Galaxies News

August 12, 2025

Top Headlines

AI Reveals Milky Way’s Black Hole Spins Near Top Speed

June 15, 2025 — AI has helped astronomers crack open some of the universe s best-kept secrets by analyzing massive datasets about black holes. Using over 12 million simulations powered by high-throughput computing, scientists discovered that the Milky Way's central ...

Black Holes Could Act as Natural Supercolliders -- And Help Uncover Dark Matter

June 5, 2025 — Supermassive black holes might naturally replicate the colossal energies of man-made particle colliders possibly even revealing dark matter offering a cosmic shortcut to discoveries that would ...

Webb Reveals the Surprising Origin of Ultra-hot Exoplanet WASP-121b

June 2, 2025 — WASP-121b may have been born in a frozen zone and later migrated into its current inferno-like orbit. A surprise discovery of methane in the wrong place suggests intense vertical winds are reshaping how we understand planetary ...

Scientists Discover New Evidence of Intermediate-mass Black Holes

May 30, 2025 — A series of studies sheds light on the origins and characteristics of intermediate-mass black ...

Understanding Why Galaxy Clusters Are Warm May Explain the Origin of Giant Interstellar Structures

May 29, 2025 — Astronomers have explained how a galaxy cluster maintains its heat, despite emitting X-rays that cool the hot gas at its center. The group discovered the existence of a fast-moving, high-temperature ...

ALMA Measures Evolution of Monster Barred Spiral Galaxy

May 22, 2025 — Astronomers have observed a massive and extremely active barred spiral galaxy in the early Universe and found that it has important similarities and differences with modern galaxies. This improves our understanding of how barred spiral galaxies, ...

Unveiling the Secrets of Planet Formation in Environments of High UV Radiation

May 21, 2025 — The fundamental building blocks for planet formation can exist even in environments with extreme ultraviolet radiation, according to a new ...

Gas Location Drives Star Formation in Distant Galaxies

May 21, 2025 — In the intriguing realm of star-forming galaxies, the key factor isn't the total amount of gas but rather its strategic distribution within the ...

'Cosmic Joust': Astronomers Observe Pair of Galaxies in Deep-space Battle

May 21, 2025 — Astronomers have witnessed for the first time a violent cosmic collision in which one galaxy pierces another with intense radiation. Their results show that this radiation dampens the wounded galaxy's ability to form new ...

Not One, but Two Massive Black Holes Are Eating Away at This Galaxy

May 19, 2025 — Astronomers searching for massive black holes shredding stars found one in an unusual place -- 2,600 light years from the core of a galaxy. The roque black hole may be from an earlier merger with another galaxy, or have been tossed out of the core ...

Astronomers Observe Largest Ever Sample of Galaxies Up to over 12 Billion Light Years Away

May 19, 2025 — The largest sample of galaxy groups ever detected has been presented by a team of international astronomers using data from the James Webb Space telescope (JWST) in an area of the sky called COSMOS ...

Stretched in a Cross Pattern: Our Neighboring Galaxy Is Pulled in Two Axes

May 16, 2025 — Researchers have discovered that Cepheid variable stars in our neighboring galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, are moving in opposing directions along two distinct axes. They found that stars closer to Earth move towards the northeast, while more ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:27pm EDT

Hubble Captures a Wild Star-Birthing Storm 160,000 Light-Years Away

Aug. 11, 2025 — Hubble’s latest portrait of the Tarantula Nebula reveals a turbulent star-making region far beyond the Milky Way. Located 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, this cosmic expanse ...

This Tiny Spacecraft Could Race to a Black Hole and Rewrite Physics

Aug. 10, 2025 — A visionary plan proposes sending a paperclip-sized spacecraft, powered by Earth-based lasers, to a nearby black hole within a century. Led by astrophysicist Cosimo Bambi, the mission would test the ...

Giant Einstein Ring Reveals One of the Universe’s Biggest Black Holes

Aug. 10, 2025 — Astronomers have uncovered what may be the most massive black hole ever found, 36 billion times the mass of our Sun, hidden at the heart of the Cosmic Horseshoe galaxy. Located 5 billion light-years ...

Hubble Just Exposed a Rare and Violent Star Collision

Aug. 7, 2025 — Hubble has helped uncover a white dwarf that’s likely the result of two stars crashing together. Carbon traces in its atmosphere tell a story of a cosmic merger, a rare phenomenon previously ...

‘Bridge’ of Stray Stars Reveals Two Massive Galaxies Tearing Each Other Apart

Aug. 7, 2025 — Astronomers have discovered a ghostly, million-light-year-long bridge of stars connecting two massive galaxies within the Abell 3667 cluster, 700 ...

Baby Star Fires a Jet, Then Gets Blasted by the Fallout

Aug. 7, 2025 — Astronomers have stumbled upon an incredible cosmic chain reaction: a young star launched a high-speed jet that ignited an explosion, creating a massive bubble in space that is now slamming back into ...

NASA and Japan’s XRISM Just Found Sulfur Hiding Between the Stars

Aug. 6, 2025 — An international team of scientists have provided an unprecedented tally of elemental sulfur spread between the stars using data from the Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) ...

Star Survives Black Hole and Comes Back for More

Aug. 6, 2025 — This is the first confirmed case of a star that survived an encounter with a supermassive black hole and came back for more. This discovery upends conventional wisdom about such tidal disruption ...

This Star Survived Its Own Supernova and Shined Even Brighter

Aug. 4, 2025 — In a spectacular image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, the spiral galaxy NGC 1309 glows with cosmic elegance and hides a strange ...

Scientists Just Recreated the Universe’s First Molecule and Solved a 13-Billion-Year-Old Puzzle

Aug. 3, 2025 — Long before stars lit up the sky, the universe was a hot, dense place where simple chemistry quietly set the stage for everything to come. Scientists ...

