Space and astronomy news
First looks would tell most observers that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and very young stars have nothing in common. But that’s not true. Astronomers have detected a supermassive black hole (SMBH) whose growth is regulated the same way a baby star’s is: by magnetic winds.
Continue reading “Growing Black Holes Have Much in Common With Baby Stars”
Four years ago, the supermassive black hole hidden in the heart of galaxy SDSS1335+0728 roared awake and announced its presence with a blast of radiation. It marks the first time astronomers witnessed a sudden activation of a supermassive black hole in real time.
Continue reading “Astronomers See a Black Hole Wake Up from its Ancient Slumber”
The early Universe was a strange place. Early in its history—in the first quintillionth of a second—the entire cosmos was nothing more than a stunningly hot plasma. And, according to researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this soup of quarks and gluons was accompanied by the formation of weird little primordial black holes (PHBs). It’s entirely possible that these long-vanished PHBs could have been the root of dark matter.
Continue reading “A New Way to Prove if Primordial Black Holes Contribute to Dark Matter”
One of the main scientific objectives of next-generation observatories (like the James Webb Space Telescope) has been to observe the first galaxies in the Universe – those that existed at Cosmic Dawn. This period is when the first stars, galaxies, and black holes in our Universe formed, roughly 50 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang. By examining how these galaxies formed and evolved during the earliest cosmological periods, astronomers will have a complete picture of how the Universe has changed with time.
As addressed in previous articles, the results of Webb‘s most distant observations have turned up a few surprises. In addition to revealing that galaxies formed rapidly in the early Universe, astronomers also noticed these galaxies had particularly massive supermassive black holes (SMBH) at their centers. This was particularly confounding since, according to conventional models, these galaxies and black holes didn’t have enough time to form. In a recent study, a team led by Penn State astronomers has developed a model that could explain how SMBHs grew so quickly in the early Universe.
Continue reading “New Simulation Explains how Supermassive Black Holes Grew so Quickly”
The supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy is a quiet monster. However, Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short) is not totally dormant. Occasionally it gobbles down a blob of molecular gas or even a star and then suffers a bit of indigestion. That emits x-ray flares to surrounding space.
Continue reading “Echoes of Flares from the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole”
We live in a Universe studded with black holes. Countless stellar mass and supermassive ones exist in our galaxy and most others. It’s likely they existed as so-called “primordial” black holes in the earliest epochs of cosmic history. Yet, there seems to be a missing link category: intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH). Astronomers have searched for these rare beasts for years and there’s only one possible observation thanks to gravitational-wave data. So, where are they?
Continue reading “Globular Clusters Should Contain More Intermediate-mass Black Holes”
What is Dark Matter? That question is prominent in discussions about the nature of the Universe. There are many proposed explanations for dark matter, both within the Standard Model and outside of it.
One proposed component of dark matter is primordial black holes, created in the early Universe without a collapsing star as a progenitor.
Continue reading “Primordial Black Holes Can Only Explain a Fraction of Dark Matter”
The earliest black holes in the Universe called primordial black holes (PBHs), are strong contenders to help explain why the Universe is heavier than it looks. There’s only one problem: these miniature monsters haven’t exactly been observed—yet. But, when astronomers do find them, they might turn out to be part of the Universe’s dark matter component.
Continue reading “Where are All the Primordial Black Holes?”
Studying gas in the Universe is no easy task. We often look to ‘non-visible’ wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum such as X-rays. The Chandra X-Ray observatory has been observing a vent of hot gas blowing away from the centre of the Milky Way. Located about 26,000 light years away, the jet extends for hundreds of light years and is perpendicular to the disk of the Galaxy. It is now thought the gas has been forced away from the centre of the Milky Way because of a collision with cooler gas lying in its path and creating shockwaves.
Continue reading “Hot Gas is Being Vented Away from the Center of the Milky Way”
Over the last few months, Universe Today has explored a plethora of scientific fields, including impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, comets, planetary atmospheres, planetary geophysics, cosmochemistry, meteorites, radio astronomy, extremophiles, and organic chemistry, and how these various disciplines help scientists and the public better understand our place in the cosmos.
Continue reading “Black Holes: Why study them? What makes them so fascinating?”