This year's Nobel Prize in Physics is being awarded "for contributions to our understanding of the evolution of the universe and Earth's place in the cosmos," with one half to James Peebles "for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology" and the other half jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz "for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star."
Based on direct observations researchers have discovered massive filaments between galaxies in a proto-cluster, extending over more than 1 million parsecs and providing the fuel for intense formation of stars and the growth of super massive black holes within the proto-cluster.
Read moreAstronomers have pieced together the cannibalistic past of our neighboring large galaxy Andromeda, which has now set its sights on the Milky Way as its next main course.
Read moreThe 'special relationship' between supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their hosts — something astronomers and physicists have observed for quite a while — can now be understood as a bond that begins early in a galaxy's formation and has a say in how both the galaxy and the SMBH at its center grow over time, according to a new study.
Read moreAstronomers have discovered a collection of 12 galaxies which existed about 13.0 billion years ago. One of the 12 galaxies is a giant object, known as Himiko, which was named for a mythological queen in ancient Japan. This discovery suggests that large structures such as protoclusters already existed when the Universe was only about 800 million years old, 6% of its present age.
Read moreAn experiment shows that one of the basic units of life — nucleobases — could have originated within giant gas clouds interspersed between the stars.
Read moreNew research by astrophysicists reveals how the gas and energy expelled by stars are returned to the universe, and in what forms. It also found that the elements produced by dying stars are transferred through a process of fragmentation and recycled into new stars and planets.
Read moreFor decades, physicists have been attempting to reconcile quantum mechanics, the physics of the very small, with gravity, the physics of the very large. While many academics are working on quantum gravity, they often use models that don't consider certain aspects of our own universe, like its accelerated expansion. A team reports a new approach to quantum gravity using a model that more closely matches our reality.
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