An artist's impression of a star circling a supermassive black hole, a repeating event that seems to be at the core of AT2018fykNASA/CXC/M. WeissAstronomers have observed a supermassive black hole consume a star in two phases and have predicted when it might take a third. If it happens, it could create a fascinating cosmic...
An artist's impression of the brightest object ever discovered – a quasar that shines with the light of 500 trillion Suns – which is also the fastest growing black hole, eating the equivalent of a Sun a dayESO/M. KornmesserOne might expect that locating the brightest object in the observable universe would be straightforward, but...
An artist's impression of what the system might look like if the object is a black hole. (Daniëlle Futselaar/artsource.nl)Something unusual is happening at the edges of the Milky Way. In a star cluster on the outskirts of our galaxy, astronomers have spotted a compact object engaged in an orbital dance with a millisecond pulsar. They...
The world of science is everchanging and progressive. Every day a new scientific discovery is made. Here are some of the most relevant this year:Consumption of Microplastics Can Cause Evolutionary ChangesAfter the non-biting midges of the species Chironomus riparius were exposed to microplastics, the genome of subsequent generations changed. Credit: Markus PfenningerIn April 2022,...
The ultra-faint Milky Way companion galaxy Leo I appears as a faint patch to the right of the bright star, Regulus. Credit: Scott Anttila Anttler2 astrophysicists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have proposed a method to see what could be the second-closest supermassive black hole to Planet: a behemoth three million times the...
