The Universe may have more ways of forging heavy elements than we thought. The creation of heavy elements in the Universe, such as gold, silver, thorium, and uranium, has long been thought to require specific and energetic conditions, such as … Read More
Signals buried deep in gravitational wave observatories’ data point to a collision of two black holes that were clearly born in different places. Almost all of the spacetime ripples observed by experiments such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or … Read More
NASA’s NICER instrument reveals that neutron stars are not as simple as we thought. Pulsars are the lighthouses of the universe. These tiny, compact objects are neutron stars — the remnants of once-massive stars — that spin rapidly, beaming radiation … Read More
A rare nova visible to the eye If you look carefully into the night sky, you might spot a star that wasn’t visible last week. A star named RS Ophiuchi, located about 4,566 light-years away in the equatorial constellation of … Read More
A ghostly “hand” reaching through the cosmos has just revealed new information about massive stars’ violent deaths. The spectacular structure is the ejecta from a core-collapse supernova, which astronomers have been able to observe as it blasts into space at … Read More
In neutron stars we can find the strangest and most dangerous substance in The Universe: Strange Matter. What is Strange Matter, how dangerous is it and what can it tell us about the beginning of the Universe? See the answer … Read More