AstroPhysics & Cosmology

When I say that the universe is 13.77 billion years old, it sounds rather authoritative.

Gigantic black holes lurk at the center of virtually every galaxy, including ours, but we've lacked a precise picture of what impact they have on their surroundings. However, a University of Chicago-led group of scientists has used data from a recently launched satellite to reveal our clearest look yet into the boiling, seething gas surrounding two supermassive black holes, each located in the center of massive galaxy clusters.

In 2023, a subatomic particle called a neutrino crashed into Earth with such a high amount of energy that it should have been impossible. In fact, there are no known sources anywhere in the universe capable of producing such energy—100,000 times more than the highest-energy particle ever produced by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator. However, a team of physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently hypothesized that something like this could happen when a special kind of black hole, called a "quasi-extremal primordial black hole," explodes.

COSMOS-Web uses JWST’s enhanced imaging capabilities The post New cosmic map will put dark-matter theories to the test appeared first on Physics World.

When young stars mix with neutron stars, things get messy.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered a new dwarf galaxy, which received designation CAPERS-39810. Further investigation of CAPERS-39810 revealed that it is an extremely metal-poor galaxy. The discovery was detailed in a paper published January 24 on the arXiv pre-print server.

This premium projector is packed with features, but the LaView Galaxy Projector doesn’t quite match up to its rivals.

Astronomers have produced the most detailed map yet of dark matter, revealing the invisible framework that shaped the Universe long before stars and galaxies formed. Using powerful new observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the research shows how dark matter gathered ordinary matter into dense regions, setting the stage for galaxies like the Milky Way and eventually planets like Earth.

A newly detected gravitational wave, GW250114, is giving scientists their clearest look yet at a black hole collision—and a powerful way to test Einstein’s theory of gravity. Its clarity allowed scientists to measure multiple “tones” from the collision, all matching Einstein’s predictions. That confirmation is exciting—but so is the possibility that future signals won’t behave so neatly. Any deviation could point to new physics beyond our current understanding of gravity.

Arp 220 is a well-known pair of galaxies that are merging. New ALMA observations of polarized light reveal the complex and powerful magnetic fields that shape the process.

This is the first time humans have laid eyes on these deep space objects.

Recently, scientists from institutions including the University of Science and Technology of China made a fundamental breakthrough in nuclear-spin quantum precision measurement. They developed the first intercity nuclear-spin-based quantum sensor network, which experimentally constrains the axion topological-defect dark matter and surpasses the astrophysical limits. The study is published in the journal Nature.

For the first time, researchers have found what seems to be a cloud of dark matter about 60 million times the mass of the sun in our galactic neighbourhood

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features an uncommon galaxy with a striking appearance. NGC 7722 is a lenticular galaxy located about 187 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows NGC 7722, a lenticular galaxy about 187 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. This “lens-shaped” galaxy sits in between more familiar spiral alaxies and elliptical galaxies in the galaxy classification scheme. The dark, dramatic dust lanes are the fingerprints of an ancient galaxy merger.

Arizona skywatchers got treated to both a beautiful sunset and a blazing comet streaking across the skies.

The mystery of dark matter—unseen, pervasive, and essential in standard cosmology—has loomed over physics for decades. In new research, I explore a different possibility: Rather than postulating new particles, I propose that perhaps gravity itself behaves differently on the largest scales.

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How a new AI model could help us better understand noncoding DNA, how doctors kept a man alive without lungs for two days, and what a peculiar flower can teach us about evolution

It isn't scientifically accurate, but if you're looking for something to create a relaxing ambiance, the Jiawen Galaxy Projector Light is an excellent choice.

"JADES-ID1 is giving us new evidence that the universe was in a huge hurry to grow up."

A new image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows the Lupus 3 cloud in Scorpius bursting with young stars that are forming within collapsing clouds of gas and dust.

The six-year results from the Dark Energy Survey highlight unresolved tensions in standard cosmological theory

Deep in the frozen heart of Antarctica, the South Pole Telescope has been watching one of the most extreme neighborhoods in our galaxy, and it's just caught something extraordinary happening there. Astronomers have detected powerful stellar flares erupting from stars near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. These aren't your average stellar flares, we're talking about energy releases so intense they make our sun's most dramatic outbursts look like flickering candles.

