Digging Up the Early Universe
Cosmologists are uncovering relics from the dawn of time, letting them look back almost all the way to the Big Bang.
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Giant Strand of Elusive Dark Matter Seen in 3D
Astronomers have taken their first 3D look at a gigantic filament of dark matter, an invisible cosmic structure that can only be detected by its gravitational effects it has on its surroundings. The universe is thought to be structured like a tangled web, with long strings of mostly dark matter intersecting at giant galaxy clusters….
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Tiniest Alien Solar System Discovered: 5 Packed Planets
The most crowded alien planetary system found yet possesses five worlds all orbiting a star at least 12 times closer than Earth does the sun, researchers say. KOI-500 is a super-compact planetary system, the most tightly packed one seen yet, hosting at least five planets ranging from 1.3 to 2.6 times the size of Earth….
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Scientists Observe Quantum Effects in Cold Chemistry
At very low temperatures, close to absolute zero, chemical reactions may proceed at a much higher rate than classical chemistry says they should—because in this extreme chill, quantum effects enter the picture. A Weizmann Institute team has now confirmed this experimentally; their results would not only provide insight into processes in the intriguing quantum world…
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New Surveys Peer Through Dust to Reveal Supermassive Black Holes
Scientists at the University of Cambridge have used cutting-edge infrared surveys of the sky to discover a new population of enormous, rapidly growing supermassive black holes in the early Universe. The black holes were previously undetected because they sit cocooned within thick layers of dust. The new study, published in the journal Monthly Notices of…
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NASA Discovers a New Black Hole in Milky Way Galaxy
NASA’s Swift satellite recently detected a rising tide of high-energy X-rays from a source toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The outburst, produced by a rare X-ray nova, announced the presence of a previously unknown stellar-mass black hole. “Bright X-ray novae are so rare that they’re essentially once-a-mission events and this is the…
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How Order Arises From the Random Motion of Particles in the Cosmos
One of the unsolved mysteries of contemporary science is how highly organized structures can emerge from the random motion of particles. This applies to many situations ranging from astrophysical objects that extend over millions of light years to the birth of life on Earth. The surprising discovery of self-organized electromagnetic fields in counter-streaming ionized gases…
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Most Precise Measurement of Universe’s Expansion Achieved
The most precise measurement ever made of the speed of the universe’s expansion is in, thanks to NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, and it’s a doozy. Space itself is pulling apart at the seams, expanding at a rate of 46.2 plus or minus 1.3 miles per second per megaparsec (a megaparsec is roughly 3 million light-years)….
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Neighboring Black Holes Defy Predictions of Violent Interactions
Around the cosmos, black holes aren’t known for being the nicest neighbors. They tend to make their presence felt in unpleasant ways, pulling nearby matter inward even as they belch out violent blasts of plasma and radiation. Put two of them in the same neighborhood and the resulting tug-of-war can quickly turn ugly. But in…
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Case of Missing Quasar Gas Clouds Now Solved
The case of the missing quasar gas clouds has been solved by a worldwide research team led by Penn State astronomers. The discovery was announced in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, which describes 19 distant quasars whose giant clouds of gas seem to have disappeared in just a few years. Quasars are powered…