https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The Milky Way's galactic bulge, the bulbous region that surrounds the galactic center, contains a dense collection of stars, planets, and other free-floating objects. This region has been studied for decades with numerous ground-based and space-based telescopes, including NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-hubble-survey-roman-future-milky.html Astronomy Mon, 11 May 2026 15:20:01 EDT news697723621 In this new image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a spiral galaxy glittering with star clusters is the center of attention. NGC 3137 is located 53 million light-years away in the constellation Antlia (The Air Pump). As a nearby spiral galaxy, this target offers astronomers an excellent opportunity to study the cycle of stellar birth and death, as well as giving researchers a glimpse of a galactic system similar to our own. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-hubble-reveals-spiral-galaxy-million.html Astronomy Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:20:01 EDT news696764341 An international team of astronomers has employed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to perform high-resolution observations of the Needle galaxy. Results of the new observational campaign, presented April 15 on the arXiv preprint server, provide more insights into the properties of molecular gas in this galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-alma-reveals-giant-molecular-clouds.html Astronomy Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:20:01 EDT news696502546 By analyzing the data from the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey (PandAS), European astronomers have discovered a new satellite of the Andromeda galaxy. The newfound object, which received the designation Andromeda XXXVI, appears to be an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy. The finding is reported in a paper published March 30 on the arXiv preprint server . https://phys.org/news/2026-04-astronomers-andromeda-xxxvi-ultra-faint.html Astronomy Tue, 07 Apr 2026 08:10:01 EDT news694706609 Finding life beyond our solar system goes beyond measuring an exoplanet's size, as rocky, Earth-sized worlds might not have the conditions for life as we know it. While exoplanets can be directly imaged by blocking their star's glare, these images are fuzzy and lack resolution to provide enough details about the habitability. Therefore, astronomers are limited to studying an exoplanet's atmosphere, and this has proven to be quite beneficial in teaching scientists about an exoplanet's formation and evolution, and whether it contains the necessary ingredients for life as we know it. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-henrietta-spectrograph-probe-alien-atmospheres.html Astrobiology Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:00:01 EDT news694089632 A recently detected flash of energy appears to have emanated from the wreckage of colliding galaxies, according to an international team of astronomers led by Penn State scientists. The burst, known as GRB 230906A, was likely caused by the collision of two neutron stars hundreds of millions of years ago and is now shedding light on how the universe creates some of its heaviest elements. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-strange-cosmic-colliding-galaxies-heavy.html Astronomy Tue, 10 Mar 2026 10:00:09 EDT news692353098 Imagine trying to reconstruct the history of a city by studying only its oldest surviving buildings. You can't watch it being built, you can't interview the architects, all you have are the structures themselves, their materials, their arrangement, the subtle clues locked into their very fabric. That is essentially what astronomers do when they study the formation of our galaxy, and a new study has just given them their biggest collection of clues yet. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-stars-lit-early-milky.html Astronomy Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:30:02 EST news691668842 In 2014, a NASA telescope observed that the infrared light emitted by a massive star in the Andromeda galaxy gradually grew brighter. The star glowed more intensely with infrared light for around three years before fading dramatically and disappearing, leaving behind a shell of dust. Although a telescope captured the phenomenon at the time, it took years for scientists to notice it. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-astronomers-star-year-infrared-black.html Astronomy Sat, 14 Feb 2026 15:00:03 EST news690123902 Astronomers have watched a dying star fail to explode as a supernova, instead collapsing into a black hole. The remarkable sighting is the most complete observational record ever made of a star's transformation into a black hole, allowing astronomers to construct a comprehensive physical picture of the process. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-supernova-clearest-view-star-collapsing.html Astronomy Thu, 12 Feb 2026 14:00:16 EST news690123883 There is no measurement that can directly observe the wave function of a quantum mechanical system, but the wave function is still enormously useful as its (complex) square represents the probability density of the system or elements of the system. But for a confined system, the wave function can be inferred. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-quantum-extent-molecule-confined-nanodroplet.html General Physics Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:16:31 EST news688900547 Computer simulations carried out by astronomers from the University of Groningen in collaboration with researchers from Germany, France and Sweden show that most of the (dark) matter beyond the Local Group of galaxies (which includes the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy) must be organized in an extended plane. Above and below this plane are large voids. The observed motions of nearby galaxies and the joint masses of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy can only be properly explained with this "flat" mass distribution. The research, led by Ph.D. graduate Ewoud Wempe and Professor Amina Helmi, is published in Nature Astronomy. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-milky-embedded-large-scale-sheet.html Astronomy Tue, 27 Jan 2026 15:20:30 EST news688749602 We now have direct images of two supermassive black holes: M87* and Sag A*. The fact that we can capture such images is remarkable, but they might be the only black holes we can observe. That is, unless we take radio astronomy to a whole new level. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-radio-telescopes-moon-dozens-black.html Astronomy Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:23:19 EST news688224122 By analyzing the data from ESA's Gaia satellite, Chinese astronomers have investigated the structure of a nearby open cluster known as NGC 752. The new study identified four substructures and delivered evidence for mass segregation in this cluster. The findings were presented Jan. 12 on the arXiv preprint server. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-gaia-reveals-substructures-cluster-ngc.html Astronomy Tue, 20 Jan 2026 08:00:01 EST news688104298 Galaxy clusters are formed by a dense packing of many galaxies, making them the most massive structures in the universe. Their progenitors, protoclusters, show these galaxies in their infancy, offering a window to study how they all formed. This early "settlement" of galaxies will eventually evolve into a sprawling metropolis by the present day. