At the center of the galaxy, millions of stars whirl in orbits around a supermassive black hole. This circuit can take anywhere from a few hours for stars close to the event horizon of the black hole to thousands of years ...
General Physics
Oct 16, 2019
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47
The center of our galaxy is a crowded place: A black hole weighing 4 million times as much as our sun is surrounded by millions of stars whipping around it at breakneck speeds. This extreme environment is bathed in intense ...
Astronomy
Oct 10, 2019
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919
Over 30 years ago, the Infrared Astronomy Satellite discovered that the universe contained many extremely luminous galaxies, some more than a thousand times brighter than our own Milky Way, but which are practically invisible ...
Astronomy
Aug 19, 2019
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298
How do galaxies such as our Milky Way come into existence? How do they grow and change over time? The science behind galaxy formation has remained a puzzle for decades, but a University of Arizona-led team of scientists is ...
Astronomy
Aug 10, 2019
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1616
Astronomers have spotted a distant pair of titanic black holes headed for a collision.
Astronomy
Jul 10, 2019
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5126
Nestled within this field of bright foreground stars lies ESO 495-21, a tiny galaxy with a big heart. ESO 495-21 may be just 3000 light-years across, but that is not stopping the galaxy from furiously forming huge numbers ...
Astronomy
Jun 13, 2019
5
689
At the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Missouri, Allison Kirkpatrick, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas, will announce her discovery of "cold quasars"—galaxies ...
Astronomy
Jun 12, 2019
9
2193
All massive galaxies are believed to host supermassive black holes (SMBH) at their centers that grow by accreting mass from their environment. The current picture also imagines that the black holes grow in size as their host ...
Astronomy
Mar 18, 2019
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170
Three images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show pairs of galaxies on the cusp of cosmic consolidations. Though the galaxies appear separate now, gravity is pulling them together, and soon they will combine to form new, ...
Astronomy
Feb 27, 2019
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221
Most galaxies host a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at their nucleus. (A supermassive black hole is one whose mass exceeds a million solar-masses.) A key unresolved issue in galaxy formation and evolution is the role these ...
Astronomy
Oct 15, 2018
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90
