In films and books black holes capture unwary spaceships and planets, gobble up whole galaxies or offer portals to other parts of the Universe.

Physics - General Physics

Mar 29, 2010 4.6 / 5 (38) 32 |

Mars Express encountered Phobos last night, smoothly skimming past at just 67 km, the closest any manmade object has ever approached Mars' enigmatic moon. The data collected could help unlock the origin of ...

Space & Earth - Space Exploration

Mar 04, 2010 5 / 5 (10) 4 |

ESA's Mars Express will skim the surface of Mars' largest moon Phobos on Wednesday evening. Passing by at an altitude of 67 km, precise radio tracking will allow researchers to peer inside the mysterious moon.

Space & Earth - Space Exploration

Mar 01, 2010 5 / 5 (2) 0 |

(PhysOrg.com) -- While airplane and rocket experiments have proved that gravity makes clocks tick more slowly - a central prediction of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity - a new experiment in ...

Physics - General Physics

Feb 17, 2010 5 / 5 (33) 10 |

Black holes are some of the most exotic objects in the universe. They are the final evolutionary stage of giant stars much larger than the sun. When these stars explode, their cores collapse down to the size ...

Space & Earth - Space Exploration

Dec 17, 2009 5 / 5 (2) 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Within a decade scientists could be able to detect the merger of tens of pairs of black holes every year, according to a team of astronomers at the University of Bonn’s Argelander-Institut ...

Space & Earth - Astronomy

Dec 16, 2009 4.7 / 5 (18) 6

(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the givens in physics is the weak equivalence principle. This principle has been considered solid since Einstein proposed that it is not possible to detect the difference between uniform acceleration ...

Physics - General Physics

Dec 08, 2009 4.5 / 5 (26) 19

(PhysOrg.com) -- Two physicists in China have used metamaterials to create the first artificial electromagnetic black hole. The scientists, Qiang Cheng and Tie Jun Cui from the Southeast University in Nanjing, ...

Physics - Optics & Photonics

Oct 16, 2009 4.1 / 5 (60) 20

Physicists at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (Germany) have succeeded in producing a Bose-Einstein condensate from the alkaline earth element calcium. The use of alkaline earth atoms creates new ...

Physics - General Physics

Sep 22, 2009 4.8 / 5 (12) 0

The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) of our galaxy is a giant complex of molecular gas and dust situated in the innermost 700 light-years of the Milky Way. Although the galaxy is over 100,000 light-years in size, ...

Space & Earth - Astronomy

Aug 28, 2009 4.3 / 5 (14) 7

An exciting new astrophysics mission led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will provide a revolutionary window into the universe. Named the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer ...

Space & Earth - Space Exploration

Aug 04, 2009 4.6 / 5 (10) 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have been turning the world's most powerful telescopes toward Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet, ever since Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley discovered a new ...

Space & Earth - Space Exploration

Jul 30, 2009 4.5 / 5 (4) 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have debated how many mass extinction events in Earth's history were triggered by a space body crashing into the planet's surface. Most agree that an asteroid collision 65 million ...

Space & Earth - Space Exploration

Jul 30, 2009 3.7 / 5 (19) 14

A new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered by an international team of astronomers.

Space & Earth - Astronomy

Jul 01, 2009 5 / 5 (22) 15

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using new data from ESA's XMM-Newton spaceborne observatory, astronomers have probed closer than ever to a supermassive black hole lying deep at the core of a distant active galaxy.

Space & Earth - Astronomy

May 27, 2009 4.9 / 5 (10) 9