Pulsating serpent: first millisecond pulsar discovered at galactic center Astronomers at the Australian National Telescope National Facility (ATNF) report the discovery of a new millisecond pulsar within the radio filament ‘snake’ at the center of our galaxy. This is the first millisecond pulsar discovered at the center of our galaxy. This discovery is detailed in his April 13th article published on the preprint server arXiv. Pulsars are highly magnetized rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. The fastest rotating pulsars with a rotation period of less than 30 mil ..read more

Telescope image shows the galaxy NGC 4383 with gas flowing from its core at a staggering rate due to star formation. ESO/A. Watts et al., CC BY We mapped huge explosions in the universe and showed how galaxies are “contaminating” the universe. We breathe oxygen and nitrogen gases in the atmosphere every day, but did you know that these gases also float around in space, around galaxies, and between galaxies?Our team has captured in high resolution how these elements reach the far reaches of the universe. Our research has now been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomi ..read more

Einstein rings suggest dark matter interacts with itself In the vast universe, galaxies with particularly high density are attracting the attention of astronomers. JWST-ER1 is located more than 17 billion light-years from Earth and was discovered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). There are clues to the mysterious nature of dark matter. What is an Einstein ring? When light from a distant source, such as a galaxy, approaches a very dense mass, such as another galaxy or galaxy cluster, the gravity of that mass acts like a lens, distorting the light’s trajectory. This phenomenon, predic ..read more

Unravel the heart of Pluto and uncover the secrets beneath Collision simulations suggest that the inflow of foreign material during a giant impact could dominate a large portion of the icy dwarf planet. This could explain the unusual shape and location of Pluto’s Sputnik Planum region, without the need for a modern subsurface ocean. In the cold expanses of the Kuiper Belt, where the sun’s rays whisper rather than scream, Pluto remains an enigmatic figure among celestial bodies. When the New Horizons spacecraft transmitted its first images, it was the Tombow region, a heart-shaped region, that ..read more

Surprisingly massive black hole with stellar mass discovered in nearby binary star system Using data from ESA’s Gaia mission, astronomers discovered a nearby binary system of massive stars orbiting a dormant black hole of stellar origin after 11.6 years. The black hole’s estimated mass (33 solar masses) is significantly larger than the masses of known stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way, and within the mass range of extragalactic black holes detected by gravitational waves. The binary star system in question is called Gaia BH3 and is located 1,926 light years from Earth in the constellat ..read more

The brightest gamma-ray burst in history was caused by the collapse of a massive star Observations show no signs of heavy elements In October 2022, an international research team including astrophysicists from Northwestern University observed GRB 221009A, the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever recorded. Now, a Northwestern-led team has confirmed that the phenomenon responsible for the historic pandemic, called B.O.A.T., is to blame. (“The brightest ever”) – The collapse and subsequent explosion of a giant star. The research team used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to discover this ..read more

First gravitational wave detection of a mass gap object merging with a neutron star An international collaboration involving Northwestern University astrophysicists uncovers potential neutron stars and mysterious objects within the “mass gap,” the region between the heaviest known neutron star and the lightest known black star. A gravitational wave signal was detected for the first time due to a merger with hole . Gravitational wave signals alone cannot reveal the nature of this mysterious object, which has a mass 2.5 to 4.5 times that of the Sun and lies 650 million light-years from Earth. Fu ..read more

Evidence of tidal locking in super-Earth LHS 3844b In a study published March 28 in the Astrophysical Journal, astronomers found that the planet has 1:1 tidal timing, meaning that it always faces the star in the same direction that the moon faces Earth. This provides the most convincing evidence to date that this means that Many rocky exoplanets were thought to be highly closed due to their orbital elements, but observational evidence was lacking. That’s it! When a planet orbits very close to its star, the side in front of the star experiences a much stronger gravitational pull than the side o ..read more

Capturing and destroying dark matter could heat up isolated, old neutron stars. A team of particle physicists from the University of Melbourne, Australian National University, King’s College London, and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has discovered that the energy transferred when dark matter particles collide and disappear in a cold neutron star can cause the star to rapidly It was calculated that it would be heated to Previously, this warming was thought to be irrelevant because this energy transfer takes a very long time, in some cases longer than the age of the universe itself. A nu ..read more

Portsmouth researchers enable discovery of remarkable gravitational wave signal Researchers at the Institute of Cosmology and Gravity (ICG) at the University of Portsmouth have helped detect a remarkable gravitational wave signal that could hold the key to solving the mysteries of the universe. The discovery was announced today (5 April) in the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration involving more than 1,600 scientists around the world, including members of the ICG, which aims to detect gravitational waves and use them for research. This is according to the latest results published by the study. Funda ..read more