Borisov is the first identified comet to visit our solar system (from another star). It is the second known interstellar object to pass through the solar system. The comet’s nucleus (a cluster of dust and ices) is approximately 975 meters...
MAMBO-9 is the most distant galaxy that has ever been detected without using a gravitational lens. It was observed directly via the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. The galaxy was formed just 970 million years after the Big Bang...
A new study suggests that the Dark Ages completely ended around 12 billion years ago. This is when the first generation of stars and galaxies lit up the universe. It is estimated that our universe is 13.8 billion years old, with an uncertainty of...
There may be an entire class of black holes that we didn’t know about. Astronomers have spotted a black hole that is smaller than the smallest known black holes in the universe. It is just 19 kilometers wide and has a mass of about 3.3 solar...
NASA shares a ‘pumpkin Sun’ image that was captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in 2014. The image is colorized in yellow and gold tones to create a Halloween-themed appearance. Like other stars, our Sun is a ball of gas. In terms...
Astronomers discover a massive planet orbiting a small star. The mass of the planet is way more than what current theoretical models predict. It lies 30 light-years away from Earth and has a mass nearly half as big as Jupiter. Like our solar...
The new simulation shows how gravity distorts light around the black hole. This is the most accurate computer-generation visualization of a black hole to date. It clearly shows all crucial components of a black hole, including accretion disk and...
A large number of specific types of particles (known as scalars) were created during cosmic inflation. If dark matter has any connection with these scalar particles, it may predate the Big Bang. About 85 percent of the mass of the universe is made...
Although space mining sounds pretty sci-fi, it will be a reality in the future. Researchers are investigating the performance of the particular bacterium to extract metals from asteroids. The bacterium named Shewanella oneidensis has been known to...
Astrophysicists study 41 nearby galaxy clusters to reveal connections between hot gas, dark matter, and stars. The sum of stars and gas across the clusters is a fixed fraction of the dark matter mass. According to the Standard Model of particle...
Researchers measure the current system responsible for Jupiter’s powerful auroras, using data obtained from Juno. They found Jupiter’s auroras are mostly powered by alternating currents, instead of direct currents. Jupiter’s...
The possibility of the existence of white holes was first suggested by a theoretical astrophysicist Igor Novikov in 1964. A white hole is a hypothetical region in spacetime, which is predicted as part of a solution to the Einstein field equations...