Expert Voices Paul Sutter

Paul Sutter received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011. After spending three years at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, he is now a visiting scholar at the Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics. Sutter is the host of several podcasts and YouTube series, consults for TV and film productions, and frequently makes public appearances discussing physics and astronomy topics and the role science plays in society.

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Is there a pattern to the universe?

By Paul Sutter

For decades, cosmologists have wondered if the large-scale structure of the universe is a fractal — that is, if it looks the same no matter how large the scale.

Countless galaxies in the universe imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Is there anything beyond the universe?

By Paul Sutter

What's beyond the known limits? What lies outside the boundary of the universe? The answer is … well, it's complicated.

An illustration of the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang.

Will we ever know exactly how the universe ballooned into existence?

By Paul Sutter

Physicists have long been unable to describe what happened just after the Big Bang when a teensy blip ballooned into the universe, a process called inflation. We may know why.

An artist's depiction of a brief but incredibly bright gamma-ray burst.

Gamma-ray bursts don't get kicked around

By Paul Sutter

For years, astronomers thought that the objects responsible for short gamma-ray bursts get kicked out of their home galaxies shortly after they're born. But new observations prove otherwise.

The spiral galaxy M81 is located about 12 million light-years away from Earth.

Galaxies, the cosmic cities of the universe, explained by astrophysicist

By Paul Sutter

Galaxies are glittering cities, massive metropolises full of stars, dust, gas, black holes, magnetic fields, cosmic rays, dark matter and more.

Uranus and Neptune have each only been visited by one spacecraft, Voyager 2.

A mission to Uranus and Neptune could act as massive gravitational-wave detector

By Paul Sutter

What if one mission could study the gravitational ripples triggered by some of the most violent events in the universe — on the way to observing the least-known planets of our solar system?

Artist impression of the Big Bang, with particles firing away from a bright core.

The 1st few seconds of the Big Bang: What we know and what we don't

By Paul Sutter

Believe it or not, physicists are attempting to understand the universe when it was only a handful of seconds old.

Artist's illustration of Planet Nine, a world about 10 times more massive than Earth that may lie undiscovered in the far outer solar system.

What if Planet Nine is a baby black hole?

By Paul Sutter

The hypothetical Planet Nine may not be a planet but rather a small black hole that might be detectable from the theoretical radiation emitted from its edge, so-called Hawking radiation.

Abstract illustration of particles interacting at the quantum level.

A new approach to directly testing quantum gravity

By Paul Sutter

A team of physicists has proposed a clever plan to concoct a quantum theory of gravity: refine an age-old technique, and use it to probe the tiniest scales in the universe.

'Black holes' with Planck hearts would lack a true event horizon (like the one illustrated in this image).

Black holes could be dark stars with 'Planck hearts'

By Paul Sutter

Black holes may not be black or holes, a new theory proposes.

Artist’s illustration of the exoplanet Proxima b, the Earth-size world that orbits in the "habitable zone" of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Proxima b is likely tidally locked, always showing the same face to its host star.

Can super-rotating oceans cool off extreme exoplanets?

By Paul Sutter

New research suggests a way to move heat around "tidally locked" alien planets: ocean currents whipping around the worlds faster than they rotate.

Abstract illustration of the early universe and quantum physics.

Superpowerful 'oscillon' particles could have dominated the infant universe, then vanished

By Paul Sutter

A weird, super-powerful particle that's not truly a particle could have dominated the universe when it was just a second old, releasing a flood of ripples that permeated all of space-time.

This artist's depiction shows the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone identified by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. In the hunt for life outside the Earth, astronomers are keen to spot planets in the "habitable zone," — the region around a star where liquid water can exist on a planet. But the true test for whether or not a planet could host life may, in fact, rest in the most noble of gases: nitrogen.

We don't really understand the habitable zones of alien planets

By Paul Sutter

It turns out we don't really understand habitable zones.

Electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, interact around a neutron star in this visualization. Why is there so much more matter than antimatter in the universe we can see?

Could there be a cluster of antimatter stars orbiting our galaxy?

By Paul Sutter

We don't know why the universe is dominated by matter over antimatter, but there could be entire stars, and maybe even galaxies, in the universe made of antimatter.

Illustration of a pair of stars about to merge: a neutron star and a white dwarf, whose gravity is severely distorting the larger white dwarf.

Neutrons' 'evil twins' may be crushing stars into black holes

By Paul Sutter

The universe may be filled with "mirror" particles — and these otherwise-undetectable particles could be shrinking the densest stars in the universe, turning them into black holes.

This image, created using data from the European Space Agency’s Herschel and Planck space telescopes, shows a piece of the Taurus Molecular Cloud.

We may have found the most powerful particle accelerator in the galaxy

By Paul Sutter

Astronomers have long wondered where high-energy cosmic rays come from within our galaxy. And now, new observations reveal an unlikely candidate: an otherwise mundane giant molecular cloud.

Mysterious 'kick' just after the Big Bang may have created dark matter

By Paul Sutter

A mysterious "kick" in the early universe may have produced more matter than antimatter. And that imbalance may have also led to the creation of dark matter, researchers now say.

The protostar IRAS 20324+4057, which is still in the process of collecting material from an envelope of gas surrounding it. Astronomers recently found prebiotic molecules in two other protostars, known as Serpens SMM1-a and IRAS 16293B.

Prebiotic ingredients for life found around young star

By Paul Sutter

Where did the ingredients for life on Earth come from? A team of astronomers has found a crucial new link: the observation of essential "prebiotic" molecules around a still-forming star.