Nearly 50 years ago, astronomers searching the cosmos for evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life detected a strong radio signal emanating from deep space. Today, scientists still aren’t sure where—or what—the Wow! Signal came from. It remains one of the most perplexing phenomena in the history of radio astronomy. A new study has brought scientists closer […]
Most Powerful Fast Radio Burst Ever Detected Hits Telescopes Across North America
For almost two decades, astronomers have detected extremely powerful, millisecond-long flashes of radio waves known as fast radio bursts (FRBs) from beyond our galaxy—and had no clue where they came from. Now, a team of scientists has detected the brightest-ever FRB and finally pinpointed its origin to a nearby galaxy. Researchers have long suspected that […]
This Bright Dot May Be an Entirely New Type of Space Object
At first, the dot looked like any other star. Then the astrophysicists switched to polarized light and found themselves looking at an entirely unexpected sight. “Everything else disappeared, even the bright central black hole, and only this little dot remained,” Elena Shablovinskaia, an astrophysicist at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile and the Max Planck Institute […]
Deepest-Ever Field Image of Giant Galaxy Cluster Is a Brutal Reminder of Your Cosmic Insignificance
When it comes to deep space observations, our cosmological insignificance seems to grow with the resolution of our telescopes’ cameras. In the latest advance, astronomers constructed the deepest-ever images of Abell 3667, a massive galaxy cluster located 700 million light-years from Earth—and most of the tiny dots you see represent entire galaxies. But the latest […]
Neptune Dances in Sync With a Rare Distant Object, Astronomers Find
For lovers of newly identified space objects, July has indeed been an exciting month. Last week, astronomers described Ammonite, a potential dwarf planet beyond Pluto. Yesterday, astronomers announced the existence of BetelBuddy, a small companion star orbiting Betelgeuse. And now we have another exciting discovery to share. In a Planetary Science Journal paper published earlier […]
Wild New Image Shows a Twin of Our Solar System Being Born
The first-ever baby pictures of a solar system that’s not our own are finally here—and they’re beautiful—and as adorable as space entities can get. In a paper published today in Nature, astronomers presented HOPS-315: a Sun-like protostar cooking up a brew of hot minerals and silicon monoxide gas, located about 1,300 light-years away from Earth. […]
Astronomers Detect a Black Hole Merger That’s So Massive It Shouldn’t Exist
Gravitational waves—ripples in space-time caused by violent cosmic events—travel at the speed of light in every direction, eventually fading out like ripples in water. But some events are so destructive and extreme that they create disturbances in spacetime more like powerful waves than small ripples, with enough energy to reach our own detectors here on […]
Physicists Propose Cheaper Alternative to Particle Colliders: Supermassive Black Holes
A new study from Johns Hopkins University suggests that supermassive black holes—those cosmic behemoths lurking at the centers of galaxies—might already be generating the kinds of high-energy particle collisions researchers have spent decades trying to recreate here on Earth. Published today in Physical Review Letters, the study proposes that certain spinning black holes could serve […]
A Rogue Black Hole of Unusual Size Is Devouring Stars in a Distant Galaxy
Astronomers have spotted an apparent supermassive black hole snacking on a star 600 million light-years away, wandering through a galaxy with an even larger black hole at its core. The event, dubbed AT2024tvd, was first spotted by the Palomar Observatory’s Zwicky Transient Facility and later confirmed by powerhouse space telescopes including Hubble and Chandra, which […]
An Asteroid Has a 1-in-63 Chance of Hitting Earth in 2032—Here’s What That Means
Odds are a funny thing. 1-in-100, for example, sounds like a long shot—until you find out it’s the chance that an asteroid will impact Earth. In a surprising—but not definitive—turn of events, early warning systems this week found that an asteroid set to swing by Earth in 2032 has a 1-in-63 chance of smashing into […]