Astrophysics News

November 20, 2024

Top Headlines

Astronomers Discover First Pairs of White Dwarf and Main Sequence Stars in Clusters, Shining New Light on Stellar Evolution

Nov. 19, 2024 — Astronomers have discovered the first pairs of white dwarf and main sequence stars -- 'dead' remnants and 'living' stars -- in young star clusters. This breakthrough offers new insights on an extreme ...

New Idea May Crack Enigma of the Crab Nebula's 'Zebra' Pattern

Nov. 18, 2024 — A theoretical astrophysicist may have solved a nearly two-decade-old mystery over the origins of an unusual 'zebra' pattern seen in high-frequency radio pulses from the Crab ...

Long-Sought Measurement of Exotic Beta Decay in Thallium Helps Extract the Timescale of the Sun's Birth

Nov. 14, 2024 — How long did it take our Sun to form in its stellar nursery? Scientists are now closer to an answer. They succeeded in the measurement of the bound-state beta decay of fully-ionized thallium ions at ...

Gas-Churning Monster Black Holes

Nov. 13, 2024 — Scientists using observations from NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have discovered, for the first time, the signal from a pair of monster black holes disrupting a cloud of gas in the center of a ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:04pm EST

Scientists Compile Library for Evaluating Exoplanet Water

Nov. 14, 2024 — By probing chemical processes observed in the Earth's hot mantle, scientists have started developing a library of basalt-based spectral signatures that not only will help reveal the composition of ...

Three Galactic 'Red Monsters' in the Early Universe

Nov. 13, 2024 — Astronomers have identified three ultra-massive galaxies -- nearly as massive as the Milky Way -- already in place within the first billion years after the Big Bang. This surprising discovery was ...

A Formula for Life? New Model Calculates Chances of Intelligent Beings in Our Universe and Beyond

Nov. 12, 2024 — The chances of intelligent life emerging in our Universe -- and in any hypothetical ones beyond it -- can be estimated by a new theoretical model ...

New Solar Composition Ratios That Could Reconcile Longstanding Questions

Nov. 12, 2024 — A team combined compositional data of primitive bodies like Kuiper Belt objects, asteroids and comets with new solar data sets to develop a revised solar composition that potentially reconciles ...

Astronomers' Theory of How Galaxies Formed May Be Upended

Nov. 12, 2024 — The standard model for how galaxies formed in the early universe predicted that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would see dim signals from small, primitive galaxies. But data are not confirming ...

Einstein's Equations Collide With the Mysteries of the Universe

Nov. 11, 2024 — Why is the expansion of our Universe accelerating? Twenty-five years after its discovery, this phenomenon remains one of the greatest scientific mysteries. Solving it involves testing the fundamental ...

Astrophysicists Use Echoes of Light to Illuminate Black Holes

Nov. 7, 2024 — Researchers have developed an innovative technique to search for black hole light echoes. Their novel method, which will make it easier for the mass and the spin of black holes to be measured, ...

Interstellar Methane as Progenitor of Amino Acids?

Nov. 6, 2024 — Gamma radiation can convert methane into a wide variety of products at room temperature, including hydrocarbons, oxygen-containing molecules, and amino acids, reports a research team. This type of ...

Mighty Radio Bursts Linked to Massive Galaxies

Nov. 6, 2024 — Researchers have uncovered where FRBs are more likely to occur in the universe -- massive star-forming galaxies rather than low - mass ...

Dance of Electrons Measured in the Glow from Exploding Neutron-Stars

Nov. 4, 2024 — The temperature of elementary particles has been observed in the radioactive glow following the collision of two neutron stars and the birth of a black hole. This has, for the first time, made it ...

Astronomers Discover the Fastest-Feeding Black Hole in the Early Universe

Nov. 4, 2024 — Astronomers have discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang that is consuming matter at a phenomenal rate -- over 40 times the ...

NASA's Hubble, Webb Probe Surprisingly Smooth Disk Around Vega

Nov. 1, 2024 — Teams of astronomers used the combined power of NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes to revisit the legendary Vega ...

New ESO Image Captures a Dark Wolf in the Sky

Oct. 31, 2024 — For Halloween, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reveals a spooktacular image of a dark nebula that creates the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colourful cosmic backdrop. Fittingly ...

