Category Astronomy/Space

This is the characteristic disc structure from the simulation of a misaligned disc around a spinning black hole. Credit: K. Pounds et al. / University of Leicester

Astronomers report the first detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30% of the speed of light, located in the center of the billion-light year distant galaxy PG211+143. The team used data from the European Space Agency’s X-ray observatory XMM-Newton to observe the black hole.

A UK team of astronomers report the first detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30% of the speed of light, located in the centre of the billion-light year distant galaxy PG211+143...

Image from the DCBH simulation shows density (left) and temperature (right) of an early galaxy. Supernovae shock waves can be seen expanding from the center, disrupting and heating the galaxy.
Credit: Georgia Tech

A simulation has suggested what astronomers should look for if they search the skies for a direct collapse black hole in its early stages. Black holes form when stars die, allowing the matter in them to collapse into an extremely dense object from which not even light can escape. Astronomers theorize that massive black holes could also form at the birth of a galaxy, but so far nobody has been able to look far enough back in time to observe the conditions creating these direct collapse black holes (DCBH).

The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2021, might be able l...

M. E. Caplan, A. S. Schneider, C. J. Horowitz. The Elasticity of Nuclear Pasta. Physical Review Letters, 2018

A team of scientists has calculated the strength of the material deep inside the crust of neutron stars and found it to be the strongest known material in the universe. Matthew Caplan, a postdoctoral research fellow at McGill University, and his colleagues from Indiana University and the California Institute of Technology, successfully ran the largest computer simulations ever conducted of neutron star crusts, becoming the first to describe how these break. “The strength of the neutron star crust, especially the bottom of the crust, is relevant to a large number of astrophysics problems, but isn’t well understood,” says Caplan.

Neutron stars are born after supernovas, an implosion ...

Artist’s conception of the Epsilon Indi system. The two brown dwarfs orbit their common center of mass, which in turn orbits the much more distant primary component, a Sun-like star. By mapping the orbital motion of the brown dwarfs, the team was able to determine their masses. Much like our Solar System’s giant planets, brown dwarfs are thought to have cloud belts that encircle the entire object and give it a striped appearance.
Credit: Illustration is by Roberto Molar Candanosa and Sergio Dieterich, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

The line that separates stars from brown dwarfs may soon be clearer thanks to new work led by Carnegie’s Serge Dieterich...