Astronomers have found the best evidence for the perpetrator of a cosmic homicide: a black hole of an elusive class known as "intermediate-mass," which betrayed its existence by tearing apart a wayward star that passed too ...
Astronomy
Mar 31, 2020
11
1372
One of the biggest ideas in physics is the possibility that all known forces, particles, and interactions can be connected in one framework. String theory is arguably the best-known proposal for a "theory of everything" that ...
Astronomy
Mar 19, 2020
19
3512
After more than 16 years studying the universe in infrared light, revealing new wonders in our solar system, our galaxy and beyond, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope's mission has come to an end.
Astronomy
Jan 31, 2020
0
945
In the year 1054 AD, Chinese sky watchers witnessed the sudden appearance of a "new star" in the heavens, which they recorded as six times brighter than Venus, making it the brightest observed stellar event in recorded history. ...
Astronomy
Jan 6, 2020
0
123
Black holes in the early universe pose a bit of a problem. Based on observations from telescopes on Earth and in space, we know that some black holes grew to be a billion times the mass of the sun just one billion years after ...
Astronomy
Dec 9, 2019
43
192
Russian astronomers have performed a detailed study of one of the ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) in the galaxy UGC 6456. Results of the research, presented in a paper published November 20 on arXiv.org, suggest that this ...
Black holes are famous for ripping objects apart, including stars. But now, astronomers have uncovered a black hole that may have sparked the births of stars over a mind-boggling distance, and across multiple galaxies.
Astronomy
Nov 26, 2019
1
471
Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers from Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have investigated IRAS 09002-473, an embedded cluster of stars in the Vela ...
In 1572, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe was among those who noticed a new bright object in the constellation Cassiopeia. Adding fuel to the intellectual fire that Copernicus started, Tycho showed this "new star" was far beyond ...
Astronomy
Oct 17, 2019
1
794
Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have used a massive cluster of galaxies as an X-ray magnifying glass to peer back in time, to nearly 9.4 billion years ago. In the process, they spotted a tiny dwarf galaxy in its very first, ...
Astronomy
Oct 14, 2019
3
581