Coming from one of the world's largest astrophysical research institutes, I can tell you, the anticipation across the global space science community is electric.

Astronomers have traced the origin point of a jet of material that is thousands of light-years long emanating from the supermassive black hole M87*

AnomalyMatch allows astronomers to process millions of Hubble images at record speed, revealing new galaxies and gravitational lenses

Red Geysers are an unusual class of galaxy that contain only old stars. Despite having plenty of star-forming gas, Red Geysers are quenched. Astronomers have mapped the flow of gas in these galaxies and figure out why they're dormant.

Using the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have found that the quark-gluon plasma that filled the universe just after the Big Bang really was a primordial "soup."

Astronomers have discovered powerful magnetic fields steering gas, dust, and star formation in a dramatic galaxy merger.

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Astronomers at Texas A&M University have discovered a rare, tightly packed collision of galaxies in the early universe, suggesting that galaxies were interacting and shaping their surroundings far earlier than scientists had predicted. Using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the researchers identified an ongoing merger event of at least five galaxies about 800 million years after the Big Bang, along with evidence that the collision was redistributing heavy elements beyond the galaxies themselves.

The venerable Hubble observatory is going strong despite its decades in space and the advent of next-generation successors

The comet broke into pieces after making a close approach around the sun in October 2025.

A pricing leak for the Galaxy S26 series suggests Samsung's Ultra model could arrive with a lower price than expected, sparking fan excitement.

Researchers at KAIST have developed a breakthrough technology that could dramatically improve our ability to image black holes and other distant objects. The team created an ultra precise reference signal system using optical frequency comb lasers to synchronise multiple radio telescopes with unprecedented accuracy. This laser based approach solves long standing problems with phase calibration that have plagued traditional electronic methods, particularly at higher observation frequencies.

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"It is amazing to see that we are gradually moving towards combining these breakthrough observations across multiple frequencies and completing the picture of the jet launching region."

An 11th-century monk saw the famous "Halley's comet" first as a child and later as an adult, new research finds.

New simulations performed on a NASA supercomputer are providing scientists with the most comprehensive look yet into the maelstrom of interacting magnetic structures around city-sized neutron stars in the moments before they crash. The team identified potential signals emitted during the stars' final moments that may be detectable by future observatories.

The James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed the most distant, early galaxy in the known universe. The new contender, MoM-z14, is visible just 280 million years after the Big Bang.

For those who watch gravitational waves roll in from the universe, GW250114 is a big one. It's the clearest gravitational wave signal from a binary black hole merger to date, and it gives researchers an opportunity to test Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, known as general relativity.

Pulsating remnants of stars hint at a clump of invisible matter thought to be about 10 million times the sun’s mass.

Dark matter is a mysterious type of matter that does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, yet is predicted to account for most of the universe's mass. While physicists have gathered extensive indirect evidence of its existence, so far dark matter has never been directly observed, thus its composition remains unknown.

Even given a set of possible quantum states for our cosmos, it's impossible for us to determine which one of them is correct

Recent James Webb Space Telescope data confirms a decade-old theory that the universe's earliest supermassive black holes formed without stars.

AI helped researchers probe the Hubble Space Telescope's archive to find strange celestial objects, including some indescribable by science.

The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration collected information on hundreds of millions of galaxies across the Universe using the U.S. Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at CTIO, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. Their completed analysis combines all six years of data for the first time and yields constraints on the Universe's expansion history that are twice as tight as past analyses.

Last year, astronomers were fascinated by a runaway asteroid passing through our solar system from somewhere far beyond. It was moving at around 68 kilometers per second, just over double Earth's speed around the sun.

The interstellar visitor may still have a few things to tell us before it leaves our solar system.

Nearly a century after Edwin Hubble discovered the universe's expansion, astronomers have finally explained the nagging mystery of why most nearby galaxies rush away from us as if the Milky Way's gravity doesn't exist? The answer lies in a vast, flat sheet of dark matter stretching tens of millions of light years around us, with empty voids above and below that make the expansion appear smoother than it should.

The galaxy MoM-z14 could offer clues to what the universe looked like in its early infancy

Our current understanding of the Cosmos shows that structures emerge hierarchically. First there are dark matter densities, then dwarf galaxies. Those dwarfs then merge to form more massive galaxies, which merge together into even larger galaxies. Evidence of dwarf galaxy mergers is difficult to obtain, but new research found some in the Milky Way's halo.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has topped itself once again, delivering on its promise to push the boundaries of the observable universe closer to cosmic dawn with the confirmation of a bright galaxy that existed 280 million years after the Big Bang.

