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    Powerful UFO spotted blasting from a distant black hole

    June 17, 2026, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Powerful UFO spotted blasting from a distant black hole
    Artistic view of multiphase AGN-driven winds highlighting the different phases and scales that are involved in the outflow. Credit: University of Bologna

    Astronomers have detected one of the most powerful ultrafast outflows ever seen from a distant supermassive black hole. Using XMM-Newton and NuSTAR, a team studied a hyper-luminous quasar at cosmic noon and found two distinct wind components blasting away from the black hole, details of which are outlined in a paper submitted to the arXiv preprint server on June 3. The study has been submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics and is currently under minor revision.

    Killer winds
    Black holes consuming large amounts of material tend to lash out, driving powerful winds of gas outward from the vicinity of the accretion disk...

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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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