Astronomers have spent nearly a century searching for dark matter, the invisible scaffolding thought to hold galaxies together. While there’s abundant indirect evidence to suggest this mysterious substance exists, no one has been able to detect it directly. Now, a new study might finally signal a breakthrough. Using data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, […]
Upcoming Super Telescope Will Study the Universe’s Most Extreme Explosions
The European Commission recently established a planned gamma-ray observatory as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium, or ERIC, which will expedite the construction of the telescope and set up a framework for the distribution of its data. In other words, we’ll soon have a record-breaking observatory for studying gamma ray sources—some of the most energetic and […]
Einstein Probe Detects Mysterious Blast of X-Rays From the Early Universe
On March 15, 2024, a space-based observatory detected bursts of low-energy X-rays from deep in the ancient universe, fluctuating in brightness for over 17 minutes before fading away. About an hour later, ground-based telescopes picked up visible light from the same source, tracing it back to when the universe was only around one billion years […]