Astronomers Discover a “Universal” Trigger for Black Hole Jets
Artist’s impression of a black hole surrounded by glowing stellar debris, with material heating up as it spirals…
Webb Measures Distance to Farthest Fast Radio Burst, Suggesting Origin
First discovered in 2007, fast radio bursts are enigmatic, millisecond-long flashes of radio emission from the distant universe.…
A Quantum Bubble Could End Reality as We Know It. Here’s Why It (Probably) Won’t
Physicists have many delightful theories about how our universe might end, including one that suggests it isn’t in…
Einstein Probe Discovers a Secret Phase of Neutron Star Collisions
Artist’s impression of satellites observing high-energy prompt emission from a binary neutron star merger. SVOM and HXMT detected…
NASA Selects Far-Infrared Telescope as First in New Mission Class
NASA announced Wednesday a mission to explore the history and evolution of the universe, PRIMA (PRobe far-Infrared Mission…
Les Neutrinos: The Ghosts of the Sun, The Great Neutrino Mystery
Dear readers, faithful companions of the lantern and the basketball, Before we speak of the stars, allow me…
Astronomers confirm Einstein’s gravity by viewing light from behind a supermassive black hole
Astronomers detected delayed X-ray flashes consistent with light reflected from the far side of an accretion disk and…
This Photon Survived an ‘Impossible’ Journey to Earth. To Explain it, Physicists Had to Break Einstein
In 2022, astronomers detected an absurdly bright and long-lasting gamma ray burst, GRB 221009A—nicknamed “BOAT,” for “Brightest of…
NASA’s Chandra Unveils Mysterious X-Ray Objects
Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have discovered a new class of objects behaving unlike any they have…
Largest-Ever Physics Survey Raises New Doubts About Our Model of the Universe
A global survey of physicists reveals strikingly little consensus on some of the deepest questions in modern physics,…
Two of the Universe’s Great Mysteries May Have Their Own Dimension
According to the standard model of cosmology, that expansion rate should be the same no matter how you…
Scientists Find a New Way To Hear the Faint “Ringing” of Black Holes
When two black holes collide and merge, they release gravitational waves. These waves can be detected by sensitive…