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. Researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, have identified a promising new method for measuring the mass of galaxies orbiting the Milky Way by using pulsars, some of the universe's most precise natural clocks, to detect tiny gravitational effects across our galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-pulsars-ultra-precise-gravitational-probes.html Astronomy Fri, 22 May 2026 12:40:04 EDT news698666582 One of the most puzzling findings from the JWST's observations of the early universe is the size of black holes. According to our understanding of black hole growth, these early black holes are far more massive than expected. Astronomers expected the unexpected from JWST, and it has delivered. Now the challenge is to update models of the universe to include these new observations. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-explanation-massive-black-holes-jwst.html Astronomy Wed, 20 May 2026 09:20:11 EDT news698486701 A new European-led telescope could map the dusty, hidden half of the universe, all without using fossil fuels. If you have ever seen the Milky Way in the night sky, you probably noticed that it looks cloudy. That is because towards the center of our galaxy, and of most galaxies, there are vast amounts of dust that make it hard to see what is going on. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-atlast-telescope-reveal-universe.html Astronomy Tue, 19 May 2026 13:40:03 EDT news698411764 A new study led by researchers at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) reveals how the disks of galaxies like the Milky Way are affected by ancient galactic collisions. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-galactic-collision-reset-milky-disk.html Astronomy Mon, 18 May 2026 14:20:03 EDT news698322680 An international team of researchers has developed new stellar and supernova models to explain the mysterious elemental abundance patterns left by billions of supernova explosions around the Perseus constellation, which have been difficult to explain with conventional theoretical models, reports three recent studies published in The Astrophysical Journal. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-uncover-chemical-perseus-cluster-galaxies.html Astronomy Thu, 14 May 2026 16:51:31 EDT news697996262 Billions of years ago, a young spiral galaxy began to grow in a crowded part of the universe. It pulled in gas and small companion galaxies, slowly building up the bright central region and sweeping spiral arms we see today. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-astrophysicists-space-archaeology-history-spiral.html Astronomy Thu, 14 May 2026 12:28:51 EDT news697980481 Astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have made the first direct detection of turbulence distorting light in the interstellar medium. The findings will help scientists achieve clearer imaging of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-astronomers-turbulence-stars-distorts.html Astronomy Wed, 13 May 2026 15:27:45 EDT news697904339 NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has released its most complete view of the starry sky to date, filling in gaps from previous observations. Nearly 6,000 colored dots scattered across the image show the locations of either confirmed or candidate exoplanets—worlds beyond our solar system—identified by the mission as of September 2025 at the end of TESS's second extended mission. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-tess-reveals-fullest-night-sky.html Astronomy Wed, 13 May 2026 15:13:43 EDT news697903806 Cornell astronomers are deploying a new instrument that grants them, for the first time, a better view of the universe's earliest galaxies, which can't be observed individually with traditional ground- or space-based telescopes. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-instrument-faint-early-galaxies-vast.html Astronomy Tue, 12 May 2026 17:00:10 EDT news697815721 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 Astronomers who simulate galaxies do not always get the same result, even when they start from identical conditions. New research from Leiden University shows that this is not a flaw, but a consequence of how galaxies behave—and how they are modeled. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-star-reshape-entire-galaxy.html Astronomy Mon, 11 May 2026 14:20:03 EDT news697723501 There's so little we know about circumbinary planets—planets that orbit two stars instead of one—that they can feel like the stuff of fantasy. And for good reason: to date, we've only confirmed the existence of 18 circumbinary planets, compared to the more than 6000 planets we know about in single star systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-star-wars-worlds-emerge-planet.html Astronomy Mon, 11 May 2026 10:20:01 EDT news697712282 The comet that rambled past us from another star last year likely originated in a cold, isolated corner of the galaxy that had yet to gel into its own solar system, astronomers reported Thursday. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-scientists-latest-interstellar-comet-home.html Astronomy Sat, 09 May 2026 13:50:01 EDT news696170704 Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have made a surprising discovery about a galaxy long, long ago and far, far away: It isn't rotating. That's something only seen in the most massive, mature galaxies that are closer to us in space and time, said Ben Forrest, a research scientist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Davis, and first author on the paper published May 4 in Nature Astronomy. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-rotating-early-galaxy-astronomers.html Astronomy Sat, 09 May 2026 11:00:02 EDT news697113449 For the first time, scientists have measured the instantaneous mind-blowing power of jets blasting from a black hole. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-astronomers-mind-power-black-hole.html Astronomy Sat, 09 May 2026 10:50:01 EDT news695566241 Astronomers have long known that neutron stars, the crushed cores left behind after massive stars explode, should be scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. However, most of them are effectively invisible. A new study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics suggests that NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could spot them anyway. