Dark matter could make our galaxy's innermost stars immortal
Stars near the center of our galaxy are acting kind of weird. Dark matter may be the explanation.
Stars near the center of our galaxy are acting kind of weird. Dark matter may be the explanation.
Using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and the Long Baseline Array (LBA), astronomers have observed a black hole low-mass X-ray binary known as Swift J1727.8-1613. As a result, they found that the system hosts a highly ...
An international team of astronomers today announced the discovery of the two earliest and most distant galaxies ever seen, dating back to only 300 million years after the Big Bang. These results, using NASA's James Webb ...
Astronomy
May 30, 2024
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Joint research led by Michiko Fujii of the University of Tokyo demonstrates a possible formation mechanism of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters, star clusters that could contain tens of thousands or even ...
Astronomy
May 30, 2024
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Over the last few months, Universe Today has explored a plethora of scientific fields, including impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, comets, planetary atmospheres, planetary geophysics, ...
Astronomy
May 30, 2024
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When a star is born or dies, or when any other very energetic phenomenon occurs in the universe, it emits X-rays, which are high-energy light particles that aren't visible to the naked eye. These X-rays are the same kind ...
Astronomy
May 30, 2024
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Researchers at the Research Center for the Early Universe (RESCEU) and Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI) at the University of Tokyo have applied the well-understood and highly ...
Astronomy
May 29, 2024
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In 1974 Stephen Hawking famously claimed that black holes should emit particles as well as absorb them. This so-called "Hawking radiation" has not yet been observed, but now a research group from Europe has found that Hawking ...
Black holes seem to provide endless fascination to astronomers. This is at least partly due to the extreme physics that takes place in and around them, but sometimes, it might harken back to cultural touchpoints that made ...
Astronomy
May 27, 2024
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An international team led by researchers at Oxford University Physics have proved Einstein was correct about a key prediction concerning black holes. Using X-ray data to test Einstein's theory of gravity, their study gives ...
Astronomy
May 25, 2024
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In general relativity, a black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, including light, can escape its pull. The black hole has a one-way surface, called an event horizon, into which objects can fall, but out of which nothing can come. It is called "black" because it absorbs all the light that hits it, reflecting nothing, just like a perfect blackbody in thermodynamics. Quantum analysis of black holes shows them to possess a temperature and Hawking radiation.
Despite its invisible interior, a black hole can reveal its presence through interaction with other matter. A black hole can be inferred by tracking the movement of a group of stars that orbit a region in space which looks empty. Alternatively, one can see gas falling into a relatively small black hole, from a companion star. This gas spirals inward, heating up to very high temperature and emitting large amounts of radiation that can be detected from earthbound and earth-orbiting telescopes. Such observations have resulted in the scientific consensus that, barring a breakdown in our understanding of nature, black holes do exist in our universe.
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