Astronomy

Gravitational waves are tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime that are produced when massive objects in the cosmos accelerate or collide. By detecting these waves, astrophysicists can study various cosmic events, including black hole […]

We’ve been covering the journey of the Habitable Worlds Observatory for some time now. Over the past few years, it’s gone from a proposal to a relatively fleshed-out plan for how and what the next […]

A new study using data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope finds that star formation in the nearby Andromeda galaxy has undergone a 500-million-year decline, with an even steeper drop in the last 40 million years. […]

Mercury was long considered the exception to the rule that magnetic planets have radiation belts similar to Earth’s Van Allen belts, but a new study by University of Michigan Engineering and the University of California, […]

“Dead stars” known as white dwarfs have already shown the potential to help us better understand how planetary systems, including our own solar system, take shape and evolve. Now, research from the University of Michigan […]

Quasars, distant cores of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, are among the most luminous objects in the universe. While not uncommon, their brightness can make it difficult to accurately measure the galaxies they reside […]

A team of astronomers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has observed an extremely rare “wandering” black hole located tens of thousands of light-years from the center of its galaxy. This finding […]

Positrons—the antimatter counterpart of electrons—are created in high-energy cosmic processes. When normal matter meets its antimatter counterpart, they annihilate, or vanish, and produce a distinctive 511 keV gamma-ray signal. Scientists use this signal to detect […]

Black holes represent some of the most extreme environments in the universe. They are the sources of the strongest gravitational fields, allowing us to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity to an extent impossible with […]

One of the challenges of searching for technosignatures (i.e., signs that intelligent life somewhere in the universe has created technology) is understanding what to look for. Technology is a very broad area, and different types […]