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With the imaging spectrograph blocking out the bright light from the region at the heart of the quasar, Hubble was able to see the structure around the black hole like never before.

Bin Ren of the Côte d’Azur Observatory and Université Côte d’Azur in France explained in a NASA statement that Hubble found lots of “weird things” around the feeding supermassive black hole powering 3C 273.

“We’ve got a few blobs of different sizes and a mysterious L-shaped filamentary structure,” Ren said. “This is all within 16,000 light-years of the black hole.”

Even matter ejected by black holes can run into objects in the dark. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have found an unusual mark from a giant black hole’s powerful jet striking an unidentified object in its path.

The discovery was made in a galaxy called Centaurus A (Cen A), located about 12 million light-years from Earth. Astronomers have long studied Cen A because it has a supermassive black hole in its center sending out spectacular jets that stretch out across the entire galaxy. The black hole launches this jet of high-energy particles not from inside the black hole, but from intense gravitational and magnetic fields around it.

Continue reading “Chandra sees black hole jet stumble into something in the dark” »

Ultra-high energy cosmic rays, which emerge in extreme astrophysical environments—like the roiling environments near black holes and neutron stars—have far more energy than the energetic particles that emerge from our sun. In fact, the particles that make up these streams of energy have around 10 million times the energy of particles accelerated in the most extreme particle environment on earth, the human-made Large Hadron Collider.

Where does all that energy come from? For many years, scientists believed it came from shocks that occur in extreme astrophysical environments—when, for example, a star explodes before forming a black hole, causing a huge explosion that kicks up particles.

That theory was plausible, but, according to new research published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the observations are better explained by a different mechanism. The source of the cosmic rays’ energy, the researchers found, is more likely magnetic turbulence. The paper’s authors found that magnetic fields in these environments tangle and turn, rapidly accelerating particles and sharply increasing their energy up to an abrupt cutoff.

New analysis supports Einstein’s relativity and narrows neutrino mass ranges, hinting at evolving dark energy.

Gravity, the fundamental force sculpting the universe, has shaped tiny variations in matter from the early cosmos into the vast networks of galaxies we see today. Using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), scientists have traced the evolution of these cosmic structures over the past 11 billion years. This research represents the most precise large-scale test of gravity ever conducted, offering unprecedented insights into the universe’s formation and behavior.

Introduction to DESI and its global impact.

Researchers have developed a new computational method to explore the neutron matter inside neutron stars at densities higher than previously studied.

This method provides insights into the behavior of neutrinos during supernova explosions, enhancing the accuracy of simulations and potentially improving our understanding of such cosmic events.

Advances in Neutron Matter Simulation.

By studying ancient, supermassive black holes called quasars, MIT PhD student Dominika Ďurovčíková is illuminating an early moment in the universe, when the galaxies could first be observed.

Distance, Mass, and Advanced Observations

To refine the measurements of Cygnus X-1, astronomers used parallax—a technique that calculates stellar distances based on their apparent motion against the backdrop of distant stars as Earth orbits the Sun. Using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), a network of 10 radio telescopes across the United States, researchers tracked the system’s full orbit over six days. They determined that the black hole lies about 7,200 light-years from Earth, significantly farther than the previous estimate of 6,000 light-years.

This updated distance means its blue supergiant companion star is also more massive and brighter than expected, with a mass 40 times that of the Sun. Combined with the black hole’s orbital period, these findings provided the recalculated mass of Cygnus X-1’s black hole.

Researchers have documented a rare supernova, 2023ufx, the most metal-poor stellar explosion observed, located in a dwarf galaxy.

This finding is crucial as it mirrors the early universe’s conditions, aiding astronomers in understanding galaxy formation and evolution.

Discovery of a Unique Supernova.

NASAs new Landolt mission, launching in 2029, will orbit an artificial star around Earth to enhance stellar and planetary measurements.

This will improve the accuracy of stellar brightness calculations by over ten times, aiding in our understanding of planets orbiting these stars and providing insights into dark energy.

The Landolt Mission