Transient and explosive astronomical phenomena constitute a research area focused on short-lived, high-energy events in the universe, such as supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, tidal disruption events, kilonovae, and fast radio bursts. This field investigates the underlying physical mechanisms driving rapid energy release, including relativistic jets, shock breakout, nucleosynthesis, compact object mergers, and accretion-induced instabilities. Research integrates multiwavelength and multimessenger observations (electromagnetic spectra, gravitational waves, neutrinos) with numerical simulations and theoretical modeling to constrain progenitor systems, energy budgets, radiative transfer processes, and environmental impact, including feedback on galactic evolution and the production of heavy elements.
After two decades in space, NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is performing better than ever thanks to a new operational strategy implemented earlier this year. The spacecraft has made great scientific strides in the ...
Astronomy
Nov 20, 2024
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Stars with masses between 10 and 30 times that of the sun, in their final evolutionary stages, form an iron core that ultimately collapses into a neutron star. This collapse releases a tremendous amount of gravitational potential ...
Astronomy
Nov 20, 2024
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A stellar odd couple 700 light-years away is creating a chaotically beautiful display of colorful, gaseous filaments. The Hubble captured the pair, named R Aquarii, and their symbiotic interactions. Every 44 years the system's ...
Astronomy
Nov 18, 2024
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Black holes are one of the most enigmatic stellar objects. While best known for swallowing up their surroundings into a gravity pit from which nothing can escape, they can also shoot off powerful jets of charged particles, ...
Astronomy
Nov 18, 2024
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An international team of researchers has uncovered evidence that astrophysics models of massive stars and supernovae are inconsistent with observational gamma-ray astronomy.
General Physics
Nov 13, 2024
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It's still one of the coolest things I ever saw. I was in the U.S. Air Force in the 90s, and November 1998 saw me deployed to the dark skies of Kuwait. That trip provided an unexpected treat, as the Leonid meteors hit dramatic ...
Astronomy
Nov 12, 2024
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When a star moves around a supermassive black hole (SMBH) in a close elliptical orbit, it gets partially tidally disrupted every time it reaches the pericenter, emitting a series of luminous flares, known as a partial tidal ...
Astronomy
Nov 11, 2024
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Massive stars about eight times more massive than the sun explode as supernovae at the end of their lives. The explosions, which leave behind a black hole or a neutron star, are so energetic they can outshine their host galaxies ...
Astronomy
Nov 11, 2024
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An international team of astronomers has inspected long-term evolution of quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) from a QPE source designated eRO-QPE2. The study found that QPEs from this source are remarkably stable over the investigated ...
Using the CHIME telescope, an international team of astronomers has detected a new repeating fast radio burst (FRBs) source in the outskirts of a quiescent galaxy. The finding of a new FRB, which experienced 22 repeating ...
