Brian Koberlein
The Universe Could Be Filled With Ultralight Black Holes That Can't Die
Steven Hawking famously calculated that black holes should evaporate, converting into particles and energy over vast periods. But what if…
A Cold Brown Dwarf is Belching Methane Into Space
Brown dwarfs span the line between planets and stars. By definition, a star must be massive enough for hydrogen fusion…
Neutron Stars Could be Heating Up From Dark Matter Annihilation
Astronomers have an intriguing idea for searching for dark matter, measuring the effect of particle self-annihilation inside various astronomical objects,…
The First Atmospheric Rainbow on an Exoplanet?
Astronomers think they've detected the first-ever rainbow-like "glory effect" on an exoplanet. The observations were made with ESA's Cheops mission,…
Hubble Sees a Star About to Ignite
This is an image of the FS Tau multi-star system taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright object at…
Merging Stars Can Lead to Blue Supergiants
Blue supergiants are a rare type of star that is vastly larger and more luminous than the Sun. They can…
Dwarf Galaxies Could be the Key to Explaining Dark Matter
If dark matter is a particle, it's possible that it could self-annihilate, becoming normal matter and releasing gamma radiation. Dwarf…
A 790,000 Year-Old Asteroid Impact Could Explain Seafloor Spherules
Researchers recently collected 850 millimeter-sized spherules from the seafloor near Papua New Guinea. They believed they were caused by an…
Black Holes Need Refreshing Cold Gas to Keep Growing
How were supermassive black holes able to grow so rapidly in the early Universe? Galactic mergers were believed to be…
White Dwarfs Might Be Less Dead Than We Thought
The standard theory says that white dwarfs are the dead cores of main sequence stars. They're out of fuel and…