Echoes in gravitational wave signals suggest that the event horizon of a black hole may be more complicated than scientists currently think.
Research from the University of Waterloo reports the first tentative detection of these echoes, caused by a microscopic...
Presently, Earth is the only known location where life exists in the Universe. This year the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to three astronomers who proved, almost 20 years ago, that planets are common around stars beyond the...
A new search led by Montana State University has revealed more than a dozen massive black holes in dwarf galaxies that were previously considered too small to host them, and surprised scientists with their location within the galaxies.
The study,...
Material falling into a black hole casts X-rays out into space—and now astronomers have used the echoes of this radiation to map the dynamic behavior and surroundings of a black hole itself.
Most black holes are too small on the sky for...
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) program uses the patterns of cosmic structure as seen in the spatial distribution of hundreds of millions of galaxies to reveal the nature of "dark energy," the source of cosmic acceleration. Since it began...
Toward the end of 2017, a massive new region of magnetic field erupted on the Sun's surface next to an existing sunspot. The powerful collision of magnetic energy produced a series of potent solar flares, causing turbulent space weather...
ESA's XMM-Newton has discovered that gas lurking within the Milky Way's halo reaches far hotter temperatures than previously thought and has a different chemical make-up than predicted, challenging our understanding of our galactic home.
A halo is a vast region of gas,...
Warm, cold, just right? Physicists at the University of California, Davis are taking the temperature of dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up about a quarter of our universe.
We have very little idea of what dark matter is...
Astronomers have discovered another candidate exoplanet orbiting our neighbor Proxima Centauri. A paper announcing these results was just published in the journal Science Advances. If confirmed, it will be the second exoplanet discovered to be orbiting the star.
It was big...
Astronomers from UCLA's Galactic Center Orbits Initiative have discovered a new class of bizarre objects at the center of our galaxy, not far from the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. They published their research today in the journal Nature.
"These...
Phosphorus, present in our DNA and cell membranes, is an essential element for life as we know it. But how it arrived on the early Earth is something of a mystery. Astronomers have now traced the journey of phosphorus...
