Our universe is a chaotic sea of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. Astronomers think waves from orbiting pairs of supermassive black holes in distant galaxies are light-years long and have been trying to observe them for decades, and now they're one step closer thanks to NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space…
HD1, object in red, appears at the center of a zoom-in image. Credit: Harikane et al. Shining only ~300 million years after the Big Bang, it may be home to the oldest stars in the universe, or a supermassive black hole. A group of astronomers from across the world, including…
Home News Science & Astronomy Christine Ye presenting her research on gravitational waves. (Image credit: Society for Science) Around the world, astrophysicists are poring over the blips of gravitational waves that ripple through Earth when distant black holes or neutron stars collide. One of those astrophysicists is Christine Ye, a…
Home News Science & Astronomy A spiral galaxy known as NGC 7172 viewed edge-on by the Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble/NASA/D. J. Rosario/A. Barth; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz) NASA's venerable space telescope has captured a stunning new view of a galaxy with an active black hole obscured by tendrils of…
What lurks at the Milky Way’s heart? Astronomers have known most of the answer for decades. Just as in most large galaxies, a supermassive black hole sits at the core of our own island in the universe, enveloped in a swirling maelstrom of molecular clouds and stars. But something seems…
It’s impossible to really understand the rivalry between UNC and Duke unless you’ve lived in North Carolina. I know, I know — that sounds pretentious as hell. It’s like someone with an apartment in New York saying “you don’t understand trees until you’ve walked through Central Park,” but I promise…
quantum physicsBy Charlie WoodMarch 29, 2022 Physicists are using quantum math to understand what happens when black holes collide. In a surprise, they’ve shown that a single particle can describe a collision’s entire gravitational wave. When two black holes collide, the titanic crash ripples out through the very fabric of…
Not all galaxies in the Universe are actively forming stars. An abundant population of inactive objects forms stars at significantly lower rates. What stops star formation in galaxies? This tends to be the biggest question in understanding galaxy evolution. Using Machine learning and state-of-art simulations, scientists from the University of…
Home News An artist's illustration of a black hole sucking in all the nearby matter in space. (Image credit: Alberto Gagliardi/Getty Images) What falls into a black hole, stays in a black hole, at least according to the laws of general relativity. But now, new research suggests that the material…