Far beyond the bright pinwheels and glowing nebulae that dominate space photography, astronomers have finally confirmed something they had only modeled on paper: a galaxy that never quite turned on.

How do you find a galaxy that never formed? The standard cosmological model predicts the existence of “failed” galaxies — clumps of dark matter that captured gas but never birthed a star. Because they ...

From your place inside the Milky Way, you are living within a galaxy that keeps a detailed chemical diary. Every star holds clues about when it formed and what the galaxy was like at the time. Over ...