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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Radio telescopes help scientists map molecules in space and uncover where and how stars form

    August 21, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The Orion Nebula with pink and purple gas and brown dust.
    The Orion Nebula, captured in visible light by the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

    You may have heard the phrase “we are made of star-stuff.” This statement by the astronomer Carl Sagan refers to the fact that elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were forged in the centers of the first stars. But how does this star-stuff evolve into the chemistry of rocks, plants and people?

    As an astrochemist and radio astronomer, I study the places in the universe where stars are born as interstellar laboratories. I’m interested in how simple ingredients come together to form bigger and bigger molecules, including those that are building blocks of life...

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    JWST spots a bizarre “black hole star” 100 billion times brighter than a star

    August 16, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Three images show a “Star” as a cut-away sphere with a yellow core; a “Black Hole Accretion Disk” with black core and blue pancake spiral; and the “Black Hole Star,” an amorphous red cloud with a black center.
    Stars (left) can be thought of as a dense ball of gas powered by nuclear fusion at their centers. Black holes (center) typically grow by consuming matter via a pancake-like accretion disk. Black hole stars (right) represent a new kind of object — nascent black holes enshrouded in dense gas such that they effectively radiate in a star-like manner. The accreting black hole, as the power source, plays the role of nuclear fusion, and the dense surrounding gas acts similarly to a pseudo-photosphere.
    Image: iStock; Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT

    Astronomers may have uncovered an entirely new cosmic object: a gigantic “black hole star” that could explain the mysterious red dots filling the early universe...

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    Active supermassive black holes may help form massive planets

    August 14, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    twin black holes
    Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

    A popular myth about black holes is that they act like giant cosmic vacuum cleaners, sucking in everything around them. But Wladimir Lyra’s research found a new mechanism around supermassive black holes that is more like a cosmic nursery, giving birth to planets more massive than Jupiter.

    “We’re finding objects that are a thousand times the mass of the Earth, but built of pure dust,” Lyra said. “And not only that, but also some of these objects are approaching the mass of the sun.”

    Lyra, an associate professor of astronomy at New Mexico State University, began this line of research as a postdoctoral fellow collaborating with Barry McKernan, Saavik Ford and Mordecai-Mark Mac Low at the American Museum of Natural History in 2010.

    Bhupendra Mishr...

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    Webb reveals oxygen-rich dust and water surviving near Milky Way’s central black hole

    August 13, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    IRS 3 Field (NIRCam and MIRI image)

    Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered that dust and water can form and survive surprisingly close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The observations reveal that the evolved star IRS3 continues to enrich its surroundings with newly formed material despite the intense radiation environment around SagittariusA*.

    IRS 3 has reached a stage near the end of its life called the asymptotic giant branch phase. Stars in this phase of life are huge, cool and luminous, and they shed gas into space with their powerful stellar winds...

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