Supermassive black holes have a complicated lifecycle. Sometimes they’re “on”, blasting out tremendous amounts of energy, and sometimes they’re “off’, where they sleep like dragons in their caves. By comparing the proportion of high-energy to low-energy waves emitted by quasars, astronomers are beginning to pin down how many black holes are sleeping, and when they’re likely to wake back up.
Continue reading “Astronomers are Starting to Understand the Quasar Lifecycle”Galaxy Mergers can Boost Star Formation, and it can Also Shut it Down
Galaxy mergers are beautiful sights, but ultimately deadly. In the midst of the collision, the combined galaxy will shine brighter than it ever has before. But that glory comes with a price: all those new stars use up all the available fuel, and star formation grinds to a halt.
Continue reading “Galaxy Mergers can Boost Star Formation, and it can Also Shut it Down”White Dwarf Atmospheres Might Contain the Pulverized Crusts of Their Dead Planets
Astronomers have developed a new technique to search for exoplanets – by looking for their crushed up bones in the atmospheres of white dwarfs. And it’s working.
Continue reading “White Dwarf Atmospheres Might Contain the Pulverized Crusts of Their Dead Planets”Galileo’s Probe Discovered a Mystery at Jupiter, Juno Finally Helped Solve it
In 1995, NASA’s Galileo mission dropped a probe into the atmosphere of Jupiter and found it to be far drier than expected. In 2020, NASA’s follow-up mission Juno explained the mystery: it involves mushballs.
Continue reading “Galileo’s Probe Discovered a Mystery at Jupiter, Juno Finally Helped Solve it”You Know it’s Spring on Mars When the Carbon Dioxide is Starting to Sublimate
The northern hemisphere of Mars is beginning to thaw from winter. But for the red planet, that doesn’t mean that birds will sing and flowers will bloom. It means that the carbon dioxide will sublimate. It’s still beautiful though.
Continue reading “You Know it’s Spring on Mars When the Carbon Dioxide is Starting to Sublimate”Away From the Light Pollution of the Inner Solar System, New Horizons was Able to see how Dark the Universe Really is
Just how dark is the universe, anyway? It’s a pretty hard thing to measure when we’re sitting this close to the sun. But NASA’s New Horizons probe is so far away that the images it takes of the distant universe are able to deliver the most accurate measurement ever of the universe’s diffuse background light.
Continue reading “Away From the Light Pollution of the Inner Solar System, New Horizons was Able to see how Dark the Universe Really is”Astronomers Hoped to see Evidence of Dark Matter Particles Inside Betelgeuse. No Luck
Axions are a hypothetical particle that might explain the existence of dark matter. But it might occasionally interact with normal matter, especially in the cores of stars. A team of physicists have searched for evidence of axions in Betelgeuse and come up with nothing. It doesn’t mean that the axion doesn’t exist, but it does mean that it will be harder to find.
Continue reading “Astronomers Hoped to see Evidence of Dark Matter Particles Inside Betelgeuse. No Luck”Astronomers see Swirling Weather on the Closest Brown Dwarf
Brown dwarfs are the weird not-planets but not-stars in the universe, and astronomers have wondered for decades if their atmospheres are striped like Jupiter’s, or splotchy like the sun’s. A team of astronomers based at the University of Arizona used NASA’s TESS Observatory to find the answer: if you saw a brown dwarf for yourself, it would look more like a giant planet than a star.
Continue reading “Astronomers see Swirling Weather on the Closest Brown Dwarf”This is the Fireworks Galaxy. It’s had ten Supernovae in the Last Century Alone
Say hello to NGC 6946, otherwise known as the Fireworks Galaxy. This little galaxy is the most prolific producer of supernovae in the known universe, popping off those incredible explosions roughly once a decade. It’s secret? An incredibly high rate of star formation.
Continue reading “This is the Fireworks Galaxy. It’s had ten Supernovae in the Last Century Alone”There Should be a few Supernovae in the Milky Way Every Century, but we’ve Only Seen 5 in the Last 1000 Years. Why?
Our galaxy hosts supernovae explosions a few times every century, and yet it’s been hundreds of years since the last observable one. New research explains why: it’s a combination of dust, distance, and dumb luck.
Continue reading “There Should be a few Supernovae in the Milky Way Every Century, but we’ve Only Seen 5 in the Last 1000 Years. Why?”