A new study using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope gives new insight into an important question: how habitable are planets that orbit the most common type of stars in the Galaxy? The target of the Read More …
For more than two decades, astronomers have been systematically tracing mystery sources of high-energy gamma rays to their sources. One, however, remained stubborn – the brightest unidentified source of gamma rays in the Milky Way. It seemed to be coming from Read More …
A rare blast of light, emitted by a star as it is sucked in by a supermassive black hole, has been spotted by scientists using telescopes from around the world. The phenomenon, known as a tidal disruption event, is the Read More …
A team of gravitational wave researchers led by the ARC Center of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) report that when two black holes collide and merge, the remnant black hole “chirps” not once, but multiple times, emitting gravitational waves—intense Read More …
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 with one half to Roger Penrose, University of Oxford, UK, “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general Read More …
An analysis of archival X-ray data from NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer has revealed a clear separation between the characteristics of stellar-mass black holes and neutron stars, which is a consequence of the lack of the hard surface in the Read More …
Scientists with the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (Insight-HXMT) team has performed extensive observations of the accreting X-ray pulsar GRO J1008-57 and has discovered a magnetic field of ~1 billion Tesla on the surface of the neutron star. This is the Read More …
Astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to record material blasting away from the site of an exploded star at speeds faster than 20 million miles per hour. This is about 25,000 times faster than the speed of sound on Read More …
Scientists have detected a mysterious gamma-ray heartbeat coming from a cosmic gas cloud. The inconspicuous cloud in the constellation Aquila is beating with the rhythm of a neighbouring precessing black hole, indicating a connection between the two objects, as the Read More …
The #AthenaNuggets 46 by Nathalie Degenaar deals with neutron stars and their magnetic fields. Under some circumstances, the magnetic field of the neutron star can be strong enough to disrupt the accretion disk and even perform as a propeller that expels Read More …
