Astronomy

You may have heard the phrase “we are made of star-stuff.” This statement by the astronomer Carl Sagan refers to the fact that elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were forged in the centers of […]

Astronomers have linked an X-ray flash discovered by the Einstein Probe to a known type of supernova with unusual features that point to the birth of an ultra-dense, rapidly spinning magnetar. The paper outlining this […]

Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have spotted an extremely bright red spot in the early universe. The object resembles an enormous star, roughly the size of our solar system. But it also is putting out […]

A new paper published in Physical Review Letters reveals that a leading dark matter candidate—the hypothetical “dark photon”—would not have heated the early universe as previously thought. The finding opens a vast region for experimental […]

Astronomers have proposed a new explanation for the mysterious Cygnus Bubble, a vast cloud of ultra-high-energy gamma rays stretching thousands of light-years across the sky. While the bubble has generally been linked to the Cygnus […]

A tiny UK-developed satellite, roughly the size of a small carry-on suitcase, could help answer one of the biggest questions in cosmology: What happened during the roughly 150 million years of the cosmic dark ages, […]

Researchers have helped unravel the mystery of why certain pairs of stars pulse with regular, long-period bursts of radio waves. The particular class of objects observed comes in pairs that always include a compact dead […]

What do you do when the observation you need comes around once a year? Well, preparation is key, but this is the awkward truth about finding another Earth. When a planet crosses the face of […]

For decades, astronomers lumped brown dwarfs into a single category defined by mass alone—too big to be classified as planets but too small to become stars. However, this definition ignores the two very different mechanisms […]

A popular myth about black holes is that they act like giant cosmic vacuum cleaners, sucking in everything around them. But Wladimir Lyra’s research found a new mechanism around supermassive black holes that is more […]