Imagine two intrepid astronauts, Jack and Andres, determined to investigate black holes. His goal is to explore what goes on inside. What will happen to…
Astronomers observe a black hole engulfing and tearing apart a star
It is the most distant black hole of this type yet detected, whose plasma jet is visible because it points towards Earth. Several teams of…
A new study questions the Big Bang hypothesis
Cosmic inflation would not explain the ultra-rapid expansion of the early Universe: this could suggest that the cosmos was not born from an initial burst.…
Astrophysicists hunt for second-closest supermassive black hole to Earth
The Milky Way’s companion galaxy, Leo I, appears as a faint blob to the right of the bright star, Regulus. Credit: Scott Anttila Anttler. Decades…
Jupiter’s moon Io may have a hellish magma ocean below its surface
There are more than 200 moons in the solar system, but none like Io, the third largest moon in Jupiter’s eighty moons. Io is really…
Do black holes evaporate?
We all know that a hole is a kind of cosmic funnel: it swallows everything that comes close enough to be trapped in its gravitational…
Astrophysicists solve the mystery of a 40-year black hole jet with NASA’s IXPE
Blazars are some of the brightest objects in the cosmos. They are composed of a supermassive black hole feeding off material swirling around it in…
Why does the universe have a speed limit?
The universe seems to have a speed limit, a maximum speed that nothing can exceed. But why is this speed not infinite? And why is…
The Hubble telescope manages to capture a rare collision between galaxies
Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, J. Dalcanton The James Webb Space Telescope has been getting all the attention lately, but Hubble, which has been…
The farthest known galaxy candidate discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope
Two regions of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, whose gravity magnifies light from extremely distant background galaxies. The colors are composed of several infrared images…