Category Astronomy/Space

A team of astronomers led by the University of Southampton have uncovered the largest cosmic explosion ever witnessed.

The explosion is more than ten times brighter than any known supernova (exploding star) and three times brighter than the brightest tidal disruption event, where a star falls into a supermassive black hole.

The explosion, known as AT2021lwx, has currently lasted over three years, compared to most supernovae which are only visibly bright for a few months. It took place nearly 8 billion light years away, when the universe was around 6 billion years old, and is still being detected by a network of telescopes.

The researchers believe that the explosion is a result of a vast cloud of gas, possibly th...

For a new study, a team of physicists recruited roughly 1,000 undergraduate students at the University of Colorado Boulder to help answer one of the most enduring questions about the sun: How does the star’s outermost atmosphere, or “corona,” get so hot?

The research represents a nearly-unprecedented feat of data analysis: From 2020 to 2022, the small army of mostly first- and second-year students examined the physics of more than 600 real solar flares—gigantic eruptions of energy from the sun’s roiling corona.

The researchers, including 995 undergraduate and graduate students, published their finding in The Astrophysical Journal. The results suggest that solar flares may not be responsible for superheating the sun’s corona, as a popular theory in astrophysics suggests.

“We...

The first-time detection of Gravitational Waves (GW) by researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015 triggered a revolution in astronomy. This phenomenon consists of ripples in spacetime caused by the merger of massive objects and was predicted a century prior by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. In the coming years, this burgeoning field will advance considerably thanks to the introduction of next-generation observatories, like the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA).

With greater sensitivity, astronomers will be able to trace GW events back to their source and use them to probe the interiors of exotic objects and the laws of physics...

Astronomers have revealed new evidence about the properties of the giant bubbles of high-energy gas that extend far above and below the Milky Way galaxy’s center.

In a study recently published in Nature Astronomy, a team led by scientists at The Ohio State University was able to show that the shells of these structures—dubbed “eRosita bubbles” after being found by the eRosita X-ray telescope—are more complex than previously thought.

Although they bear a striking similarity in shape to Fermi bubbles, eRosita bubbles are larger and more energetic than their counterparts...