A team of researchers at the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics has found evidence that suggests Sagittarius A* is not a massive black hole but is instead a mass of dark matter. In their paper published in ...
At the center of most galaxies are black holes so massive—up to several billion times the mass of our sun—that they have earned the descriptor "supermassive." Compare this to your run-of-the-mill stellar-mass black hole, ...
Astronomy
May 25, 2021
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10
On Sept. 9, 2018, astronomers spotted a flash from a galaxy 860 million light years away. The source was a supermassive black hole about 50 million times the mass of the sun. Normally quiet, the gravitational giant suddenly ...
Astronomy
May 17, 2021
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977
General relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity, is best tested at its most extreme—close to the event horizon of a black hole. This regime is accessible through observations of shadows of supermassive black holes and ...
General Physics
Apr 20, 2021
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1328
In the past, we've reported about how the Roman Space Telescope is potentially going to be able to detect hundreds of thousands of exoplanets using a technique known as microlensing. Exoplanets won't be the only things it ...
Astronomy
Apr 19, 2021
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16
A pair of orbiting black holes millions of times the Sun's mass perform a hypnotic pas de deux in a new NASA visualization. The movie traces how the black holes distort and redirect light emanating from the maelstrom of hot ...
Astronomy
Apr 15, 2021
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14451
Ultralight bosons are hypothetical particles whose mass is predicted to be less than a billionth the mass of an electron. They interact relatively little with their surroundings and have thus far eluded searches to confirm ...
General Physics
Apr 14, 2021
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660
A new black hole breaks the record—not for being the smallest or the biggest—but for being right in the middle.
Astronomy
Mar 29, 2021
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6035
Recent observations have shown that there is a supermassive black hole at the center of each galaxy. However, what is the origin of these supermassive black holes? It is still a mystery today. An international research team ...
Astronomy
Mar 11, 2021
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6631
Globular clusters are extremely dense stellar systems, in which stars are packed closely together. They are also typically very old—the globular cluster that is the focus of this study, NGC 6397, is almost as old as the ...
Astronomy
Feb 11, 2021
2
775
