As their name suggests, ultradiffuse galaxies, or UDGs, are dwarf galaxies whose stars are spread out over a vast region, resulting in extremely low surface brightness, making them very difficult to detect. Several questions ...
Astronomy
Sep 6, 2021
6
1232
Supermassive black holes, or SMBHs, are black holes with masses that are several million to billion times the mass of our sun. The Milky Way hosts an SMBH with mass a few million times the solar mass. Surprisingly, astrophysical ...
Astronomy
Jun 16, 2021
16
5145
A new theoretical study has proposed a novel mechanism for the creation of supermassive black holes from dark matter. The international team find that rather than the conventional formation scenarios involving 'normal' matter, ...
Astronomy
Feb 24, 2021
142
3193
The Milky Way is surrounded by dozens of dwarf galaxies that are thought to be relics of the very first galaxies in the universe. Among the most primitive of these galactic fossils is Tucana II—an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy ...
Astronomy
Feb 1, 2021
17
1417
A new theory about the nature of dark matter helps explain why a pair of galaxies about 65 million light-years from Earth contains very little of the mysterious matter, according to a study led by a physicist at the University ...
General Physics
Sep 9, 2020
83
365
For several years, astronomers and cosmologists have theorized about the existence of an additional planet with a mass 10 times greater than that of Earth, situated in the outermost regions of the solar system. This hypothetical ...
Just as the sun has planets and the planets have moons, our galaxy has satellite galaxies, and some of those might have smaller satellite galaxies of their own. To wit, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a relatively large ...
Astronomy
Apr 6, 2020
19
2414
Almost 20 years ago, the DAMA/LIBRA experiment at Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory—LNGS began publishing data showing that it had detected a signal modulation produced by an interaction with the Milky Way's dark ...
Astronomy
Jan 24, 2019
54
354
Since the 1970s, astronomers and physicists have been gathering evidence for the presence in the universe of dark matter: a mysterious substance that manifests itself through its gravitational pull. However, despite much ...
Astronomy
Oct 5, 2018
71
386
Dark matter halos are theoretical bodies inside which galaxies are suspended; the halo's mass dominates the total mass. These halos cannot be observed directly, but astronomers infer their presence by the phenomenon of gravity ...
