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Object located around a black hole 5 billion light-years from Earth has been measured

A team of researchers has accurately detected a structure in the innermost region of a quasar (small, very far objects that emit huge amounts of energy, comparable to that emitted by a whole galaxy) at a distance of more than five billion light-years from Earth.

Feb 25th, 2016

Study finds surprising variability in shape of Van Allen Belts

The shape of the two electron swarms 600 miles to more than 25,000 miles from the Earth's surface, known as the Van Allen Belts, could be quite different than has been believed for decades, according to a new study of data from NASA's Van Allen Probes.

Feb 24th, 2016

Putting the universe on the scales

Researchers used a combination of radio and optical telescopes to identify the precise location of a fast radio burst in a distant galaxy, allowing them to conduct a unique census of the Universe's matter content.

Feb 24th, 2016

ATLASGAL survey of Milky Way completed

A spectacular image of the Milky Way has been released to mark the completion of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL). The APEX telescope has mapped the full area of the Galactic Plane visible from the southern hemisphere for the first time at submillimeter wavelengths and in finer detail than space-based surveys.

Feb 24th, 2016

Hubble directly measures rotation of cloudy 'super-Jupiter'

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have measured the rotation rate of an extreme exoplanet by observing the varied brightness in its atmosphere. This is the first measurement of the rotation of a massive exoplanet using direct imaging.

Feb 18th, 2016

Five-dimensional black hole could 'break' general relativity

Researchers have shown how a bizarrely shaped black hole could cause Einstein's general theory of relativity, a foundation of modern physics, to break down. However, such an object could only exist in a universe with five or more dimensions.

Feb 18th, 2016

New clues in the hunt for the sources of cosmic neutrinos

The sources of the high-energy cosmic neutrinos that are detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory buried in the Antarctic ice may be hidden from observations of high-energy gamma rays, new research reveals. These high-energy cosmic neutrinos, which are likely to come from beyond our Milky Way Galaxy, may originate in incredibly dense and powerful objects in space that prevent the escape of the high-energy gamma rays that accompany the production of neutrinos.

Feb 18th, 2016

Space mission to unveil mysteries of the hot universe

The ASTRO-H X-ray space telescope mission is being launched in Japan this week.

Feb 12th, 2016

Gravitational waves found, black-hole models led the way

Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity in 1916, and now, almost exactly 100 years later, the faint ripples across space-time have been found. The advanced Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory (aLIGO) has achieved the first direct measurement.

Feb 11th, 2016

'Cannibalism' between stars

Astronomers discovered stars may not accumulate their final mass steadily, as was previously thought, but in a series of violent events manifesting themselves as sharp stellar brightening. The young FU Orionis star in the constellation of Orion is the prototype example, which showed an increase in brightness by a factor of 250 over a time period of just one year, staying in this high-luminosity state now for almost a century.

Feb 8th, 2016

A violent wind blown from the heart of a galaxy tells the tale of a merger

Researchers have succeeded in revealing the detailed structure of a massive ionized gas outflow streaming from the starburst galaxy NGC 6240.

Feb 4th, 2016

Galactic center's gamma rays unlikely to originate from dark matter, evidence shows

Bursts of gamma rays from the center of our galaxy are not likely to be signals of dark matter but rather other astrophysical phenomena such as fast-rotating stars called millisecond pulsars, according to two new studies.

Feb 3rd, 2016

Moon was produced by a head-on collision between Earth and a forming planet

The moon was formed by a violent, head-on collision between the early Earth and a 'planetary embryo' called Theia approximately 100 million years after the Earth formed, geochemists and colleagues report.

Jan 29th, 2016

Hubble sees monstrous cloud boomerang back to our galaxy

Hubble Space Telescope astronomers are finding that the old adage 'what goes up must come down' even applies to an immense cloud of hydrogen gas outside our Milky Way galaxy. The invisible cloud is plummeting toward our galaxy at nearly 700,000 miles per hour.

Jan 29th, 2016

Scientists discovered ways to clock the beginning of the Universe

A new paper points out and studies a generic type of signals existing in the primordial universe models, which can be used to model-independently distinguish the inflation scenario from alternatives.

Jan 26th, 2016

Peering into the hottest cosmic hearth

Radio astronomers gaze deep into the heart of an active galaxy.

Jan 26th, 2016