Category Astronomy/Space

IMAGE: The 305-metre Arecibo telescope, in Puerto Rico, and its suspended support platform of radio receivers is shown amid a starry night. A flash from the Fast Radio Burst source FRB 121102 is seen: originating beyond the Milky Way, from deep in extragalactic space. CREDITS: Image design: Danielle Futselaar – Photo usage: Brian P. Irwin / Dennis van de Water / Shutterstock.com

Extragalactic source of radio-wave flashes resides in a powerfully magnetized astrophysical region. New detections of radio waves from a repeating fast radio burst have revealed an astonishingly potent magnetic field in the source’s environment, indicating that it is situated near a massive black hole or within a nebula of unprecedented power.

A year ago, the astronomers pinpointed the location of the enigmatic fas...

Size comparison of a dwarf galaxy (right inset, bottom) with a larger galaxy in the centre. Top inset: Dwarf galaxy overlain with some of the MaNGA data, revealing the winds from the supermassive black hole. Credit: Samantha Penny (Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth) and the SDSS collaboration

Scientists have solved a cosmic mystery by finding evidence that supermassive black holes prevent stars forming in some smaller galaxies. These giant black holes are over a million times more massive than the sun and sit in the centre of galaxies sending out powerful winds that quench the star-making process...

Researchers Jan Kramers and Georgy Belyanin found mineral compounds unlike anything on Earth, or in known meteorites or comets, in these fragments from the Hypatia stone, which was picked up in south-west Egypt in the Libyan Desert Glass Field. Credit: Dr Mario di Martino, INAF Osservatorio Astrofysico di Torino

Analyses on a small pebble in south-west Egypt cast significant questions on a widely-held view about the primitive pre-solar dust cloud which our Sun, Earth and other planets were formed from. Researchers found exotic micro-mineral compounds in the ‘Hypatia’ stone that are not known to occur on Earth, elsewhere in our solar system, or in known meteorites or comets.

In 2013, researchers announced that a pebble found in south-west Egypt, was definitely not from Earth...

NGC4993, the galaxy hosting the gravitational wave event GW170817 that has been used to measure the age of the universe. The source of the event is the red dot to the upper left of the galaxy’s center; it was not there in earlier images. Credit: NASA and ESA

The direct detection of gravitational waves from at least five sources during the past two years offers spectacular confirmation of Einstein’s model of gravity and space-time. Modeling of these events has also provided information on massive star formation, gamma-ray bursts, neutron star characteristics, and (for the first time) verification of theoretical ideas about how the very heavy elements, like gold, are produced.

Astronomers have now used a single gravitational wave event (GW170817) to measure the age of the universe...