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Neutron Star
The Universe’s idea of a ‘typical star’ has changed dramatically over time. When you look out at the Universe today, you’re not seeing it exactly as it is at one particular […]
Binary pulsars are doing what no other measurement has done: measure our galactic acceleration directly. Even though the majority of the matter that makes up our Universe may be completely […]
Two stellar mass black holes, if they merge in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole, could have their gravitational wave signal affected by the strongly curved space around them. […]
It doesn’t propagate at infinite speeds, and that’s a problem for Newton. When you look at the Sun, the light you’re seeing isn’t the light that’s being emitted right now. Instead, […]
With just a few more neutron star mergers, we’ll have the best constraints of all-time. How fast is the Universe expanding? Ever since the expanding Universe was first discovered nearly […]
Just because you have “star” in your name doesn’t mean you are one. When we think about the objects in our Universe, they fall into two categories: self-luminous objects, like stars, […]
There was less than a 2 second delay between gravitational waves and light, but that’s incredibly meaningful. There’s an important rule in relativity that — as far as we know — all objects must […]
It comes from a supernova seen just 33 years ago, and it doesn’t pulse. 33 years ago, a supernova occurred just 168,000 light-years from Earth. This new image of the supernova […]
Think they all burn through their fuel, die, and leave white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes behind? Think again. The day will come when our Sun, like most stars, can […]
A year ago, a puzzling gap existed between black holes and neutron stars. With nearly a year of new data, LIGO solves the puzzle. On Monday, March 16, 2020, astrophysicist Carl […]
One of NASA’s original great observatories, Spitzer showed us the infrared Universe as never before. On January 30, 2020, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope was retired after a 17 year mission. Prior […]
The highest-energy particles on Earth reach enormous energies, but it’s nothing compared to what the Universe can achieve. Deep underground in Europe, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator lives in a […]
If you’re wondering whether the blast wave or the radiation would kill us first, you’re asking the wrong question. As far as raw explosive power goes, no other cataclysm in […]
The NICER experiment, designed to measure neutron stars as never before, just released their first pulsar map, and it’s amazing. After typical supernovae, remnant collapsed cores of matter are left behind. […]
Even before MMA was a combat sport, it was a unique type of astronomy. Today, it’s opening up the Universe as never before. On February 24, 1987, a spectacular signal was […]
Our Universe is 13.8 billion years old, and our Sun formed about 2/3rds of the way through. Here’s what came before it. When it comes to the great cosmic question of […]
It’s been spectacularly confirmed by observation, but theoretically, it couldn’t have been any other way. If the Sun were to spontaneously cease emitting light, we wouldn’t know about it for about […]
Every object in the Universe is constrained by the laws of physics. Does this mean there are any black holes that shouldn’t exist? When it comes to the objects that […]
What’s more massive than the heaviest known neutron star but lighter than the lightest known black hole? LIGO may be about to solve that mystery. Whenever a star is born in […]
There are rules absolutely forbidding it from happening. But some particles do it anyway. All the matter we know of in the Universe is made up of Standard Model particles. Photons […]
Many of them are spinning at nearly the speed of light. When you do the math, there’s no other way it could have been. Take a look out there at the […]
The dream of multi-messenger astronomy is to seen an event with gravitational waves, neutrinos, and light all together. The newest candidate just might get us there. When it comes to cataclysmic […]
13.8 billion years isn’t close to enough time, but if we wait long enough, even our Sun will become one. The Big Bang happened approximately 13.8 billion years ago, and it […]
The visible light portion of the spectrum is tiny compared to the whole thing. Here’s what we’re missing. When you look at the Milky Way in visible light, you might see […]
LIGO and Virgo have now detected a total of 11 binary merger events. But exactly 0 were in the Milky Way. Here’s why. One of the most spectacular recent advances in […]
Even if we don’t destroy ourselves, we always have the Universe to contend with. Wiping out all life on Earth is hard, but causing mass extinctions is easy. The 1991 eruption […]
While the web of dark matter (purple) might seem to determine cosmic structure formation on its own, the feedback from normal matter (red) can severely impact galactic scales. Both dark […]
Gravity gets weaker as the distance squared. But gravitational waves only get weaker as the distance. Why? One of the things we often just accept about the world is that […]
What happened 4.56 billion years ago is the most important part of the cosmic story ever to happen to us. If you were to look at our Universe at the time […]
In 2017, we saw gravitational waves a neutron star merger for the first and only time. And it keeps getting more interesting. On August 17, 2017, a cosmic signal arrived […]