R. Farinelli

The neutron star 4U 1735-44 is gobbling up matter from a companion star. The matter spirals into a flat disk, like water going down a bathtub drain. But this disk shines in X-rays, and astronomers have for the first time measured how "combed" those rays are: that is, how polarized.

The Universe was born in the Big Bang and almost instantly passed through a phase of inflation — an ultra-fast expansion that blew up microscopic regions to cosmological scales.