Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

A Black Hole has been Found Lurking Just Outside the Milky Way

This artist’s impression shows a compact black hole 11 times as massive as the Sun and the five-solar-mass star orbiting it. The two objects are located in NGC 1850, a cluster of thousands of stars roughly 160 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a Milky Way neighbour. The distortion of the star’s shape is due to the strong gravitational force exerted by the black hole.  Not only does the black hole’s gravitational force distort the shape of the star, but it also influences its orbit. By looking at these subtle orbital effects, a team of astronomers were able to infer the presence of the black hole, making it the first small black hole outside of our galaxy to be found this way. For this discovery, the team used the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Astronomers have found a smaller, stellar-mass black hole lurking in a nearby satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way.  The black hole has been hiding in a star cluster named NGC 1850, which is one of the brightest star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The black hole is 160,000 light-years away from Earth, and is estimated to be about 11 times the mass of our Sun.

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Posted on by Paul M. Sutter

Astronomy Jargon 101: Weak Force

A view of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter detector. Shown are photomultiplier tubes that can ferret out single photons of light. Signals from these photons told physicists that they had not yet found Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) Credit: Matthew Kapust / South Dakota Science and Technology Authority

In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! You’ll be surprised by the power of today’s topic: the weak force!

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Posted on by Paul M. Sutter

Astronomy Jargon 101: Strong Nuclear Force

The pentaquark, a novel arrangement of five elementary particles, has been detected at the Large Hadron Collider. This particle may hold the key to a better understanding of the Universe's strong nuclear force. [Image credit: CERN/LHCb experiment]

In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! Feel the power of today’s topic: the strong force!

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Posted on by Paul M. Sutter

Astronomy Jargon 101: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations

An artist's concept of the latest, highly accurate measurement of the Universe from BOSS. The spheres show the current size of the "baryon acoustic oscillations" (BAOs) from the early universe, which have helped to set the distribution of galaxies that we see in the universe today. Galaxies have a slight tendency to align along the edges of the spheres — the alignment has been greatly exaggerated in this illustration. BAOs can be used as a "standard ruler" (white line) to measure the distances to all the galaxies in the universe. Credit: Zosia Rostomian, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! Listen carefully for today’s topic: baryon acoustic oscillations!

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Posted on by Matt Williams

Not Saying it was Aliens, but ‘Oumuamua Probably Wasn’t a Nitrogen Iceberg…

Artist’s impression of the interstellar object, `Oumuamua, experiencing outgassing as it leaves our Solar System. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser

On October 19th, 2017, astronomers made the first-ever detection of an interstellar object (ISO) passing through our Solar System. Designated 1I/2017 U1′ Oumuamua, this object confounded astronomers who could not determine if it was an interstellar comet or an asteroid. After four years and many theories (including the controversial “ET solar sail” hypothesis), the astronomical community appeared to land on an explanation that satisfied all the observations.

The “nitrogen iceberg” theory stated that ‘Oumuamua was likely debris from a Pluto-like planet in another solar system. In their latest study, titled “The Mass Budget Necessary to Explain ‘Oumuamua as a Nitrogen Iceberg,” Amir Siraj and Prof. Avi Loeb (who proposed the ET solar sail hypothesis) offered an official counter-argument to this theory. According to their new paper, there is an extreme shortage of exo-Plutos in the galaxy to explain the detection of a nitrogen iceberg.

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Posted on by Brian Koberlein

Understanding the Early Universe Depends on Estimating the Lifespan of Neutrons

How NASA's Lunar Prospector could study neutron decay. Credit: Johns Hopkins APL/Ben Smith

When we look into the night sky, we see the universe as it once was. We know that in the past the universe was once warmer and denser than it is now. When we look deep enough into the sky, we see the microwave remnant of the big bang known as the cosmic microwave background. That marks the limit of what we can see. It marks the extent of the observable universe from our vantage point.

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Posted on by Scott Alan Johnston

Fungi Were Able to Absorb Radiation on the ISS. Could Astronauts Grow Their own Radiation Shields in Space?

A lack of effective radiation shielding is one of the biggest challenges still to be overcome if humans are to embark on long-term voyages into deep space. On Earth, the planet’s powerful magnetosphere protects us from the deadliest forms of radiation – those produced by solar flares, and galactic cosmic rays arriving from afar – that stream through the Solar System. Astronauts on the International Space Station, some 408km above the Earth, receive elevated levels of radiation, but are close enough to Earth that they still receive some shielding, and can stay on orbit for up to a year. The same can’t be said for astronauts traveling further out, to the Moon, for example, or, someday, to Mars. Future deep space voyagers will need to bring their own shielding with them – or, as a new paper suggests – grow it along the way.

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