Astrophysics News

September 9, 2016

Hundreds of Undiscovered Black Holes Revealed

Rare Fossil Relic of Early Milky Way

Reconciling Dwarf Galaxies With Dark Matter

Earth's Carbon Points to Planetary Smashup

Latest Headlines

updated 12:41am EDT

Avoiding 'Traffic Jam' Creates Impossibly Bright 'Lighthouse'

Sep. 8, 2016 — The central energy source of enigmatic pulsating Ultra Luminous X-ray sources (ULX) could be a neutron star according to numerical simulations. ULXs, which are remarkably ... read more

Detailed Age Map Shows How Milky Way Came Together

Sep. 6, 2016 — Using colors to identify the approximate ages of more than 130,000 stars in the Milky Way's halo, astronomers have produced the clearest picture yet of how the galaxy formed more than 13.5 billion ... read more

First Gravitational Waves Form After 10 Million Years

Sep. 5, 2016 — If two galaxies collide, the merging of their central black holes triggers gravitational waves, which ripple throughout space. An international research team has now ... read more

The Supernova That Wasn't: A Tale of Three Cosmic Eruptions

Sep. 2, 2016 — Long-term observations with the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that Eta Carinae, a very massive star system that has puzzled astronomers since it erupted in a supernova-like ... read more

First Stars Formed Even Later Than Previously Thought

Sep. 2, 2016 — ESA's Planck satellite has revealed that the first stars in the Universe started forming later than previous observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background indicated. This ... read more

Discovery One-Ups Tatooine, Finds Twin Stars Hosting Three Giant Exoplanets

Aug. 31, 2016 — Scientists have discovered three giant planets in a binary star system composed of stellar 'twins' that are also effectively siblings of our Sun. One star hosts two planets ... read more

The Rise and Fall of Galaxy Formation

Aug. 30, 2016 — Astronomers have charted the rise and fall of galaxies over 90 percent of cosmic history. The FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey has built a multicolored photo album of ... read more

NASA Team Probes Peculiar Age-Defying Star

Aug. 29, 2016 — For years, astronomers have puzzled over a massive star lodged deep in the Milky Way that shows conflicting signs of being extremely old and extremely young. Researchers ... read more

Milky Way Had a Blowout Bash 6 Million Years Ago

Aug. 29, 2016 — The center of the Milky Way galaxy is currently a quiet place where a supermassive black hole slumbers, only occasionally slurping small sips of hydrogen gas. But it wasn't ... read more

A Better Way to Learn If Alien Planets Have the Right Stuff

Aug. 24, 2016 — A new method for analyzing the chemical composition of stars may help scientists winnow the search for Earth 2.0. Researchers describe a computational modeling technique that ... read more

Nearby Earth-Like Planet Discovered

Building NASA's Rocket Fuel Tank in 60 Seconds

Space Is So Big, Even Speed-Of-Light Messaging Can Seem Slow

18 Quintillion Planets Are Ready to Be Explored

The Genesis Project: New Life on Exoplanets

Aug. 31, 2016 — Can life be brought to celestial bodies outside our solar system which are not permanently inhabitable? This is the question with which experts are dealing in a recent ... read more

Scientists Discover a ‘dark’ Milky Way

Aug. 26, 2016 — Using the world's most powerful telescopes, an international team of astronomers has found a massive galaxy that consists almost entirely of dark ... read more

Unexpected Trove of Gas Discovered Around Larger Stars

Aug. 25, 2016 — Astronomers using ALMA surveyed dozens of young stars -- some Sun-like and others approximately double that size -- and discovered that the larger variety have surprisingly rich reservoirs of carbon ... read more

Can One Cosmic Enigma Help Solve Another?

Aug. 24, 2016 — Astrophysicists have proposed a clever new way to shed light on the mystery of dark matter, believed to make up most of the universe. The irony is they want to try to pin down the nature of this ... read more

NASA's WISE, Fermi Missions Reveal a Surprising Blazar Connection

Aug. 24, 2016 — Astronomers using observations from NASA's WISE and Fermi missions have confirmed a connection between the infrared and gamma-ray light emitted by blazars, a class of distant galaxies powered by ... read more

Cosmic Neighbors Inhibit Star Formation, Even in the Early Universe

Aug. 24, 2016 — Researchers have discovered four of the most distant clusters of galaxies ever found, as they appeared when the universe was only 4 billion years old. This sample is now providing the best ... read more

Young Heavyweight Star Discovered in the Milky Way

Aug. 21, 2016 — A young star over 30 times more massive than the sun could help us understand how the most extreme stars in the universe are ... read more

How We Escaped the Big Bang: New Theory on Moving Through Time

Aug. 17, 2016 — A physicist is challenging the conventional view of space and time to show how the world advances through time. In her new research, she argues that T violation, or a violation of time reversal (T) ... read more

Fifth Force of Nature? Light Particle May Be Key to Understanding Dark Matter in Universe

Aug. 15, 2016 — Recent findings indicating the possible discovery of a previously unknown subatomic particle may be evidence of a fifth fundamental force of nature, according to new research by theoretical ... read more

Brown Dwarfs Reveal Exoplanets' Secrets

Aug. 15, 2016 — Brown dwarfs are smaller than stars, but more massive than giant planets. As such, they provide a natural link between astronomy and planetary science. However, they also show incredible variation ... read more

New Worlds New Horizons: A Midterm Assessment

Aug. 15, 2016 — While scientists have made remarkable advancements in astronomy and astrophysics since the beginning of this decade -- notably the first detection of gravitational waves and the discovery of distant ... read more

NASA's Fermi Mission Expands Its Search for Dark Matter

Aug. 12, 2016 — Dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up most of the material universe, continues to vex scientists, but three creative studies using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have helped ... read more

Ten Trillionths of Your Suntan Comes from Beyond Our Galaxy

Aug. 11, 2016 — Astronomers have accurately measured the light hitting the Earth from outside our galaxy and determined that 10 trillionths of your suntan comes from beyond our ... read more

Hubble Uncovers a Galaxy Pair Coming in from the Wilderness

Aug. 11, 2016 — Two tiny dwarf galaxies have been observed that have wandered from a vast cosmic wilderness into a nearby 'big city' packed with galaxies. After being quiescent for billions of years, they ... read more

Much Ado About Nothing: Astronomers Use Empty Space to Study the Universe

Aug. 11, 2016 — An international team of astronomers reports that they were able to achieve four times better precision in measurements of how the universe's visible matter is clustered together by studying the ... read more

Earth Interacted With Supernova Remnants for 1 Million Years

Aug. 10, 2016 — Physicists have succeeded in detecting a time-resolved supernova signal in the Earth's microfossil record. As the group shows, the supernova signal was first detectable at a time starting about ... read more

Stellar Lab in Sagittarius

Aug. 10, 2016 — The small smattering of bright blue stars in a new ESO image is the perfect cosmic laboratory in which to study the life and death of stars. Known as Messier 18 this star cluster contains stars that ... read more

Insight Into Why the Universe Is Dominated by Matter and Why We Exist

Aug. 7, 2016 — New findings reveal why the universe is dominated by matter and why we exist and how matter and antimatter are ... read more

Veins on Mars Were Formed by Evaporating Ancient Lakes

Aug. 5, 2016 — Mineral veins found in Mars's Gale Crater were formed by the evaporation of ancient Martian lakes, a new study has ... read more

Do Black Holes Have a Back Door?

Aug. 5, 2016 — One of the biggest problems when studying black holes is that the laws of physics as we know them cease to apply in their deepest regions. Large quantities of matter and energy concentrate in an ... read more

Wednesday, August 31, 2016