The total amount of ordinary matter, called baryonic matter, makes up for about 5% of the total matter of our Universe. The other 95% consists of the exotic dark matter and dark energy. However, even this 5% of baryonic matter is hard to detect! Only 60% of the baryonic matter has been observed! Now scientists, used ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory and found evidence of where these missing baryons are!!
Scientists used ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatories as well as the Swift X-ray Telescope to find evidence for the existence of a rare type of black hole, an intermediate-mass black hole!!
Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars are massive, energetic stars at the end of their lives. They generate strong winds that sweep their surrounding material and create strong shockwaves as they collide with the interstellar medium (ISM). This process heats up the ISM to high enough temperatures to produce X-rays. This rare phenomenon was observed using XMM-Newton, ESA’s space telescope.
The neutron star merger named GW170817/GRB 170817A that took place last August, was the first cosmic event that astronomers were able to observe both light and gravitational waves! Now scientists discovered that probably this merging process also created the lowest mass black hole ever detected!!
In a recent study, astronomers used ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray telescope to observe six spiral galaxies, in an attempt to uncover the missing matter in the universe.
The last twenty years astronomers are searching for evidence to support a theory that claims that thousands of black holes surround supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centre of galaxies. Now a team of researchers at the Columbia University found this long awaited evidence!!
QSOs are the brightest, long-lived, objects in the universe. The most distant of them can provide us with a wealth of information regarding the mechanisms that create black holes as well as put constraints on the cosmological model. Recently, astronomers observed the most distant QSO that has ever been detected, in X-rays!
Massive stars are several times larger than our Sun. Due to their large mass, they burn their nuclear fuel rapidly and explode, ejecting large amount of material via what are called stellar winds. Astronomers now observed a pair of massive stars that its stellar winds get brighter instead of dimming!!
A neutron star merger puzzles astronomers since it continues to brighten, months after it was first observed!!
Astronomers re-analysed X-ray data from the Perseus galaxy cluster and their findings may shed light on the nature of the mysterious, invisible dark matter that makes up about 85% of the matter in our Universe.
