accretion disks
Black Holes Dominate Large Regions of Space, But They’re Mysterious
In the beginning, the Universe was all primordial gas. Somehow, some of it was swept up into supermassive black holes…
If We Want To Find Life-Supporting Worlds, We Should Focus on Small Planets With Large Moons
There's no perfect way of doing anything, including searching for exoplanets. Every planet-hunting method has some type of bias. We've…
Gluttonous Black Holes Eat Faster Than Thought. Does That Explain Quasars?
At the heart of large galaxies like our Milky Way, there resides a supermassive black hole (SMBH.) These behemoths draw…
Astronomers Precisely Measure a Black Hole's Accretion Disk
Actively feeding supermassive black holes are known as quasars, and they can outshine all the stars of their host galaxy.…
Advanced Life Should Have Already Peaked Billions of Years Ago
Did humanity miss the party? Are SETI, the Drake Equation, and the Fermi Paradox all just artifacts of our ignorance…
Astronomers Have a New Way to Find Exoplanets in Cataclysmic Binary Systems
Have you heard of LU Camelopardalis, QZ Serpentis, V1007 Herculis and BK Lyncis? No, they're not members of a boy…
A Star Passed too Close and Tore Out a Chunk of a Protoplanetary Disk
When it comes to observing protoplanetary disks, the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array (ALMA) is probably the champion. ALMA was the…
Black Hole Simulation Solves a Mystery About Their Accretion Disks
A new study by an international team of astrophysicists have validated an age-old theory about how accretion disks behave.
Astronomy Without A Telescope – Blazar Jets
[/caption] Polar jets are often found around objects with spinning accretion disks – anything from newly forming stars to ageing…
Caught in the Act! Merging Galaxies Create a Binary Quasar
[/caption] Excellent teamwork by astronomers working in two different wavebands – x-ray and optical - has led to the discovery…