The science behind NASA’s ‘ghost hand’ image
Two of NASA’s orbiting X-ray observatories have combined efforts this Halloween, imaging a ghost hand reaching out to us from space. But all is not as it appears. This skeletal hand is actually the...
View ArticleWhat we’ve learned in 60 years of studying quasars
The 1960s were a time of revolution. Antiwar rallies, civil rights marches, and political assassinations dominated the evening news, while radical advances in spaceflight culminated with the first...
View ArticleThe different types of supernovae
Scientists classify Supernova 1987a in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud as a type II — meaning it resulted from the collapse, and ensuing explosion, of a massive star. Credit: NASA/ESA/P. Challis and...
View ArticleThe different types of supernovae explained
It’s easy to forget that stars, just like us, have lifetimes. They’re born, they live, and eventually, they die. And for some stars, their death is dramatic, producing an explosion so powerful it can...
View ArticleMassive gamma-ray burst reached Earth’s ionosphere
It came from somewhere 2 billion light-years away. And when it arrived in October of 2022, the gamma-ray burst lit up the entire ionosphere. Now astronomers are working in a whole realm of “new physics...
View ArticleWhat are wormholes? An astrophysicist explains these shortcuts through...
What are wormholes and do they exist? – Chinglembi D., age 12, Silchar, Assam, India Imagine two towns on two opposite sides of a mountain. People from these towns would probably have to travel all the...
View ArticleStudy reveals M87 has a spinning black hole
The giant elliptical galaxy M87 has been the front-runner in breaking news concerning black holes for a third time now. The first time was in April 2019, when the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) captured...
View ArticleNGC 7727’s cosmic merger foreshadows our own future
Lying 90 million light-years away in Aquarius, two galaxies in the midst of a cosmic merger were recently studied using the Gemini South Telescope in Chile. Astrophysicists captured streams of swirling...
View Article4 of the weirdest objects in space
The universe is filled with bizarre objects. Then again, Earth is all we know. So what may seem wild and exotic to us is likely common throughout the cosmos. But that doesn’t take away from the fact...
View Article‘Tasmanian devil’ rises from slumber with brilliant bursts of light
In September 2022, a distant dead star reawakened with a flash of light. The brilliant and powerful pulsing signal is about one billion light-years from Earth and was picked up by 15 different...
View ArticleWhat happens at the center of a black hole?
Do black holes have centers? If so, what’s going on in there? Richard LivitskiSeal Beach, California Einstein spent 10 years wrestling with three fundamental concepts in physics: acceleration, the...
View ArticleBlack holes, explained by an astrophysicist
While we know a lot about black holes, they still remain as one of the greatest mysteries in the universe. So let’s dive in — not literally – to answer all your burning questions about these cosmic...
View ArticleAstronomers study an unlikely stellar fountain of youth
A mysterious and intensely fierce environment resides in the centers of galaxies. Objects orbiting the galactic centers are always subject to falling into the trap of the accretion disks or event...
View ArticleThe biggest black hole merger just got weirder
When the LIGO and Virgo observatories detected gravitational waves in the spring of 2019, the event represented the biggest merger of two black holes ever detected. The wave event, called GW190521,...
View ArticleWhy are some black holes bigger than others? An astronomer explains
Why are there small and big black holes? Also, why are some black holes invisible and others have white outlines? – Sedra and Humaid, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Black holes are dense astronomical...
View ArticleMerry Christmas from the cosmos
Have you ever seen comparison photos of objects on Earth versus objects in space, and found that there are some mind-boggling similarities? I’m talking about ones that look almost identical. A fresh...
View ArticleThe 10 greatest JWST discoveries, so far
The ground in French Guiana literally shook as the rockets on the Ariane 5 launch vehicle ignited the morning of Dec. 25, 2021. The roar signaled the start of the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST)...
View ArticleWhat are neutron stars? The cosmic gold mines, explained
It isn’t a secret that humanity and everything around us is made of star stuff. But not all stars create elements equally. Sure, regular stars can create the basic elements: helium, carbon, neon,...
View ArticleKip Thorne and the mind-bending science of Interstellar
Astronomy enthusiasts are my kinda people. Like me, they love all sorts of science, and science fiction, too — particularly films that lead us into a dystopian, mysterious, explorative future we can’t...
View ArticleEinstein Cross
The Einstein Cross (Huchra’s Lens) is one of the most profound examples of gravitational lensing, a phenomenon first deduced by Albert Einstein. Images of the Einstein Cross appear to be a galaxy with...
View Article