Massive black holes 'switched on' by galaxy collision

(PhysOrg.com) -- The centre of most galaxies harbours a massive black hole. Our Milky Way galaxy is one of these - the exotic object there however is reasonably calm, unlike some super-massive gravity monsters in other galaxies. ...

Black holes -- gas blowers of the Universe

(PhysOrg.com) -- Supermassive black holes with the mass of many millions of stars have been detected at the centre of many large galaxies. A super-massive black hole acts like a lurking "monster" at the centre of the galaxy ...

X-ray telescope to detect dark energy in space

It will be on board in 2012, when a Soyus-2 rocket carries an X-ray telescope into space to decode the nature of the universe's dark energy: an X-ray detector developed by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. ...

Widening the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

"The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been dominated for its first half century by a hunt for unusual radio signals. But as he prepares for the publication of his new book The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone?," ...

Pin-pointing water in space

(PhysOrg.com) -- Water is regarded as a key ingredient for life - and water exists plenty in the universe. Now scientists have found the precious element in a disk around a young star, similar to our Sun. This disk, supposedly ...

Living fossils hold record of 'supermassive' kick

The tight cluster of stars surrounding a supermassive black hole after it has been violently kicked out of a galaxy represents a new kind of astronomical object and a fossil record of the kick.

page 3 from 3