Indranil Banik

Astronomers debate the age of the universe as passionately as 19th-century geologists argued over the age of the Earth. Direct measurements give contradictory numbers: Edwin Hubble's law and the cosmic microwave background paint different cosmic chronologies.

The standard cosmological model ΛCDM, where dark matter and dark energy act as the chief architects of the cosmos, has predicted astronomical data with Swiss-watch precision for decades. Its foundation was laid by three geniuses.

Dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way look as if they’ve survived a gravitational storm. Their stellar bodies are stretched, scattered by tidal tails, and heated from within.