AstroPhysics & Cosmology

Astronomers have identified what may be the first example of a new class of radio galaxy, one whose central black hole appears to have launched powerful jets on four separate occasions. High-resolution observations with the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), combined with data from MeerKAT and the Very Large Array, reveal four pairs of radio structures arranged symmetrically around the central galaxy.

When we think of asteroids, we often think of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that contains the majority of the known asteroids in our solar system. However, our solar system hosts several other populations of asteroids and icy rocks, including the Jupiter Trojan asteroids that orbit in Jupiter’s orbit, and the icy bodies and comets of the Kuiper Belt. But there’s one population of asteroids that often gets overlooked called Centaurs, primarily because their orbits are not in a fixed location and instead whose orbits cross the orbits of the outer planets.

Galaxies are enormous and hold hundreds of billions of stars. These stars form from cold, dense gas. Every large galaxy, including the Milky Way, is wrapped in a huge envelope of gas called the circumgalactic medium, or CGM. This reservoir of raw material stretches 10–20 times the size of the visible portion of the galaxy.

The enduring mystery of Genghis Khan's final resting place — and the extreme lengths his followers took to hide it.

An international team, including researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, has reached a major milestone in

What if the universe’s biggest mystery has no answer?

NASA's PRIMA mission will use spare parts from Webb to do major science at a lower cost.

Could you imagine if pagers made a comeback? Sure, your smartphone would still be your notepad-flashlight-camera-personal assistant-MP3 player-wallet-social media browser. But imagine if pagers made it so easy to do that one important thing—pinging your friends and associates—that we all brought them back into our lives, or adopted them for the first time.

A new study from a Yale-led research team suggests that some of the most interesting black holes in

Strike a bell, and it rings with a pitch and a fading that tell you about the bell: its size, its shape, the metal it is made of. Black holes ring too. When two merge, the newborn black hole shivers and sheds gravitational waves in a brief, dying chord, and since 2015, gravitational-wave detectors have been listening. The notes of that chord, which physicists call quasinormal modes, depend only on the black hole's mass and spin and on the law of gravity itself. Change the law, and the chord changes.

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the universe's oldest light, leftover thermal radiation from about 380,000 years after the big bang. Maps of the CMB offer a picture of the "baby universe" as it was 13.8 billion years ago.

As a star nears the end of its life, it faces two very different fates: It can explode as a supernova, leaving behind a neutron star, or collapse and become a black hole. What determines the outcome remains one of astrophysics' great unanswered questions.

Hubble observations of massive stars in metal-poor dwarf galaxies are revealing clues to why the early universe looks so unusual. Researchers found that stellar winds weaken sharply at extremely low metallicities, potentially allowing massive stars to retain more material and evolve in unexpected ways. The team also found large differences in iron abundance, a key ingredient in stellar winds and supernovae.

Astronomers have discovered a faint population of young stars extending far beyond the known edge of the nearby spiral galaxy Messier 74. The finding suggests the galaxy is nearly twice as large as previously measured. The new study was published Sept. 4 in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

No evidence has been found linking 3I/ATLAS to aliens. But the interstellar object, just the third of its kind to be found, shows that life's molecular precursors are abundant in the Milky Way.

When the universe was still in its infancy—only 500 million years after the Big Bang, or about 3% of its current age—some of the universe's earliest stars and galaxies had already formed. Astronomers have long predicted that much of the gas surrounding these young galaxies must have remained relatively pristine, composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, the primordial ingredients available in the newborn cosmos.

Gabrielle Henry is suing the Miss Universe Organization and related companies over a 2025 stage fall in Thailand, alleging a traumatic brain injury, continuing symptoms and disruption to her medical career

Astronomers have discovered the first globular cluster stellar stream beyond the Milky Way, opening a new way to study dark matter in distant galaxies. These faint trails of stars trace a galaxy’s gravitational structure and could eventually help scientists map invisible matter across the universe.

Galaxies and their stars in the early Universe look a lot weirder than those we see today, and astronomers want to know why. A team of researchers at the University of Utah decided to survey certain stars in nearby galaxies as analogs of those that existed when the Universe was still in its infancy. The survey, called the "Treasury of Extremely Metal-Poor O Stars (TEMPOS), used the ultraviolet (UV) light streaming from those relatively close-by stars as detected by the Hubble Space Telescope's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.

Astrophysicists from The University of Hong Kong (HKU), working with a research team led by Beijing Normal University (BNU), have developed a more physically realistic approach to testing how ultralight, or "fuzzy," dark matter could influence gravitationally lensed images. The study is the first to make gravitational-lensing predictions directly from three-dimensional wave simulations of fuzzy dark matter.

