Black hole ripples could help pin down expansion of universe

The echoes of light from jets launched from black holes offers a new way to pin down the distance to these exotic objects and to study a largely unobserved population in the center of the Galaxy. It could also even help determine ...

A compact high-resolution spectrometer with flat optics

An optical spectrometer is an instrument used to measure properties of light over a specific portion of the light spectrum. These devices have found a wide range of practical applications. Dispersive optical elements (e.g., ...

How Webb's coronagraphs reveal exoplanets in the infrared

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has many different observing modes to study planets orbiting other stars, known as exoplanets. One way in particular is that Webb can directly detect some of these planets. Directly detecting ...

Deblurring can reveal 3D features of heavy-ion collisions

When the nuclei of atoms are about to collide in an experiment, their centers never perfectly align along the direction of relative motion. This leads to collisions with complex three-dimensional geometry. Emissions from ...

Can JWST see galaxies made of primordial stars?

All stars are composed of mostly hydrogen and helium, but most stars also have measurable amounts of heavier elements, which astronomers lump into the category of "metals." Our sun has more metals than most stars because ...

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