Comets that have hit Earth have been a mixed bag. Early in Earth's history, during the solar system's chaotic beginning, they were likely the source of our planet's water, ultimately making up about 0.02% of the planet's ...
A study published in Physical Review Letters outlines a new approach for extracting information from binary systems by looking at the entire posterior distribution instead of making decisions based on individual parameters.
A new study in published in Physical Review Letters analyzes the most complete set of galaxy clustering data to test the ΛCDM model, revealing discrepancies in the formation of cosmic structures in the universe, hinting at ...
Almost 300 binary mergers have been detected so far, indicated by their passing gravitational waves. These measurements from the world's gravitational wave observatories put constraints on the masses and spins of the merging ...
Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity, has passed all tests with predictions that are spot-on. One prediction that remains is "gravitational wave memory"—the prediction that a passing gravitational wave will permanently ...
As physicists continue their struggle to find and explain the origin of dark matter, the approximately 80% of the matter in the universe that we can't see and so far haven't been able to detect, researchers have now proposed ...
After almost a century of speculation, proposals and searches for dark matter, physicists now know that it currently comprises about 27% of the universe's mass-energy, with an abundance over five times that of ordinary matter ...
How would atoms behave near a supermassive object? We know how atoms behave in extremely weak gravity like that at the Earth's surface: They can be excited from a lower energy level to a higher one when an electron absorbs ...
How accurate are past records of sunspots? In a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, a team of multinational researchers examined the historical record and found that after the unusual period of almost no sunspots, ...
A new study in Physical Review Letters explores the conditions of black hole formation from dying stars, particularly the role of neutrino-induced natal kicks in the formation process.
