It's not easy to figure out how far away other galaxies are. Astronomers have to be exceptionally clever to calculate distances to objects that are billions and billions of light years away, and they might now have a brand new measuring tool that involves supermassive black holes and radiating gas clouds. Sexy.
How did the universe get its start? That question may plague mankind until the end of time, yet there's one scientific mind that could get us a little closer to the answer. That mind? It belongs to Jacob Barnett, a 12-year-old in Indiana who already takes college-level advanced astrophysics classes.
If you're having a hard time visualizing the Big Bang, let Columbia University astronomy and physics professor Janna Levin show you how it all started. In this first-rate animation that shows the Big Bang more concisely than I've ever seen,...