black holes

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has potentially unlocked a crucial piece of the cosmic puzzle, shedding light on one of the universe's most enigmatic phenomena - black holes. Contrary to the spotlight typically reserved for the colossal supermassive black holes, a recent discovery suggests that their smaller counterparts, dubbed "baby quasars," might hold the key to unraveling long standing mysteries.Traditionally, supermassive black holes, with masses billions of times those of the sun, steal the cosmic limelight.…

The brightest object in the universe—at least, the brightest we’ve seen yet—shines 500 trillion times brighter than the sun, and it eats a sun a day. Objects like these are rare, and despite their objective brightness, remain elusive and hard to spot. This record-breaker was first spotted in 1980 and mischaracterized as a regular old star. Then, in a study conducted by a team out of Australia using the Siding Spring Observatory, it was recast as a quasar. Observations published Monday in Nature Astronomy and collected by…

If you asked an astrophysicist what is yet to be discovered in the universe, there’s a good chance they’d paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: It’s full of known unknowns. What Drew Noomi Rapace to Constellation?Besides the regular matter and energy we know and love, the universe is also composed of two big mysteries: dark energy and dark matter. Theoretical astrophysicists aim to tackle these unknowns by mathematically dreaming up objects that could address the gaps in our knowledge. Thus, in research published in Classical and…

An artist’s impression of GRB 221009A, which may have heralded the birth of a black hole.Image: NASA/Swift/Cruz deWildeBlack holes. Despite their names, the enigmatic objects are opposite of vacuous. They are some of the universe’s densest objects, with masses ranging from the size of stars to several hundred million stars. Their gravitational fields are so intense that not even light can escape them at a certain point, leaving us hopelessly guessing at how reality manifests itself beyond their event horizons.It’s no…

Stay calm, everybody stay calm. But it’s finally happening: The European Space Agency is committing itself to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a gravitational wave observatory that will study some of the universe’s most enigmatic phenomena.Alex Winter on the Most Important Modern Horror Movie On Thursday, LISA was formally adopted, meaning that ESA “recognizes that the mission concept and technology are sufficiently advanced,” according to an agency release, and construction on the observatory can officially…

A team of scientists found a compact object 40,000 light-years from Earth that is either a very massive neutron star or an itsy-bitsy black hole, but they’re not sure which.Remake this Sci-Fi Film with Peter Capaldi!The so-called mass gap object has a mass between 2.09 and 2.71 times that of our Sun. For a neutron star—the collapsed, superdense core of a star—that would be huge, perhaps even the largest yet known. But for a black hole—an even more compact object, so dense that not even light can escape it—it would be…

In a surprising first, scientists might have observed a supernova turning into a black hole or neutron star. This supernova may have been a missing link between stars and black holes, the astronomers say.For decades, astronomers have hoped to find direct observational evidence of the stellar process that changes stars to black holes or neutron stars. And now, while observing a supernova detected last year, researchers may have found such evidence.When a star reaches the end of its lifespan, it runs out of the…

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”- Carl Sagan This profound statement by Carl Sagan beautifully captures the essence of our cosmic connection. The stars, those twinkling specks in the night sky, are not just distant suns but the very vessels where the recipe of life was cooked. Among the most dramatic events in this cosmic saga are supernovas, stellar explosions of unimaginable…

ISRO, NASA, ESA and other space agencies have been in the news for a plethora of amazing launches that will serve to shed new light o the Universe. In fact, the Indian space agency ISRO, launched the XpoSat satellite yesterday to study black holes, Magnetars and more. Know how you too can get into stargazing.(The Conversation) There are few things more peaceful and relaxing than a night under the stars. Through the holidays, many people head away from the bright city lights to go camping. They revel in the dark skies,…

In yet another proud moment for India, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has powered another amazing mission to a successful conclusion. Dubbed the PSLV-C58 XPoSat Mission, ISRO launched the rocket and got the satellite into place exactly where it was required. While the XPoSat satellite is the most important part of the entire mission, all the hard work involved in boosting it into space in the correct orbit depended on just one thing - the PSLV-C58 rocket system, which has not been just successful, it is…