At the center of a galaxy called NGC 1068, a supermassive black hole hides within a thick doughnut-shaped cloud of dust and gas. When astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study this cloud in more detail, they made an unexpected discovery that could explain why supermassive black holes grew so rapidly in the early Universe.
Read moreAstronomers have completed the largest survey to date of the faint outskirts of nearby galaxies, successfully testing a low-cost system for exploring these local stellar systems. The team find that the diameters of the galactic outskirts — the haloes — appear to correlate with the brightness and type of galaxy.
Read moreAstronomers have used a massive cluster of galaxies as an X-ray magnifying glass to peer back in time, to nearly 9.4 billion years ago. In the process, they spotted a tiny dwarf galaxy in its very first, high-energy stages of star formation.
Read moreAstronomers have discovered that powerful winds driven by supermassive black holes in the centers of dwarf galaxies have a significant impact on the evolution of these galaxies by suppressing star formation.
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New research sheds light on the ages of ice deposits reported in the area of the Moon's south pole — information that could help identify the sources of the deposits and help in planning future human exploration.
Gas blown out of the Milky Way disk from exploding stars falls back onto the galaxy to form new generations of stars. In an effort to account for this recycling process, astronomers were surprised to find a surplus of incoming gas.
Read moreA team of astronomers has discovered that several of the small — or 'dwarf' — galaxies orbiting the Milky Way were likely stolen from the Large Magellanic Cloud, including several ultrafaint dwarfs, but also relatively bright and well-known satellite galaxies, such as Carina and Fornax.
Read moreA hot, molten Earth would be around 5% larger than its solid counterpart. The difference between molten and solid rocky planets is important for the search of Earth-like worlds beyond our Solar System and the understanding of Earth itself.
Read morePhysicists at Stockholm University and the Max Planck Institute for Physics have turned to plasmas in a proposal that could revolutionise the search for the elusive dark matter.
Read moreOut at the boundary of our solar system, pressure runs high. This pressure, the force plasma, magnetic fields and particles like ions, cosmic rays and electrons exert on one another when they flow and collide, was recently measured by scientists in totality for the first time — and it was found to be greater than expected.
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