Category Astronomy/Space

Astronomers are studying black holes that could have formed in the early universe, before stars and galaxies were born. Such primordial black holes (PBHs) could account for all or part of dark matter, be responsible for some of the observed gravitational waves signals, and seed supermassive black holes found in the center of our Galaxy and other galaxies.

The Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) is home to many interdisciplinary projects which benefit from the synergy of a wide range of expertise available at the institute...

By analyzing the data from the eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey (eFEDS), an international team of astronomers has detected a new supercluster. The newly found structure consists of eight galaxy clusters. The discovery is reported in a paper published December 21 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Containing various structures with a range of masses, from massive and dense clusters of galaxies to low-density bridges, filaments and sheets of matter, superclusters are among the largest structures in the known universe...

There’s something a little off about our theory of the universe. Almost everything fits, but there’s a fly in the cosmic ointment, a particle of sand in the infinite sandwich. Some scientists think the culprit might be gravity—and that subtle ripples in the fabric of space-time could help us find the missing piece.

A new paper co-authored by a University of Chicago scientist lays out how this might work. Published Dec. 21 in Physical Review D, the method depends on finding such ripples that have been bent by traveling through supermassive black holes or large galaxies on their way to Earth.

The trouble is that something is making the universe not only expand, but expand...

A research team, led by astronomers from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), has discovered 591 high velocity stars based on data from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) and Gaia, and 43 of them can even escape from the Galaxy.

The study was published online in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series on Dec. 17.

After the first high-velocity star was discovered in 2005, over 550 ones have been discovered with multiple telescopes in 15 years. “The 591 high-velocity stars discovered this time doubled the total number previously discovered, bringing the current total number exceeding 1,000,” said Dr...