A team of astronomers has managed to calculate the speed of a distant supermassive black hole’s spin thanks to the object’s chance meeting with a star—which it promptly destroyed. How …
The cutting-edge Webb Space Telescope has spotted the most distant black hole merger yet, which occurred when the universe was just 740 million years old. It’s the first time astronomers …
The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Milky Way, but a newly spotted object takes the crown for the most …
If you want to stay grounded—which is to say, you want a haunting reminder of your own diminutive size and mortality—do I have the tool for you. Meet Galactic Compass: …
Our Sun is about 330,000 times the mass of Earth, yet it is dwarfed by the black holes that lurk at the centers of galaxies. A team of astronomers recently …
Peering into the deep universe is like peering back through time. Distant galaxies appear as they did two to three billion years ago, and now, astronomers have detected heavier elements …
To make maps of these structures, astronomers turn to individual stars. Each star’s composition records its birthplace, age, and natal ingredients, so studying starlight enables a form of galactic cartography—as …
Scientists leading the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope mission have just released its breathtaking first science images, taken only four months after launch. These new space photos reveal spectacular …
Like any object, black holes take time to grow and form. And like a 6-foot-tall toddler, Fan’s supersize black holes were too big for their age—the universe wasn’t old enough …
A second study, published the same day in Science, shone more light on the mysterious bursts and their variety. This group of researchers, mostly at Australian institutions, spotted the farthest …