Astrophysicists

Astrophysicists have devised a new way to verify the existence of the supermassive black hole Leo I*.A behemoth <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>black hole</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>A black hole is a place in space where the gravitational field is so strong that not even light can escape it. Astronomers classify black holes into three categories by size: miniature, stellar, and supermassive black holes.…

This illustration shows NASA’s IXPE spacecraft, at right, observing blazar Markarian 501, at left. A blazar is a black hole surrounded by a disk of gas and dust with a bright jet of high-energy particles pointed toward Earth. The inset illustration shows high-energy particles in the jet (blue). Credit: NASA/Pablo GarciaBlazars are some of the brightest objects in the cosmos. They are composed of a supermassive <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div…

Scientists have discovered a relatively small black hole lurking next to a star in the constellation Ophiuchus, about 1,600 light-years away. It’s now the closest-known back hole to Earth.Black holes are the densest objects in our universe (sorry, neutron stars). Whether they’re small, stellar-mass black holes or the supermassive ones atthe centers of galaxies, the objects have gravitational fields so intense that not even photons of light can escape their event horizons. The recently discovered black hole—named Gaia…

A new analysis of more than 1,500 supernovae has put fresh precision on measurements of the dark matter and dark energy that permeate our universe.According to the research, about two-thirds of the cosmos (66.2%) is made up of dark energy, and the remaining third (33.8%) is made up of matter. Almost all matter is what’s called “dark,” meaning we can’t actually see it—we only know it’s there because we can measure its gravitational effects. The regular matter we can touch and see makes up less than 5% of the universe. The…

The emission from M87 has now been resolved into a bright, thin ring (orange colormap), arising from the infinite sequence of additional images of the emission region, and the more diffuse primary image, produced by the photons that come directly toward Earth (in blue contours). When viewed at the imaging resolution of the Event Horizon Telescope, the two components blur together. However, by separately searching for the thin ring, it is possible to sharpen the view of M87, isolating the fingerprint of strong gravity.…

Some of the brightest, most energetic objects in the Universe are the mystery source of high-energy cosmic neutrinos, new research has confirmed.A comprehensive analysis has pretty conclusively linked galaxies hosting blazing nuclei known as blazars with these enigmatic particles.  It's a result that provides a really unexpected solution to a problem that has had astrophysicists scratching their heads for years."The results provide, for the first time, incontrovertible observational evidence that the sub-sample of…

An artist’s impression of two black holes about to collide and merge.Gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime caused by accelerated masses that propagate as waves at the speed of light outward from their source. Although you don’t need a gigantic object to create gravitation waves, our instruments are only able to detect those generated by extreme acceleration of very massive objects, such as the binary orbit of black holes.A massive black hole sits at the center of most galaxies, such as Sagittarius…

Scientists create “time machine” simulations studying the lifecycle of ancestor galaxy cities.Many processes in astrophysics take a very long time, making their evolution tricky to study. For example, a star like our sun has a lifespan of about 10 billion years and galaxies evolve over the course of billions of years.One way astrophysicists deal with this is by looking at various different objects to compare them at different stages of evolution. They can also look at distant objects to effectively peer back in time,…