Astrophysics
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Astronomers have discovered the most distant object ever seen – a strange galaxy some 13.5 billion light-years away. Named HD1, the galaxy may house a never-before-seen population of stars, or a supermassive black hole mysteriously ahead of its time.
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Astronomers have discovered the closest known pair of supermassive black holes – and that record has two meanings. Not only are they the closest pair to Earth, but they’re the closest to each other as well, heading for an eventual monster merger.
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How did the universe end up with exactly the amount of dark matter needed? A new model suggests dark matter particles in the early universe converted regular matter into dark matter exponentially, before being slowed by the expansion of the universe.
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Astronomers have proposed a novel solution to one of the many mysteries of black holes – why do so many seem to be more massive than expected? A new model suggests that their growth may be “cosmologically coupled” to the expansion of the universe.
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Astronomers have discovered a big hole in space. New 3D visualizations of the Perseus and Taurus star-forming clouds have revealed a large cavity between them, possibly created in ancient supernova explosions.
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A new type of gravitational wave detector has recorded two rare events that may be signals of dark matter or primordial black holes. These high-frequency gravitational waves are beyond the range of most detectors and have never been recorded before.
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Physicists have outlined a relatively simple new way to create antimatter, by firing two lasers at each other to reproduce the conditions near a neutron star, converting light into matter and antimatter. Doing so could unlock cosmological mysteries.
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It’s tricky detecting gravitational waves – these spacetime ripples are often drowned out by background vibrations from earthquakes and human activity. Now a pair of astrophysicists has proposed a new location that would be far quieter – the Moon.
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By studying the logs of computer malfunctions caused by high-energy particles striking their circuitry, ESA scientists have used "housekeeping" data from the Rosetta and Mars Express deep-space probes to shed new light on cosmic rays in the solar system.
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Supermassive black holes are thought to grow slowly over billions of years – but how did they appear so early in the universe’s lifetime? A new origin story suggests black hole seeds were created by halos of self-interacting dark matter collapsing.
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Astronomers say they’ve closed the case on the mysterious and unprecedented dimming of the supergiant star Betelgeuse in 2019 and 2020. A new study says that the event was caused by a combination of a big dust cloud and a drop in temperature.
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The Milky Way is thought to host a supermassive black hole in its center – but perhaps its dark heart is made of different stuff. A new study proposes that it could instead be a core of dark matter made up of hypothetical particles called “darkinos.”
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