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-cosmic-lens-reveals-hyperactive-cradle.html Astronomy Thu, 08 Jan 2026 08:41:36 EST news687084061 Astronomers have created a detailed forecast of where they expect to observe future stellar explosions in a nearby galaxy, opening a new window into how exploding stars shape the cosmos. Focusing on M33, a spiral galaxy about 2.7 million light‑years away, this research combined new maps of cold atomic hydrogen gas from the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array (NSF VLA) with millimeter‑wave observations of molecular gas from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). https://phys.org/news/2026-01-stars-die-beaten-path.html Astronomy Wed, 07 Jan 2026 11:05:28 EST news687006175 Astronomers from Cardiff University, UK, have employed the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA) to explore the nearby Andromeda galaxy. Results of the observational campaign, published December 27 on the pre-print server arXiv, yield important insights into the molecular cloud system of this galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-astronomers-molecular-cloud-atlas-nearby.html Astronomy Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:20:55 EST news686913576 Size matters when it comes to telescopes. The bigger they are, the farther they can see. Prioritizing constructing large ones is therefore high on the priority list for many observational organizations. But doing so comes at a cost, and not just in terms of money. Finding a suitable site can be a challenge, and that has been particularly true for the effort to build a 30-meter telescope in the Northern Hemisphere. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-astronomy-giant-canary-islands.html Astronomy Mon, 05 Jan 2026 10:15:19 EST news686830501 Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers has observed an elliptical galaxy known as NGC 4486B. Results of the observational campaign, published Dec. 16 on the arXiv preprint server, deliver important insights into the properties of the double nucleus of this galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-astronomers-explore-nucleus-galaxy-ngc.html Astronomy Fri, 26 Dec 2025 09:30:01 EST news685685224 Professor Woong-bae Zee of the College of Liberal Studies at Sejong University has revealed that a galaxy does not possess only a single evolutionary pathway; instead, depending on the nature of its neighboring galaxy, it can exhibit two entirely different "faces of evolution." The work is published in The Astrophysical Journal. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-dual-impact-stellar-bars-star.html Astronomy Mon, 22 Dec 2025 12:50:01 EST news685629630 Clues about how galaxies like our Milky Way form and evolve and why their stars show surprising chemical patterns have been revealed by a new study. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-cosmic-gas-collisions-milky-chemical.html Astronomy Mon, 08 Dec 2025 06:30:05 EST news684397772 Astronomers know that mergers play a huge role in galaxy growth. Right now, the Milky Way is slowly consuming the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The evidence is a stream of gas called the Magellanic Stream that's about 600,000 light-years long. The Milky Way (MW) is stripping this gas from the clouds, which don't have enough mass to retain it. They're losing the gravitational tug-of-war with the much more massive MW. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-andromeda-galaxy-quenches-satellite-galaxies.html Astronomy Wed, 19 Nov 2025 10:15:04 EST news682769702 Astronomy is increasingly becoming an online affair. Recent discoveries of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS and R2 SWAN have highlighted this fact, when both were first discussed on message boards and verified via remote telescopes before confirmation. Another recent find also shows what's possible, as devoted amateur astronomer Filipp Romanov has accomplished an amazing feat, and discovered a supernova in a remote galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-dedicated-amateur-supernova-remote-galaxy.html Astronomy Wed, 01 Oct 2025 16:10:07 EDT news678553453 For decades, scientists engaged in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have probed the galaxy for signs of artificial radio transmissions. Beginning with Project Ozma in 1960, astronomers have used radio antennas to listen for possible transmissions from other star systems or galaxies. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-galaxies-high-radio-emissions-home.html Astronomy Wed, 01 Oct 2025 07:16:06 EDT news678521761 A cosmic dance could be the future of the Milky Way as it tracks a course to collide with neighboring galaxies, a University of Queensland survey has found. The paper is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-dwarf-galaxies-milky-future.html Astronomy Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:40:03 EDT news674120401 Astronomers have discovered potentially the most massive black hole ever detected. The cosmic behemoth is close to the theoretical upper limit of what is possible in the universe and is 10,000 times heavier than the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-billion-solar-masses-cosmic-horseshoe.html Astronomy Thu, 07 Aug 2025 12:22:04 EDT news673788121 For generations, humans have gazed at the stars and wondered about the ultimate fate of the universe. Will it expand forever into the cold emptiness, or meet a more dramatic end? https://phys.org/news/2025-07-dark-energy-decreasing-big-crunch.html Astronomy Sun, 06 Jul 2025 10:10:01 EDT news670827825 The Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (M31), is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way at a distance of about 2.5 million light-years. Astronomers use Andromeda to understand the structure and evolution of our own spiral, which is much harder to do since Earth is embedded inside the Milky Way. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-nasa-views-galactic-neighbor-andromeda.html Astronomy Thu, 26 Jun 2025 06:59:04 EDT news670139942 Astronomers have surveyed massive, dense star factories, unlike any found in the Milky Way, in a large number of galaxies across the local universe. The findings provide a rare glimpse into processes shaping galaxies in the very early universe and possibly the Milky Way a few billion years from now. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-belly-beast-massive-clumps-reveal.html Astronomy Wed, 11 Jun 2025 16:01:13 EDT news668876463 For years, astronomers have predicted a dramatic fate for our galaxy: a head-on collision with Andromeda, our nearest large galactic neighbor. This merger—expected in about 5 billion years—has become a staple of astronomy documentaries, textbooks and popular science writing. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-astronomers-thought-milky-doomed-andromeda.html Astronomy Sat, 07 Jun 2025 13:40:01 EDT news668176742 It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-milky-chance-colliding-galaxy-billions.html Astronomy Sat, 07 Jun 2025 11:10:01 EDT news668167562