlcat Games, the Cyprus-based developer known for dense role-playing games like and .

CosmoCube would peer 13.5 billion years back in time from the far side of the moon. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy . The big bang may have started everything we know and love, but there wasn't much to show for it at first.