It's difficult to determine the shape of our galaxy. So difficult that only in the last century did we learn that the Milky Way is just one galaxy among billions. So it's not surprising that despite all our modern telescopes ...
Astronomy
Sep 18, 2023
2
114
At the center of every galaxy is a supermassive black hole. Beyond a certain size, these become active, emitting huge amounts of radiation, and are then called quasars. It is thought these are activated by the presence of ...
Astronomy
Sep 12, 2023
0
72
Physicists like me don't fully understand what makes up about 83% of the matter of the universe—something we call "dark matter." But with a tank full of xenon buried nearly a mile under South Dakota, we might one day be ...
General Physics
Aug 9, 2023
5
18
Astrophysicists have been trying to understand the formation of cosmological objects and phenomena in the universe for decades. Past theoretical studies suggest that quantum fluctuations in the early universe, known as primordial ...
As different as they may seem, black holes and Las Vegas have one thing in common: What happens there stays there—much to the frustration of astrophysicists trying to understand how, when and why black holes form and grow.
Astronomy
Dec 15, 2022
6
358
A new study has revealed the true shape of the diffuse cloud of stars surrounding the disk of our galaxy. For decades, astronomers have thought that this cloud of stars—called the stellar halo—was largely spherical, like ...
Astronomy
Nov 18, 2022
1
817
A study co-led by physicists at UC Riverside and UC Irvine has found that dark matter halos of ultra-diffuse galaxies are very odd, raising questions about physicists' understanding of galaxy formation and the structure of ...
Astronomy
Sep 12, 2022
1
250
According to the standard model of cosmology, the vast majority of galaxies are surrounded by a halo of dark matter particles. This halo is invisible, but its mass exerts a strong gravitational pull on galaxies in the vicinity. ...
Astronomy
Aug 5, 2022
187
1299
A research team led by Dr. Zhao Gongbo from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), in collaboration with scientists from the U.K. and Germany, investigated the large-scale structure ...
Astronomy
Apr 25, 2022
0
92
At the center of spiral galaxies—those near to us but also those billions of light-years away—there is a vast spherical region made up of dark matter particles. This region has two defining characteristics: a density ...
Astronomy
Feb 11, 2022
5
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