One of the Fastest-Spinning Stars in the Universe

Oct. 30, 2024 — New research in our Milky Way has revealed a neutron star that rotates around its axis at an extremely high speed. It spins 716 times per second, making it one of the fastest-spinning objects ever ...

Evidence Mounts for Dark Energy from Black Holes

Oct. 30, 2024 — Researchers have strengthened the case that matter becomes dark energy when massive stars collapse and become black ...

Seeing a Black Hole's Jet in a New Light

Oct. 28, 2024 — Researchers have pored over more than two decades' worth of data from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory to show there's new knotty science to discover around black ...

Scientists Discover Molecules That Store Much of the Carbon in Space

Oct. 24, 2024 — A distant interstellar cloud was found to contain an abundance of pyrene, a type of large carbon-containing molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). This suggest pyrene may have ...

Dandelion-Shaped Supernova and Zombie Star

Oct. 24, 2024 — A historical supernova documented by Chinese and Japanese astronomers in 1181 has been lost for centuries, until very recently. Yet, the newly found remnant shows some stunning characteristics that ...

Rocky Planets Orbiting Small Stars Could Have Stable Atmospheres Needed to Support Life

Oct. 23, 2024 — A sequence of events during the evolution of certain rocky planets orbiting M-dwarfs, the most common stars in the universe, creates an atmosphere that would be stable over time. This is true for ...

Physicists Discover First 'Black Hole Triple'

Oct. 23, 2024 — A surprising discovery about the black hole V404 Cygnus is expanding our understanding of black holes, the objects they can host, and the way they ...

Ultra-Small Spectrometer Yields the Power of a 1,000 Times Bigger Device

Oct. 23, 2024 — Researchers are designing new ways to make spectrometers that are ultra-small but still very powerful, to be used for anything from detecting disease to observing stars in distant ...

Neutron Stars May Be Shrouded in Axions

Oct. 18, 2024 — Physicists have shown that extremely light particles known as axions may occur in large clouds around neutron stars. These axions could form an explanation for the elusive dark matter that ...

Astronomers Detect Ancient Lonely Quasars With Murky Origins

Oct. 17, 2024 — Astronomers observed ancient quasars that appear to be surprisingly alone in the early universe. The findings challenge physicists' understanding of how such luminous objects could have formed ...

'Inside-Out' Galaxy Growth Observed in the Early Universe

Oct. 11, 2024 — Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the 'inside-out' growth of a galaxy in the early universe, only 700 million years after the Big ...

Researchers Find Clues to the Mysterious Heating of the Sun's Atmosphere

Oct. 11, 2024 — Researchers have made a significant advancement in understanding the underlying heating mechanism of the sun's atmosphere, finding that reflected plasma waves could drive the heating of coronal ...

NASA's Hubble, New Horizons Team Up for a Simultaneous Look at Uranus

Oct. 11, 2024 — NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons spacecraft simultaneously set their sights on Uranus recently, allowing scientists to make a direct comparison of the planet from two very ...

NASA's Hubble Watches Jupiter's Great Red Spot Behave Like a Stress Ball

Oct. 9, 2024 — Astronomers have observed Jupiter's legendary Great Red Spot (GRS), an anticyclone large enough to swallow Earth, for at least 150 years. But there are always new surprises -- especially when ...

Space Oddity: Most Distant Rotating Disc Galaxy Found

Oct. 7, 2024 — Researchers have discovered the most distant Milky-Way-like galaxy yet observed. Dubbed REBELS-25, this disc galaxy seems as orderly as present-day galaxies, but we see it as it was when the Universe ...

Influence of a Black Hole's Spin: First Evidence of Precession in Ultraluminous Accretion Disks

Oct. 7, 2024 — Researchers conducted innovative simulations of spinning black holes grounded in general relativity, which clarified that the ultraluminous accretion disk (i.e., gaseous spiral surrounding a black ...

Winds of Change: James Webb Space Telescope Reveals Elusive Details in Young Star Systems

Oct. 7, 2024 — Planet-forming disks, maelstroms of gas and dust swirling around young stars, are nurseries that give rise to planetary systems, including our solar system. Astronomers have discovered new details of ...