Astronomers at The University of Manchester have played a leading role in the discovery of a new cosmic object that is much larger than anything astronomers have seen before in the distant universe. This new discovery captures the cosmic moment when a galaxy cluster—among the largest structures in the universe—started to assemble only about a billion years after the Big Bang, 1 or 2 billion years earlier than previously thought possible. This result, made using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and James Webb Space Telescope, is described in a paper published in the journal Nature.

DeepMind’s AlphaGenome AI model could help solve the problem of predicting how variations in noncoding DNA shape gene expression

Physicists observed the first clear evidence that quarks create a wake as they speed through quark-gluon plasma, confirming the plasma behaves like a liquid.

Scientists continue to mine data gathered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, retired in 2018, and continue to turn up surprises. A new paper reveals the latest: a possible rocky planet slightly larger than Earth, orbiting a sun-like star about 146 light-years away. The candidate planet, HD 137010 b, might be remarkably similar to Earth, but it has one potentially big difference: It could be colder than perpetually frozen Mars.

A team of researchers studying the uncertainties associated with a phenomenon known as cosmic birefringence has developed a method to reduce uncertainties in its observational measurements, according to a new study published in Physical Review Letters on January 27. The study is the first to quantitatively address the uncertainty surrounding the birefringence angle, which is a crucial observational quantity that could provide clues to unknown physical theories breaking the universe's left-right symmetry, and to understanding dark matter and dark energy.

JWST has revealed a strange early universe filled with ultra-bright “blue monster” galaxies, mysterious “little red dots,” and black holes that seem far too massive for their age. A new study proposes that dark stars—hypothetical stars powered by dark matter—could tie all these surprises together. These exotic objects may have grown huge very quickly, lighting up the early cosmos and planting the seeds of supermassive black holes.

In its first moments, the infant universe was a trillion-degree-hot soup of quarks and gluons. These elementary particles zinged around at light speed, creating a "quark-gluon plasma" that lasted for only a few millionths of a second. The primordial goo then quickly cooled, and its individual quarks and gluons fused to form the protons, neutrons, and other fundamental particles that exist today.

Marvel Studios' 'Wonder Man' arrives on Disney+ in January 2026, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Here's how the series fits into the MCU timeline and wider story.

When astronomers look out into the cosmos, they see supermassive black holes (SMBH) in two different states. In one state, they're dormant. They're actively accreting only a tiny amount of matter and emit only faint, weak radiation. In the other, they're more actively accreting matter and emitting extremely powerful radiation. These are normally called active galactic nuclei (AGN).

Some galaxies eject powerful streams of charged particles—jets—from their centers into space. The prominent jet of Messier 87 (M87) in the constellation Virgo is visible over distances of 3,000 light-years and can be observed over the full electromagnetic spectrum. It is powered by the central engine, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy with a mass of around 6 billion times that of our sun. The exact location around the black hole where the jets originate is still unknown.

Using various space telescopes and ground-based facilities, astronomers have performed X-ray and radio observations of an accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar known as MAXI J1957+032. Results of the observational campaign, published on the arXiv preprint server and forthcoming in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, provide more insights into the nature of this pulsar.

Six anomalies found in Hubble’s archives. A pair of astronomers at the European Space Agency (ESA) discovered more than 800 previously undocumented "astrophysical anomalies" hiding in Hubble's archives. To do so, researchers David O'Ryan and Pablo Gómez trained an AI model to comb through Hubble's 35-year dataset, hunting for strange objects and flagging them for manual review. It's "a treasure trove of data in which astrophysical anomalies might be found," O'Ryan said in a statement. Studying space is hard. There's lots of it, it's noisy, and the flood of data generated by tools like the Hubble Space Telescope can overwhelm even large research teams. And sometimes space is weird. … Read the full story at The Verge.

Samsung's first Galaxy S26 teaser spotlights a new privacy screen feature, hinting at a stronger focus on user protection in its next flagship.

Observations with the Event Horizon Telescope enable researchers to localize the likely base of the central outflow in a massive galaxy.

