Radio

Active galactic nuclei are known by different names depending on the viewing angle. Now, for the first time astronomers have directly imaged the last piece of the puzzle that ties them all together – a dusty donut of material that surrounds a supermassive black hole.

Soma Laboratory has developed a handheld gadget that taps into the hidden voices of everyday modern objects, such as display screens, park railings and electronic doors. Ether picks up secret electromagnetic whispers and records the audio to a cabled audio recorder.​

A team of astronomers has used a global array of telescopes to peer through the fog and capture some of the clearest radio images yet of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. And it may indicate that the object just happens to be pointing directly at Earth.

The CHIME telescope has picked up 13 unexplained radio signals coming from beyond the Milky Way. These fast radio bursts are part of one of the strangest mysteries of modern astronomy, but the new detections could help unlock their source, thanks to a rare one that seems to be repeating.

In 1974, astronomers used the Arecibo Observatory to beam a message from humanity to the stars, in one of the most well-known attempts to contact possible alien life. For the 44th anniversary of the Arecibo Message, scientists are reaching out to the public for help in designing an updated version.

A huge radio telescope array spread across the Australian Outback is helping identify the mysterious fast radio bursts. Astronomers have now announced the discovery of 20 new FRBs in a bit over a year, including the brightest and closest events yet seen.

As crucial as antennas are, the rigid metals they’re made of can limit what devices they can be built into. To help with that, researchers at Drexel University have developed a new kind of antenna that can be sprayed onto just about any surface.

​Back in 2010, Sonitus Technologies introduced a novel in-mouth hearing aid called the SoundBite. Now the US Department of Defense has awarded the company a contract to develop a wireless two-way comms system that clips to a user's back teeth.​

An international team of astronomers has detected the most distant radio galaxy ever observed. By measuring the redshift of its light, the researchers determined that the object is about 12 billion light-years away, which dates it back to when the universe itself was just a kid.

A brown dwarf was recently downgraded to planet status (albeit a huge one), and now astronomers have discovered that it generates an enormous magnetic field, which could provide a new tool in the search for exoplanets.

The MeerKAT radio telescope array is finally up and running in South Africa. To show off what the facility can do, astronomers have pointed all 64 antennas towards the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and snapped one of the clearest shots ever taken of the mysterious region.

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are strange, extremely bright and mysterious signals from space. Now, astronomers at Australia’s Parkes Observatory have recorded three new signals in relatively quick succession – one of which is the brightest FRB ever detected.