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    Dark matter, not a black hole, could power Milky Way’s heart

    February 7, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    'Dark matter, not a black hole, could power Milky Way's heart'
    Artistic representation of the Milky Way, where the innermost stars move at near relativistic speeds (defined as velocities that constitute a significant fraction of the speed of light, typically considered to be 10% or more) around a dense core of dark matter, with no black hole at the centre. At greater distances, the halo part of the same invisible dark matter distribution continues to shape the motions of stars in the outskirts of our galaxy, tracing the characteristic rotation curve. Credit: Valentina Crespi et al. License type Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

    Our Milky Way galaxy may not have a supermassive black hole at its center but rather an enormous clump of mysterious dark matter exerting the same gravitational influence, astronomers say...

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    XRISM gives sharpest-ever glimpse at growth of a rapidly-spinning black hole

    January 6, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Image: Artist’s rendering of the innermost regions around the supermassive black hole in the active galaxy MCG-6-30-15.  The event horizon (black region in center) marks the boundary between the black hole and the surrounding accretion disk, where the gas orbits at nearly the speed of light before plunging in. The extreme gravity and spin of the black hole combine to warp the shape of both the event horizon and the accretion disk as predicted by general relativity, even bending the light from the back side of the disk up into our line of sight. The wind driven from the innermost regions of this system is depicted by outflowing streamlines.  The component of this wind along our line of sight absorbs some of the X-rays emitted from the innermost disk. 

    Astronomers have obtained the sharp...

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    The monster hiding in plain sight: JWST reveals cosmic shapeshifter in the early universe

    December 14, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The monster hiding in plain sight: JWST reveals cosmic shapeshifter in the early universe
    Covering a tiny patch of sky spanning less than a tenth of the full moon, the famous “Hubble eXtreme Deep Field” image revealed thousands of galaxies, including objects from the universe infancy. The James Webb Space Telescope observed the same region over three years. U of A researchers zoomed in on the galaxy reported in this study (inset), captured when the universe was only 800 million years old. The team found that even at its young age, it already harbored a supermassive black hole, shrouded in dust. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Östlin, P. G. Perez-Gonzalez, J. Melinder, the JADES Collaboration, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

    In a glimpse of the early universe, astronomers have observed a galaxy as it appeared just 800 million years after the Big Bang—a cosmic Jekyll and Hyde that loo...

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    Black hole blast outshines 10 trillion Suns

    November 9, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A distant supermassive black hole has set a new cosmic record, unleashing the brightest flare ever seen as it devoured a gigantic star that wandered too close. A colossal black hole 10 billion light-years away has been caught devouring one of the universe’s biggest stars, unleashing a flare 30 times brighter than any seen before. The flare, detected by Caltech’s ZTF, likely marks a tidal disruption event — when a star is shredded by a black hole’s gravity.

    The Universe’s most massive stars typically end their lives in spectacular explosions known as supernovae before collapsing into black holes. But one enormous star seems to have met a very different fate...

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