A researcher from Sejong University has used a new theory of gravity proposed by Erik Verlinde to predict the observed central surface density of dark matter. The study was published in Physics of the Dark Universe on Sept. 20.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completed its 200,000th orbit around Earth on Sept. 19, marking another milestone for an observatory that continues to transform our understanding of the universe.

If you want to understand the origins of black holes, Yale astronomers say, you need to look beyond the centers of galaxies and start searching in the nooks and crannies. That's where you'll find the "wanderers"—black holes whose journeys may tell the story of how the first black holes formed.

Richard de Grijs looks at how the Roman Space Telescope will change astronomy forever The post How the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will turn the sky into a dataset appeared first on Physics World.

For more than a decade, PI (Physik Instrumente) has supplied precision motion and piezoelectric technologies for the development, alignment, testing, and flight hardware of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Physicists searching through Large Hadron Collider data found no evidence that the machine has been producing microscopic quantum black holes, but the result sharply narrows where such exotic physics could still be hiding. These hypothetical black holes could form if extra spatial dimensions make gravity much stronger at extremely tiny scales, potentially offering clues toward the long-sought theory of quantum gravity.

A team led by University at Buffalo physicists has found a mathematical solution that shows how a frustrated quantum magnet can transition from ultraslow behavior to ultrafast, highly entangled behavior resembling that of a black hole.

The more astronomers learn about the universe's earliest galaxies, the stranger they seem. Many of their surprising properties may be explained by differences between their massive stars and those in galaxies like our own Milky Way. A new University of Utah-led survey with the Hubble Space Telescope is shedding light on the stellar astrophysics operating in early galaxies.

Astronomers looking at Vera C. Rubin Observatory test data have discovered 'Aquarius IV', believed to be a brand new satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located 350,000 light-years away.

An international team of astronomers from ASTRON, JIVE, the University of Amsterdam and other institutions has found the first so-called "microblazar" in the Milky Way. This stellar system is composed of a massive star and a black hole with a jet that is pointed toward Earth. The researchers also identified the region where the jet hits a molecular cloud as a place where particles are accelerated to ultra-high energies, likely up to petaelectronvolts. This would make microblazars one of the most powerful particle accelerators in the galaxy. The research was appears in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Understanding the origin, acceleration and propagation of high-energy cosmic rays has been a century-old mystery in astrophysics. Recently, joint observations from China's Einstein Probe (EP) satellite and the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) showed an extraordinarily long X-ray tail near a pulsar about 4,600 light-years (27 quadrillion miles) from Earth—one that had never before been seen in full. The tail extends about 42 light-years (250 trillion miles) and stretches in the same direction as ultrahigh-energy gamma-ray emission detected by LHAASO, with the two showing a close spatial match.

The discovery of a very early and rare proto-supercluster of infant galaxies may help give clues to the formation of such clusters and their connection to the Cosmic Web.

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has taken its first pictures of space as it heads toward its orbital location. From there, it will begin scanning deep space to uncover more about our universe.

Using data from the Japan–led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory, astronomers have directly observed a giant star's outflow, called a stellar wind, being captured by its compact companion and providing the power source for strong X-ray flares. The research is part of NASA's exploration of the extreme universe to better understand how the cosmos works.

When the James Webb Space Telescope pointed its powerful instruments toward the early universe, scientists were surprised by what it found. At high-redshift (z) values, corresponding to less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang, astronomers witnessed an abundance of galaxies that hosted what appeared to be the "seeds" of supermassive black holes (SMBHs).

Scientists have found evidence that black holes of vastly different sizes may launch powerful jets according to the same universal rule. Supermassive black holes can produce jets soon after tearing apart a star, then fire up again hundreds or thousands of days later when their feeding rate drops to about 2% of the Eddington limit. That same threshold is known to trigger jets from much smaller black holes in the Milky Way.

Alix Earle's stepmother Ashley Dupré details her role in the Eliot Spitzer scandal and affair with TJ Earle in a revealing new essay for Elle.

Scientists theorize that the rapid emergence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the early Universe can be explained by the direct-collapse black hole (DCBH) scenario. In a recent study, astronomers investigated the potential host environments of DCBHs and found that this scenario is a plausible explanation for how the "seeds" of SMBH formed.

New research suggests that a perplexing signal created by a pair of colliding black holes may have been warped by a space-time phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This theory could finally explain the "impossible" size of the merging singularities, but it also poses a new problem.

Coming in several thousand pounds under its projected weight and using just a fraction of the projected fuel has done wonders for its potential time in space.

Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have extended the search for evidence of microscopic black holes produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The formation of these tiny, fleeting objects at the LHC represents one way theorists have sought to resolve anomalies in our understanding of the basic structure of spacetime, while the method used to look for them demonstrates a new way of searching for new particles.

Though the spiral galaxy in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope seems serene, it hides a chaotic secret. This galaxy is NGC 4698, and it lies about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It's one of more than a thousand galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, the nearest large cluster of galaxies bound together by gravity.

A new way to accurately measure the distance between quasar pairs—the blazing, black-hole-powered centers of distant galaxies that appear side by side in space—is showing promise through University of Alberta research.

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope may now have enough fuel for at least 22 years of science, more than double its original 10 year design life. An extremely precise course correction, extra fuel at launch, and additional expected savings could keep the powerful observatory studying the universe for decades.

Author(s): Ryan WilkinsonA proposed lab-based quantum sensor could precisely measure within seconds the warping of spacetime caused by Earth’s rotation. [Physics 19, s112] Published Thu Sep 17, 2026

30 years ago, an amateur astronomer noticed a white dwarf star suddenly getting brighter. New research shows this is due to a Very Late Thermal Pulse, a type of helium flash. The star has heated up and become brighter, and is now called a 'born again' star. It's evolved into a Wolf-Rayet type star, and astronomers will get to watch as it continues to evolve on human timescales.

An early-career Western Australian astrophysicist has helped uncover a universal rule behind one of the most powerful behaviors in the universe: when black holes launch jets. The discovery, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, shows black holes appear to fire off powerful jets at the same critical point in their feeding cycle—whether they are about 10 times the mass of the sun or millions of times heavier.

Computer simulations find that overmassive black holes form readily in the early universe. Their spectra match that of Little Red Dots, which later become powerful quasars and supermassive galactic black holes.

Dark matter is one of the oldest open problems in physics. It makes up most of the matter in the universe and shapes how galaxies form and move, yet no one has ever directly detected it. Physicists have proposed dozens of candidates to explain it: exotic new particles, black holes formed moments after the Big Bang and more.

New supercomputer simulations suggest JWST’s puzzling Little Red Dots are rapidly growing black holes from the early Universe. Extreme radiation may have helped create unusually massive black hole seeds, while dense surrounding gas allowed them to grow dozens of times faster than black holes can today. The simulated objects closely resemble the Little Red Dots seen by Webb. If correct, they could solve the mystery of how enormous black holes formed so soon after the Big Bang.

Can you reconstruct the astrophysics illustration in our interactive slide puzzle? The post Uncertainty and the random universe: a slide puzzle appeared first on Physics World.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, will dismantle the Large Hadron Collider, which helped discover the so-called God Particle, in order to build a more powerful particle accelerator.

NASA has begun flipping on the instruments aboard the Roman Space Telescope to prepare the observatory for its scientific mission as it travels nearly a million miles to its final destination in orbit.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope hasn't yet reached its Sun–Earth L2 orbit, and it already has some good news. NASA has announced that the mission has enough fuel to potentially double its mission length. Though initially scheduled for five years of observations, followed by a five-year extended mission, the entire mission could now reach 22 years.

Some vampire white dwarfs that feed on companion stars can transform into neutron stars, but like a cosmic Goldilocks, conditions must be "just right" for this extreme makeover.

In this excerpt from "On Time: The Physics That Makes the Universe Tick," author and theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili examines the possibility of time starting before the Big Bang, with the cosmological theory of eternal inflation.

A new simulation suggests little red dots, unusually compact objects seen in photos from space, might be one stage in the evolution of black holes.

Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses his latest book, "Lost in Space," a gorgeously illustrated 400-page odyssey around the heavens.

James Webb Space Telescope spies colossal cosmic cloud | Space photo of the day for Sept. 16, 2026

Dwarf galaxies—with a mass equal to about a billion suns, but often considerably less—are the most abundant in the universe. However, because of their low luminosity, they are very difficult to detect. They have mostly been discovered in the vicinity of the Milky Way, in what is called the Local Group, but also, and in large quantities, at greater distances, where current instrumentation cannot distinguish individual stars.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have measured the most powerful gas outflow ever recorded from a "dead" galaxy outside our cosmic neighborhood and found that even outflows this extreme may not be enough to permanently shut down star formation.

Roman Telescope’s 22-Year Fuel Supply NASA fitted the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope with a grapple fixture and

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Originally planned to have a primary five-year mission followed by a five-year extended mission, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will now operate for over two decades.

