Outer Space

Benjamin Johnson May 25, 2018 38

A Multiverse — where our Universe is only one of many — might not be as inhospitable to life as previously thought, according to new research. Questions about whether other universes might exist as part of a larger Multiverse, and…

Benjamin Johnson May 24, 2018 19

Astronomers at ANU have found the fastest-growing black hole known in the Universe, describing it as a monster that devours a mass equivalent to our sun every two days. The astronomers have looked back more than 12 billion years to…

Benjamin Johnson May 14, 2018 149

A multitude of discoveries are on the horizon after a much-awaited release that is based on 22 months of charting the sky as part of Gaia’s mission to produce the largest, most precise three-dimensional map of our Galaxy ever created. The new…

Benjamin Johnson May 03, 2018 12

While astronomers routinely study galaxies much farther away, they’re visible only because they glow with the brightness of billions of stars. And a supernova, often brighter than the galaxy in which it sits, also can be visible across the entire…

Benjamin Johnson May 02, 2018 9

A Columbia University-led team of astrophysicists has discovered a dozen black holes gathered around Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The finding, which has been published in Nature, is the first to support…

Benjamin Johnson Apr 27, 2018 11

New images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and other telescopes reveal a rich landscape of stars and glowing clouds of gas in one of our closest neighboring galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud. The pictures have allowed astronomers to…

Benjamin Johnson Apr 17, 2018 2

Astronomers, using data from the Gemini and W. M. Keck Observatories in Hawai’i, have encountered a galaxy that appears to have almost no dark matter. Since the Universe is dominated by dark matter and it is the foundation upon which…

Benjamin Johnson Apr 15, 2018 14

Astronomers are back in the dark about what dark matter might be, after new observations showed the mysterious substance may not be interacting with forces other than gravity after all. Dr. Andrew Robertson of Durham University presented the new results…

Benjamin Johnson Mar 26, 2018 4

Trailing Earth’s orbit at 94 million miles away, the Kepler space telescope has survived many potential knock-outs during its nine years in flight, from mechanical failures to being blasted by cosmic rays. At this rate, the hardy spacecraft may reach…

Benjamin Johnson Dec 13, 2017 7

Due to Hollywood films and science fiction novels, most of us believe that aliens would come in the form of monster-like beings very different to humans. However, new research suggests we could have more in common with extra-terrestrials than we…