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Portrait of a black hole
IRAM's 30-metre dish is part of the Event Horizon Telescope which is looking into the centre of the Milky Way.
March 31, 2017 Read more
Mysterious cosmic explosion surprises astronomers studying the distant x-ray universe
A mysterious flash of X-rays has been discovered by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in the deepest X-ray image ever obtained. This source likely comes from some sort of destructive event, but it may be of a variety that scientists have never seen before.
March 31, 2017 Read more
Explaining the accelerating expansion of the universe without dark energy
Enigmatic dark energy, thought to make up 68% of the universe, may not exist at all.
March 31, 2017 Read more
Wrong-way asteroid plays 'chicken' with Jupiter
For at least a million years, an asteroid orbiting the 'wrong' way around the sun has been playing a cosmic game of chicken with giant Jupiter and with about 6,000 other asteroids sharing the giant planet's space.
March 30, 2017 Read more
Solving the case of the missing x-rays
A fierce wind obscures x-rays emitted from a disk of matter around a black hole.
March 24, 2017 Read more
Gravitational wave kicks monster black hole out of galactic core
Astronomers have uncovered a supermassive black hole that has been propelled out of the center of a distant galaxy by what could be the awesome power of gravitational waves.
March 23, 2017 Read more
New study maps space dust in 3-D (w/video)
New research raises new questions about properties of dust in local and distant reaches of Milky Way.
March 23, 2017 Read more
Tracing aromatic molecules in the early universe
A team of astronomers has taken us a step closer to better understand the formation and destruction mechanisms of dust molecules in the distant universe.
March 23, 2017 Read more
Breaking the supermassive black hole speed limit
A new computer simulation helps explain the existence of puzzling supermassive black holes observed in the early universe. The simulation is based on a computer code used to understand the coupling of radiation and certain materials.
March 22, 2017 Read more
Before and after: Unique changes spotted on comet 67p/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Rosetta spacecraft documented growing fractures, collapsing cliffs and rolling boulders on the comet's surface.
March 22, 2017 Read more
Does the universe have a rest frame?
Experiment aims at resolving divergence between special relativity and standard model of cosmology.
March 21, 2017 Read more
Swift mission maps a star's 'death spiral' into a black hole (w/video)
Some 290 million years ago, a star much like the sun wandered too close to the central black hole of its galaxy. Intense tides tore the star apart, which produced an eruption of optical, ultraviolet and X-ray light that first reached Earth in 2014.
March 21, 2017 Read more
Does Mars have rings? Not right now, but maybe one day
Scientists have developed a model that suggests that debris that was pushed into space from an asteroid or other body slamming into Mars around 4.3 billion years ago and alternates between becoming a planetary ring and clumping up to form a moon.
March 21, 2017 Read more
Astronomers to peer into a black hole for first time with new Event Horizon Telescope
On April 5-14 2017, the team behind the Event Horizon Telescope hopes to test the fundamental theories of black-hole physics by attempting to take the first ever image of a black hole's event horizon (the point at which theory predicts nothing can escape).
March 20, 2017 Read more
Less dark matter in distant galaxies?
Milky Way systems in the early universe consist mainly of gas and stars.
March 16, 2017 Read more
The rotation axes of stars tell us about how they were born
Using asteroseismology, an international research team discovered a surprising alignment of the rotation axes of stars in open clusters, shedding light on the conditions in which stars are formed in our galaxy.
March 16, 2017 Read more
Relativistic electrons uncovered with Van Allen Probes (w/video)
New observations from NASA's Van Allen Probes mission show that the fastest, most energetic electrons in the inner radiation belt are not present as much of the time as previously thought.
March 15, 2017 Read more
Scientists identify a black hole choking on stardust
Data suggest black holes swallow stellar debris in bursts.
March 15, 2017 Read more