Stars are not fixed and unchanging, as many ancient people thought. Sometimes a star appears where it was not before, and then disappears within a few days or weeks. The earliest record of such a “guest star,” as it was called by ancient Chinese astronomers, is that of a star that suddenly appeared in the… Read More »
Forget “little green men”; it was the “little red dots” in the infant universe that caught the eye of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Scientists say the strange red objects hide stars that models suggest are “too old” to have existed in early cosmic times, as well as black holes thousands of times more… Read More »
Astronomers have obtained new information about the formation of planets around twin stars orbiting each other. Although we are familiar with planets orbiting a single central star (similar to the arrangement of our solar system), more than 50% of the stars in the universe are found in binary systems, meaning they have a companion star.… Read More »
When it comes to “shattering” cosmic ghosts, only the most extreme objects in the universe are up to the task: neutron stars. Scientists have simulated collisions between these extremely dense and dead stars and shown that such powerful events can briefly “trap” neutrinos, also known as “ghost particles.” This discovery could help scientists better understand… Read More »
Astronomers have discovered the slowest spinning radio-emitting neutron star ever seen; It takes almost an hour to complete a full rotation. That might sound pretty fast, but these dead stars are known to spin so fast that some make 700 full rotations each. second. Even the slowest of the nearly 3,000 radio-emitting neutron stars, or… Read More »
Researchers have discovered that elusive intermediate-mass black holes can form in dense star clusters containing tens of thousands to millions of tightly packed stars, called “globular clusters.” An intermediate-mass black hole has a mass between 100 and 10,000 suns. They are heavier than solar-mass black holes, which have masses between 10 and 100 solar masses,… Read More »
Scientists using the Euclid space telescope have discovered a staggering 1.5 trillion orphan stars drifting within a massive cluster of thousands of galaxies, one of the largest structures in the universe. Torn away from their home galaxy, these orphan stars fill the space between the Perseus cluster’s galaxies with ghostly blue light. This so-called “intra-cluster”… Read More »
Astronomers have discovered three “runaway” ancient stars on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, racing in the wrong direction at speeds of hundreds of thousands of kilometers per hour. Although alive for their age, the three stars are so old that they date back to the formation of the first galaxies. This is one… Read More »
Astronomers may have finally solved the mystery of how extremely dense dead stars called white dwarfs keep their heavy metal shells fresh by cannibalizing what’s left of their planetary systems. Our Sun will turn into a white dwarf in about five billion years after exhausting the hydrogen that fuels nuclear fusion in its core. So… Read More »
Scientists may be one step closer to discovering how gamma-ray bursts became some of the most powerful explosions in the known universe. For context, a single gamma-ray burst, or GRB, can produce more energy in seconds than the sun will radiate in billions of years. Because of this power, scientists suggest that GRBs are created… Read More »