Mergers
Evidence of Dark Matter Interacting With Itself in El Gordo Merger
The Standard Model of particle physics does a good job of explaining the interactions between matter's basic building blocks. But…
Two Stars in a Binary System are Very Different. It's Because There Used to be Three
A beautiful nebula in the southern hemisphere with a binary star at it's center seems to break our standard models…
Binary Stars Live Complicated Lives, Especially Near the End
We know what will happen to our Sun. It'll follow the same path other stars of its ilk follow. It'll…
A Black Hole can Tear a Neutron Star Apart in Less Than 2 Seconds
An international team has simulated what happens when a black hole and neutron star merge, and the results were pretty
When Galaxies Collide, Black Holes Don’t Always Get the Feast They Were Hoping for
What happens when galaxies collide? Well, if any humans are around in about a billion years, they might find out.…
A third of the stars in the Milky Way came from a single merger 10 billion years ago
Ten billion years ago the young Milky Way survived a titanic merger with a neighboring galaxy, eventually consuming the whole…
Merging Black Holes and Neutron Stars. All the Gravitational Wave Events Seen So Far in One Picture
The Theory of Relativity predicted the existence of black holes and neutron stars. Einstein gets the credit for the theory…
New Simulation Shows Exactly What’s Happening as Neutron Stars Merge
Neutron stars are the remnants of massive stars that explode as supernovae at the end of their fusion lives. They're…
Astronomers Find the Hollowed-Out Shell of a Dwarf Galaxy that Collided With the Milky Way Billions of Years Ago
In 2005 astronomers found a dense grouping of stars in the Virgo constellation. It looked like a star cluster, except…
Neutron stars of different masses can make a real mess when they collide
When neutron stars collide, they go out with a tremendous bang, fueling an explosion up to a thousand times more…