A new search for emerging jets at CERN has ruled out key dark‑sector scenarios The post ATLAS narrows the hunt for dark matter appeared first on Physics World.

Researchers developed a method to reduce uncertainty in cosmic birefringence, sharpening the angle tied to parity violation, dark matter, and dark energy.

Author(s): Michael SchirberDark matter having a small electric charge would presumably generate a magnetic-field variation on Earth’s surface, but observations find no such signal. [Physics 19, s10] Published Tue Jan 27, 2026

Scientists analyzed more than 100 million image cutouts from a Hubble Space Telescope archive and found hundreds of previously undiscovered objects

Supermassive black holes grow larger by accreting matter. When they're actively accreting matter they're called active galactic nuclei (AGN). AGN are the most luminous sources of persistent radiation in the Universe, yet they turn on and off as the SMBH passes through quiet and active phases. Astronomers have found one that is just turning on its powerful jets after a long period of dormancy.

The comet bearing Edmond Halley's name may have been misnamed! New research from Leiden University reveals that an 11th Century English monk recognised the famous comet's periodicity centuries before the British astronomer. Eilmer of Malmesbury witnessed the comet's appearances in both 989 and 1066, linking the two observations and understanding they represented the same celestial visitor returning after decades, a realisation documented by the medieval chronicler William of Malmesbury but overlooked by scholars until now. The discovery challenges whether history's most famous comet should continue bearing Halley's name when a Benedictine monk beat him to the discovery by more than 600 years.

Astronomers use the term dark energy to refer to energy in the universe that is unaccounted for by ordinary matter but necessary to explain cosmology. Astronomy, however, isn't the only field with missing energy. Rice University professor Peter Wolynes and postdoctoral researcher Carlos Bueno, along with Universidad de Buenos Aires collaborators Ezequiel Gaplern, Ignacio Sánchez and Diego Ferreiro, recently published a paper describing the "dark energy" found in the structural protein universe. This missing energy comes from the tension between the form of a protein and its function.

3I/ATLAS has been classified as a natural comet, yet a rare CIA Glomar response has raised questions from scientists and the public about transparency and unanswered cosmic mysteries.

The six-year Dark Energy Survey has released its full results, showing that two leading models of cosmology are equally valid — but both fail to explain one key observation.

Using a brand new data analysis tool, astronomers identified more than 800 strange and previously undocumented space objects.

Computer simulations carried out by astronomers from the University of Groningen in collaboration with researchers from Germany, France and Sweden show that most of the (dark) matter beyond the Local Group of galaxies (which includes the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy) must be organized in an extended plane. Above and below this plane are large voids. The observed motions of nearby galaxies and the joint masses of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy can only be properly explained with this "flat" mass distribution. The research, led by Ph.D. graduate Ewoud Wempe and Professor Amina Helmi, is published in Nature Astronomy.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international team of astronomers has mapped a magnetic highway driving a powerful galactic wind into the nearby galaxy merger of Arp 220, revealing for the first time that its fast, molecular outflows are strongly magnetized and likely helping to drive metals, dust, and cosmic rays into the space around the galaxy.

Why are SMBH in the early Universe so massive? According to astrophysical models, these extraordinarily large SMBH haven't had time to become so massive. Super-Eddington accretion might explain it, but can it explain a very unusual early SMBH recently discovered?

A team of astronomers has employed a cutting-edge, artificial intelligence–assisted technique to uncover rare astronomical phenomena within archived data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The team analyzed nearly 100 million image cutouts from the Hubble Legacy Archive, each measuring just a few dozen pixels (7 to 8 arcseconds) on a side. They identified more than 1,300 objects with an odd appearance in just two and a half days—more than 800 of which had never been documented in scientific literature.

Astronomers have captured the first radio waves ever detected from a rare class of exploding star, a discovery that has given them an unprecedented look into the final years of a massive star before its death in a powerful stellar explosion called a supernova.

Astronomers used AI to scan about 100 million Hubble image cutouts, finding 1,300 rare, odd objects in days, over 800 previously unreported.

"It is exciting to think that Little Red Dots may represent the first direct observational evidence of the birth of the most massive black holes in the universe."

Novel modelling approach suggests that the traditionally ice-rich image of these planets may be skewed The post Uranus and Neptune may be more rocky than icy, say astrophysicists appeared first on Physics World.