Some of the universe’s oldest black holes swoop past our cosmic neighborhood at least once every decade, moving planets in their wake, a new study suggests. And if scientists can detect them, it would provide the first proof that these black holes exist as dark matter. Black holes, regions of immense gravity that even trap … Read more
A roughly 3,000-year-old stone disk covered with enigmatic markings is actually an ancient celestial map marking the brightest stars in the night sky, researchers claim. The tire-size stone, which was discovered near an ancient hill fort in northeastern Italy a few years ago, features 29 carved markings on its front and back that may represent … Read more
In the 1930s, a Swiss astronomer named Fritz Zwicky noticed that galaxies in a distant cluster were orbiting one another much faster than they should have been given the amount of visible mass they had. He proposed than an unseen substance, which he called dark matter, might be tugging gravitationally on these galaxies. Since then, … Read more
Astronomers have accidentally discovered the first known intergalactic trail of stars. The gigantic “stellar stream,” which is around 10 times longer than the Milky Way, suggests that more of these structures could be lurking in deep space, a new study reveals. Stellar streams are elongated threads of gravitationally entwined stars that have likely been ripped … Read more
The strength of solar storms hitting Earth can vary dramatically over short distances, with places just a few dozen miles apart experiencing very different magnetic disruptions, new research finds. This could mean that some areas are more vulnerable to large solar storms than previously appreciated, study co-author Eija Tanskanen, the director of the Sodankylä Geophysical … Read more
Astronomers have discovered a remarkable star system with six planets unlike any in our solar system. According to new research, all six planets orbit the same star in resonance with each other, following an unwavering rhythm that has lasted billions of years. Because of this peculiar resonance, the outermost planet in the system completes one … Read more
Galaxies like our Milky Way are mysteriously hard to come by in our cosmic backyard. New supercomputer simulations have helped astronomers finally answer why. The Milky Way sits within a galaxy cluster on the Supergalactic Plane — a billion light-year-wide sheet, or “supercluster,” upon which large galaxy clusters are pinned. But other spiral galaxies are … Read more
Astronomers have discovered a new class of stellar object that seems to be defying death in inexplicable ways. The object, located about 15,000 light-years from Earth, appears to be a magnetar — the collapsed heart of a once-giant star, now cramming a sun’s worth of mass into a ball no wider than a city, while … Read more
Astronomers have peered back to the dawn of the cosmos to observe time ticking five times more slowly in the early universe than it does now — finally proving a prediction that Albert Einstein made more than a century ago. Researchers spotted the extreme slow-motion effect in data taken from bright cosmic beacons known as … Read more
A malevolent, screaming skull face. A witch cackling in profile. An all-seeing eye, gazing red and furious from the void of space. Like cosmic Halloween decorations, nebulas are some of the most gorgeous objects in the universe, and some of the spookiest. These vast regions of gas and dust, illuminated by starlight and sculpted by … Read more