More good news for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The telescope's first mid-course correction was extremely efficient, using only 10% of the fuel allotted for it. This efficiency, coupled with other factors, means the powerful space telescope will likely have an additional ~12 years of observing time.

Researchers have found that if black holes have certain features, known as "hair," then we could prove it by observing the gravitational ringdown of merging black holes. Future studies could test the no-hair theorem of general relativity.

Astronomers have discovered that winds from a supermassive black hole are about 100 times more powerful than previously thought. XRISM observations showed the resulting turbulence spreading roughly 300,000 light-years, extending far beyond the black hole’s host galaxy. The energy involved rivals several billion supernova explosions, revealing just how dramatically black holes can influence the space around them.

Could the hunt for the universe’s missing matter be the biggest wild goose chase in scientific history?

The latest gravitational-wave discoveries include record-breaking cataclysms

Physicists are searching for what lies underneath the particles we know

Astronomers have found that a nearby galaxy's black hole is blasting out a far more powerful and hidden gas outflow than previously realized. Studying NGC 1068, a well-known galaxy with an actively feeding black hole at its center, researchers combined new infrared observations with existing data to map how the black hole's energy is reshaping the surrounding gas. The results are reported in a paper published Aug. 6 in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A SLAC-led experiment more than a mile beneath a Canadian mine has begun collecting early scientific data ahead

A world-leading dark matter detector observed a rare particle interaction that may represent dark matter, the invisible substance

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When JWST's first science results started rolling in, it was a triumph for scientific vision and persistence. For years, the fate of the powerful space telescope was uncertain. It went way over budget, and for 25 years, troubling conversations accompanied its ongoing development. Several times, it seemed like it would be canceled, and in 2011, Congress came close to ending the program.

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A new study of nine nearby galaxies has shown that actively growing supermassive black holes may contribute to, rather than prevent, star formation in their host galaxies.

"Every one of these objects we study helps us understand a little more about how planets form around other stars."

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The James Webb Space Telescope spots mysterious “little red dots” everywhere. A bold new theory suggests they’re suns dozens of times larger than our entire solar system. The post Black Holes or Black Hole Stars? Astronomers Spar Over Webb Telescope’s ‘Little Red Dots.’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

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Gravity from entropy theory offer hints of why low-entropy regions persist in the universe The post Could quantum information theory explain universe evolution? appeared first on Physics World.

The Hubble and James Webb space telescopes discovered some surprising things about 27 new tiny objects far beyond the orbit of Neptune.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened many wonders of the cosmos to scientists since it began science operations a few years ago. But one thing it hasn't done is find an "exomoon." These still-theoretical moons orbit exoplanets in other star systems, and JWST was supposed to find a plethora of them.

A distant star has captured astronomers' attention over the past decade, teasing them with indications that it will soon explode as a supernova. But new research shows that something else entirely is behind the star's outbursts. Rather than an impending catastrophic explosion, a previously unseen companion may be responsible for the star's behavior.

Black holes are regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. When two black holes orbit each other and merge, they produce gravitational waves (i.e., ripples in spacetime) that can resemble those emitted by mergers involving other exotic compact objects.

A massive worldwide survey of physicists has revealed surprisingly little agreement about some of the universe’s biggest mysteries. No majority backed the standard cosmological model, a leading explanation for dark matter, or any single theory of quantum gravity. One area of stronger agreement stood out: 68% said the Big Bang does not necessarily represent the beginning of time. Researchers say the divisions show just how alive and unsettled the frontiers of physics remain.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered that the ring system of the tiny solar system body is even more interesting than they knew.

An international team, including researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, has reached a major milestone in "precision cosmology" by measuring the amount of helium created in the universe's first five minutes with unprecedented accuracy.

A spectacular new Hubble Space Telescope image reveals almost 30,000 newborn stars around an enormous cavity carved into a stellar nursery in a neighboring galaxy.

The most comprehensive catalogue of exploding white dwarf stars ever assembled has revealed new clues about dark energy, the mysterious force driving the universe’s accelerating expansion.

A new study suggests that the young stars orbiting the Milky Way's central black hole may have a surprisingly ordinary origin. But the black hole's influence may be what makes their origin look more exotic than it really is. Along with shaping their orbits, it may also destroy their stellar companions. The paper outlining this work was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics on Aug. 11.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will let scientists survey the cosmos like never before, thanks in part

As our telescopes have improved and we've been able to peer farther back in time, we've begun finding more fascinating features of the universe. But one thing we haven't found for sure is Population III (Pop III) stars. These were the earliest stars in the universe, formed completely from pristine hydrogen and helium, with no "metals" (i.e., elements heavier than those two) polluting their processes.