New Research Suggests That Sugar Molecules Exist in Deep Space
When we think of sugar, it’s in the form of a holiday sweet or a reason to head back to gym after New Year’s Eve…
Cosmology
Astronomers Discover Most-Distant Object Ever Observed In Our Solar System
A team of astronomers has discovered the most-distant body ever observed in our Solar System. It is the first known Solar System object that has…
Astronomers Discover Unexpected Companion Around A Young Star
Astronomers have captured one of the most detailed views of a young star taken to date, and revealed an unexpected companion in orbit around it….
Chandra Reveals Cosmic Fountain Powered by Giant Black Hole
Before electrical power became available, water fountains worked by relying on gravity to channel water from a higher elevation to a lower one. This water…
Fast-Growing White Dwarf Surprises Astronomers
Astronomers have detected a bright X-ray outburst from a star in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy almost 200,000 light years from Earth. A…
Astronomers Find Unknown Treasure Trove of Planets Hiding in Dust
The first unbiased survey of protoplanetary disks surrounding young stars in the Taurus star-forming region turned up a higher-than-expected number of disks with features suggesting…
LIGO Makes Vital Contribution to New Gravitational Wave Discoveries
Researchers from the University of Portsmouth have made vital contributions to the observations of four new gravitational waves, which were announced this weekend. The new…
Astronomers Reveal How Stellar Binaries Form
Most stars with the mass of the sun or larger have one or more companion stars, but when and how these multiple stars form is…
GRAVITY Measures Environs of a Massive Black Hole Outside the Milky Way
Discovery is the first detailed observation of the environs of a massive black hole outside the Milky Way, say researchers from the GRAVITY group. In…
Fermi Traces the History of Starlight Across the Cosmos
Scientists using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have measured all the starlight produced over 90 percent of the universe’s history. The analysis, which…
ALMA Reveals Black Hole ‘Donuts’ Are Actually ‘Fountains’
Based on computer simulations and new observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have found that the rings of gas surrounding active supermassive…
Scientists Discover Two Gravitationally Lensed Quasars
The path of light is bent by mass, an effect predicted by Einstein’s theory of gravity, and when a massive galaxy or cluster lies along…
Scientists One Step Closer to Understanding Spiraling Black Holes
A new model is bringing scientists a step closer to understanding the kinds of light signals produced when two supermassive black holes, which are millions…
Spitzer Reveals That Silica is Formed When Massive Stars Explode
We are all, quite literally, made of star dust. Many of the chemicals that compose our planet and our bodies were formed directly by stars….
ALMA Reveals the Most Luminous Known Galaxy in the Universe
The most luminous galaxy in the universe has been caught in the act of stripping away nearly half the mass from at least three of…
NASA Discovers New Information About Interstellar Visitor ‘Oumuamua
In November 2017, scientists pointed NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope toward the object known as ‘Oumuamua — the first known interstellar object to visit our solar…
Astronomers Reveal Cold Molecular Gas Pumped by a Black Hole
Most galaxies lie in clusters containing from a few to thousands of other galaxies. Our Milky Way, for example, belongs to the Local Group cluster…
Astronomers Witness Slow Death of Neighbouring Dwarf Galaxy
The new peer-reviewed study of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), which is a tiny fraction of the size and mass of the Milky Way galaxy,…