Black holes may leak more energy to their surroundings than previously suspected — and the faster these voids spin, the more efficient this energy extraction seems to be. With this in mind, a team of scientists has discovered how the disks of gas and dust that swirl around black holes can become the powerful engines … Read more
There are a lot of ways for dead stars to blow their tops. Astronomers discovered this explosive diversity when they assessed 3,628 exploding white dwarfs during a next-generation sky survey conducted using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) between March 2018 and December 2020. That means that this dataset of nearby supernovas is several times larger … Read more
Astronomers have uncovered a treasure trove of feeding black holes at the heart of dwarf galaxies — small, faint galaxies containing thousands to several billions of stars but very little gas. The discovery, made with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), contains several “missing link” intermediate-mass black holes. This is both the largest sample of … Read more
Dark energy, the mysterious force that’s driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, may not actually exist, scientists say. Their research has brought into question one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. In a new study, published Dec. 19, 2024 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers analyzed data from … Read more