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From 1 collapsing star, 2 black holes form and fuse (w/video)

Over billions of years, small black holes can slowly grow into supermassive black holes by taking on mass from their surroundings, and also by merging with other black holes. But this slow process can't explain how supermassive black holes existing in the early universe would have formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang. New findings from a group of Caltech researchers help to test a model that solves this problem.

Nov 6th, 2013

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Astronomers find black hole in globular cluster

Last year when a team of astronomers led by a Michigan State University professor discovered two black holes in a collection of stars known as a globular cluster, they weren't sure if their presence was a common occurrence or a unique stroke of luck.

Nov 6th, 2013

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Astronomers establish the strength of high-inclination asteroids

A team of astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the University of Hyogo used the Subaru Prime Focus Camera (Suprime-Cam) mounted on the Subaru Telescope to observe faint asteroids with highly inclined orbits. They found that a smaller fraction of tiny bodies occur among high-inclination asteroids than those near the ecliptic plane.

Nov 6th, 2013

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White dwarfs hide information on dark forces

Researchers from Europe and the USA have ruled out a multitude of possible parameters for dark photons - a type of dark matter and energy - with the help of white dwarfs. In some aspects, the shining of these dying stars gives more information on dark forces than is provided by earth-based laboratories.

Nov 5th, 2013

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Work towards largest telescope contracts awarded

The international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) office awarded contracts to prepare for the world's largest radio telescope yesterday, marking the start of the return on Australia and WA's investment in the ambitious Square Kilometre Array.

Nov 5th, 2013

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A cutting-edge detector technology for astronomical observations

Semiconductors have had a nice run, but for certain applications, such as astrophysics, they are being edged out by superconductors. Ben Mazin, assistant professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara, has developed a superconducting detector array that measures the energy of individual photons.

Nov 4th, 2013

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New tool may unveil inhabitable worlds

Funding for SPIRou, a spectropolarimeter and a high-precision velocimeter optimized for both the detection of habitable Earth twins orbiting around nearby red dwarf stars and the study of the formation of Sun-like stars and their planets, was confirmed today by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) observatory.

Nov 4th, 2013

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Gravity and the robot satellite attitude problem

Using an in-orbit robot to capturing a malfunctioning satellite that is tumbling out of control is currently just a theoretical idea. However, research inspired by nature could take us a small step towards making such science fiction science fact.

Nov 4th, 2013

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