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-roman-space-telescope-poised-elusive.html Astronomy Wed, 06 May 2026 17:10:02 EDT news697304102 Supermassive black holes lurk at the centers of massive galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Puzzlingly, supermassive black holes more than a billion times the mass of the sun appear to exist just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was less than 5% of its current age. As interstellar gas spirals towards such black holes, it accelerates to extreme speeds, heats up, and emits intense radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, creating a "quasar." https://phys.org/news/2026-05-quasars-star-formation-early-universe.html Astronomy Wed, 06 May 2026 16:10:01 EDT news697300142 Astronomers from the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) and elsewhere have conducted photometric and spectroscopic observations of a cataclysmic variable system designated SRGA J115215.0−510656. Results of the new observations, published April 29 on the arXiv pre-print server, indicate that the investigated system is an unusual long-period dwarf nova. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-j1152-unusual-period-dwarf-nova.html Astronomy Wed, 06 May 2026 14:40:06 EDT news697277554 Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope together with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have looked deeply at thousands of young star clusters in four nearby galaxies, studying clusters at different stages of evolution. Their findings show that more massive star clusters emerge more quickly from the clouds they are born in, clearing away gas and filling the galaxy with ultraviolet light. The result gives us a better understanding of star formation in galaxies, as well as how and where planets can form. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-webb-hubble-massive-star-clusters.html Astronomy Wed, 06 May 2026 11:20:01 EDT news697282081 Across the Milky Way galaxy, a planetary odd couple is circling a star some 190 light years from Earth. A normally "lonely" hot Jupiter is sharing space with a mini-Neptune, in a rare and unlikely pairing that's had astronomers puzzled since the system's discovery in 2020. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-jwst-pins-planetary-odd-couple.html Astronomy Tue, 05 May 2026 12:00:01 EDT news697196142 Our most massive satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), has been the center of a heated debate in the astrophysics community over the last few years. That debate centers on whether this is the LMC's first or second "pass" by the Milky Way itself—and it has huge implications for the evolution of our galaxy given the disruption such a large grouping of stars has. A new paper from Scott Lucchini, Jiwon Jesse Han, Sapna Mishra, and Andrew J. Fox and his co-authors, currently available on the arXiv preprint server, provides what they claim to be definitive evidence that this is, in fact, the first time LMC has encountered the Milky Way. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-large-magellanic-cloud-visitor.html Astronomy Mon, 04 May 2026 10:20:07 EDT news697106221 We're focusing on space news this week, but we did cover the usual amount of local news down here in Earth's gravity well: A new Tokamak reactor regime sustained stable plasma fusion for one full minute. An anomaly in global sea level rise turns out to be due to deep ocean heating. And Chinese researchers report that they found microplastics in every part of both healthy and diseased human brains. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-saturday-citations-spaaa-aaace.html Other Sat, 02 May 2026 09:00:01 EDT news696857370 Chinese astronomers report the discovery of DESI-HVS1, which may be an old metal-poor hypervelocity star of galactic center origin. The finding, based on the data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and ESA's Gaia satellite, was detailed in a research paper published April 23 on the arXiv pre-print server. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-desi-hvs1-hypervelocity-star-ejected.html Astronomy Fri, 01 May 2026 10:00:03 EDT news696763810 When you're looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, it helps to know what you're looking for and to go about it in the most efficient way. But work so far has generally not done so, writes Benjamin Zuckerman, an astrophysicist and emeritus professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). https://phys.org/news/2026-04-extraterrestrial-intelligence.html Astrobiology Fri, 01 May 2026 08:30:01 EDT news696769964 The Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) has made a breakthrough in exploring the extreme universe. For the first time, the LHAASO collaboration has detected ultra-high-energy (UHE) gamma rays—with energies exceeding 100 trillion electron-volts (TeV)—from a gamma-ray binary system, LS I +61° 303. The discovery challenges existing theories of particle acceleration in extreme astrophysical environments. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-lhaaso-extreme-particle-milky.html Astronomy Thu, 30 Apr 2026 13:20:06 EDT news696768002 The Milky Way galaxy grew into its current form with the help of smaller galaxies over time, which it has "consumed" or merged with. Astronomers are able to pick out which stars in the Milky Way came from other galaxies by identifying certain features, like the eccentricities of their galactic orbits and how many heavier elements they contain. Properties of some of the merged galaxies can then be determined when astronomers find collections of stars with similar features. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-lost-galaxy-loki-milky.html Astronomy Thu, 30 Apr 2026 12:40:03 EDT news696769916 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 Astronomers now estimate there is at least one planet for every star in our galaxy. These worlds, called exoplanets, are planets that orbit stars outside our solar system. But new research from McMaster University reveals a surprising twist: the most common planets in our galaxy don't exist around the most common stars. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-common-planets-galaxy-dont-stars.html Astronomy Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:20:04 EDT news696680521 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 Astronomers can use telescopes to find specific molecules in the atmospheres of neighboring planets, in nebulae—clouds of interstellar dust and gas—hundreds or thousands of light-years away, or in galaxies beyond the far reaches of the Milky Way. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-potential-life-distant-planets-years.html Astronomy Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:40:01 EDT news696509641