New Hubble view of the Lagoon Nebula

This incredible image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals thousands of colourful galaxies in the constellation of Leo, components of cluster known as MACS J1149.5+2223. This vibrant view of the early universe was captured as part of the Frontier Fields campaign, which aims to investigate galaxy clusters in more detail than ever before.

Newly formed dwarf galaxies were likely the reason that the universe heated up about 13 billion years ago, according to new work by an international team of scientists. The finding opens an avenue for better understanding the early period of the universe’s 14-billion-year history.

Five years ago, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astronomers for their discovery, in the late 1990s, that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace. Now, a team of scientists led by Professor Subir Sarkar of Oxford University’s Department of Physics has cast doubt on this standard cosmological concept.