Astronomy
- Space
LIGO and Virgo detected a collision between a black hole and a mystery object
The first evidence of an object more massive than any neutron star and more lightweight than any black hole has astronomers wondering what it is.
- Space
Black hole plasma jets are shaped like bell-bottoms
Jets of high-energy particles change from slightly curved sides to flared cones as they shoot away from galaxies, just like flare-legged pants.
- Space
The Milky Way’s giant gas bubbles were seen in visible light for the first time
Variation in the light’s wavelengths could help scientists map the velocity of the gas that makes up the towering structures known as Fermi bubbles.
- Space
A Milky Way flash implicates magnetars as a source of fast radio bursts
A bright radio burst seen from a magnetar in the Milky Way suggests that similar objects produce the mysterious fast radio bursts observed in other galaxies.
- Space
Half the universe’s ordinary matter was missing — and may have been found
Astronomers have used fast radio bursts as cosmic weigh stations to tease out where the universe’s “missing matter” resides.
- Physics
A star shredded by a black hole may have spit out an extremely energetic neutrino
A star’s fatal encounter with a black hole might have produced a neutrino with oomph.
- Astronomy
The oldest disk galaxy yet found formed more than 12 billion years ago
A spinning disk galaxy similar to the Milky Way formed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, much earlier than astronomers thought was possible.
- Space
How tiny ‘dead’ galaxies get their groove back and make stars again
Computer simulations explain how puny galaxies can sustain star formation: Gas falls into them and billions of years later begins to create new stars.
- Space
The closest black hole to Earth may have been spotted 1,000 light-years away
What appears to be the closest black hole to the solar system shares orbits with two massive stars, a new study finds.
- Astronomy
The sun is less magnetically active than similar stars, and we don’t know why
Why our star seems so different from its stellar kin is a mystery.
- Astronomy
A century ago, astronomy’s Great Debate foreshadowed today’s view of the universe
The argument between Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis 100 years ago was ultimately settled by Edwin Hubble.
- Astronomy
High-speed gas collisions prevent star birth in galaxies’ bars
The spiral galaxy NGC 1300 makes few if any stars in its bright bar. Simulations suggest gas clouds colliding at high speed stunt star formation.
