Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.
Latest articles by Robert Lea

By Robert Lea Published
Did primordial black holes born during the Big Bang swallow the universe's antimatter, allowing matter to dominate the cosmos?

By Robert Lea Published
A cosmic explosion with an energy equivalent to the output of a billion suns went unnoticed by astronomers until they caught the "echo" of this gamma-ray burst.

By Robert Lea Published
"Cosmic archaeologists" have discovered an iron-deficient second-generation star, which provides evidence of how ancient stars enriched their successors.

By Robert Lea Published
The research could shed light on how black holes vomit out matter and how this influences their home galaxies.

By Robert Lea Published
A sample collected by the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft from the spinning top-like asteroid contained the nucleobases adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil.

By Robert Lea Published
The local universe may be expanding more slowly than previously thought, a discovery that could relieve a pesky discrepancy known as the Hubble tension.

By Robert Lea Published
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered an example of a new class of exoplanet, and it smells like rotten eggs.

By Robert Lea Published
Red Dwarf's scouse technician Dave Lister was the last human alive, a down-on-his-luck slobbish space-hero long before Peter Quill guarded the galaxy.

By Robert Lea Published
Astronomers have tracked a powerful blast of radiation back to its source, finding a neutron star collision within colliding galaxies.

By Robert Lea Published
Astronomers have witnessed evidence of an extremely violent collision between planets, and it resembles the event in Earth's history that created the moon.

By Robert Lea Published
Astronomers have discovered that the birth of neutron stars with magnetic fields trillions of times stronger than Earth's magnetosphere is the "magic trick" behind superbright supernovas.

By Robert Lea Published
Merging black holes and neutron stars have unusual oval orbits prior to colliding and merging, which challenge the laws of physics.

By Robert Lea Published
SpaceX engineers tested Ship 39's propellant system, leading to some stunning images.

By Robert Lea Published
The catalog of gravitational waves "heard" by LIGO, KAGRA and Virgo has doubled with detections of spacetime ripples.

By Robert Lea Published
The ESA's Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft watched as a superstorm that ravaged Earth also struck the Red Planet.

By Robert Lea Published
The Milky Way nebula RCW 36 resembles a stunning cosmic bird of prey in an incredible Very Large Telescope image.

By Robert Lea Published
The galaxy NGC 941 was imaged by the Subaru Telescope at the summit of Maunakea, Hawai'i.

By Robert Lea Published
"TIC 120362137 is currently the most compact known 3+1-type quadruple star system."

By Robert Lea Published
Using gravitational waves as a measure of the universe's rate of expansion could solve the biggest headache in physics, the so-called "Hubble tension."

By Robert Lea Published
One of our universe's biggest stars has dramatically turned into a rare, yellow 'hypergiant' star, and astronomers aren't sure when it will go supernova.

By Robert Lea Published
"We can study a diverse population of supermassive black holes and their radio jets at different stages of their evolution."

By Robert Lea Published
Astronomers have dived into the turbulent and chaotic heart of the Milky Way, discovering hidden chemistry around our galaxy's supermassive black hole.

By Robert Lea Published
Astronomers suspect the heart of the Milky Way may be hiding a big secret: a rapidly spinning, highly magnetic, neutron star-powered pulsar.

By Robert Lea Published
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have investigated 70 dusty galaxies at the very edge of the universe that challenge our understanding of cosmic evolution.
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