Black Holes Don’t Just Swallow Light, They Sing. And We Just Learned the Tune

Aug. 1, 2025 — Using a powerful mathematical tool, scientists have unveiled the intricate "ringing" of black holes, unlocking patterns missed for decades and laying the groundwork for sharper ...

Astronomers Detect Life’s Building Blocks Around a Young Star

Aug. 2, 2025 — Astronomers using ALMA have discovered complex organic molecules, including potential precursors to life's building blocks, in the protoplanetary disc of a young star, V883 Orionis. This finding ...

Astronomers Capture Giant Planet Forming 440 Light-Years from Earth

July 23, 2025 — Astronomers have likely witnessed a planet forming in real time, seen inside a spiral arm of the HD 135344B protoplanetary disc—exactly where theory predicted. The direct light detection is what ...

Hubble Caught a Star Exploding — and It’s Helping Map the Cosmos

July 25, 2025 — In the sprawling Hydra constellation, 137 million light-years away, lies NGC 3285B—a dazzling spiral galaxy recently spotlighted by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. This cosmic beauty orbits the ...

NASA’s Roman Telescope Will Catch 100,000 Explosions — and Rewrite the Universe’s Story

July 22, 2025 — NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is set to embark on a deep-sky survey that could capture nearly 100,000 cosmic explosions, shedding light on everything from dark energy to black hole physics. Its ...

NASA’s IXPE Tracked a Rare Pulsar—and Found an Unexpected Power Source

July 20, 2025 — Astronomers studying a rare neutron star system have uncovered a surprising source of powerful X-rays. Using NASA s IXPE telescope and data from other observatories, an international team found that ...

Hubble Cracks Open a Glittering Cosmic Time Capsule, Revealing Multi-Generational Stars 160,000 Light-Years Away

July 14, 2025 — Hubble’s crystal-clear look at NGC 1786—an ancient globular cluster tucked inside the Large Magellanic Cloud—pulls us 160,000 light-years from Earth and straight into a cosmic time machine. ...

Two Monster Black Holes Just Collided — It’s So Massive, It Shouldn’t Exist

July 14, 2025 — Two colossal black holes among the most massive ever seen collided in deep space, creating gravitational waves that rippled across the cosmos and shook the foundations of astrophysical theory. ...

Gravitational Shockwave: LIGO Catches a 225-Solar-Mass Black-Hole Smash-Up

July 14, 2025 — Gravitational-wave detectors have captured their biggest spectacle yet: two gargantuan, rapidly spinning black holes likely forged by earlier smash-ups fused into a 225-solar-mass titan, GW231123. ...

This Interstellar Comet May Be a Frozen Relic from Before the Sun

July 11, 2025 — A newly discovered comet, 3I/ATLAS, may be the most ancient visitor ever detected, potentially older than our solar system itself. Unlike previous interstellar objects, this ice-rich comet seems to ...

100 Ghost Galaxies May Be Orbiting the Milky Way—and We’re Just Now Uncovering Them

July 13, 2025 — New supercomputer simulations suggest the Milky Way could be surrounded by dozens more faint, undetected satellite galaxies—up to 100 more than we currently know. These elusive "orphan" ...

These Mysterious Stars Could Glow Forever Using Dark Matter

July 13, 2025 — Imagine a star powered not by nuclear fusion, but by one of the universe’s greatest mysteries—dark matter. Scientists have proposed the existence of “dark dwarfs,” strange glowing objects ...

Big-Bang Echoes Unmask a Billion-Light-Year Hole Around Earth—and It’s Stretching Space Faster

July 15, 2025 — Our galaxy may reside in a billion-light-year-wide cosmic bubble that accelerates local expansion, potentially settling the long-running Hubble tension. Galaxy counts reveal a sparsely populated ...

Ice in a Million-Degree Fermi Bubble Reveals the Milky Way’s Recent Eruption

July 9, 2025 — Astronomers using the Green Bank Telescope spotted surprisingly cold, dense hydrogen clouds embedded inside the Milky Way’s vast, super-hot Fermi bubbles—structures thought to be created by a ...

A Star Exploded Twice — First-Ever Image Reveals Its Cosmic Fingerprint

July 3, 2025 — Astronomers studying the remnant SNR 0509-67.5 have finally caught a white dwarf in the act of a rare “double-detonation” supernova, where an initial helium blast on the star’s surface triggers ...

Citizen Scientists Spot Rare Exploding Star in Real-Time

July 1, 2025 — Citizen scientists using the Kilonova Seekers platform spotted a stellar flash 2,500 times brighter than before, allowing astronomers to identify the exploding cataclysmic variable GOTO0650 within ...

JWST Unlocks 10-Billion-Year Mystery of How Galaxies Shape Themselves

June 30, 2025 — Using the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists spotted thin and thick disks in galaxies as far back as 10 billion years ago—something never seen before. These observations reveal that galaxies ...

Record-Breaking 10-Billion-Year Radio Halo Just Rewrote the Universe’s Origin Story

June 28, 2025 — A newly discovered radio halo, 10 billion light-years away, reveals that galaxy clusters in the early universe were already steeped in high-energy particles. The finding hints at ancient black hole ...

Planets May Start Forming Before Stars Even Finish Growing

June 30, 2025 — In a stellar nursery 460 light-years away, astronomers sharpened old ALMA data and spotted crisp rings and spirals swirling around 27 infant stars—evidence that planets start taking shape just a ...

What the Universe Tried to Hide: The 21-Centimeter Signal Explained

June 22, 2025 — Scientists are peering into the universe's mysterious Cosmic Dawn using the faint whispers of hydrogen radio waves emitted over 13 billion years ago. These signals, particularly the elusive ...