Gravitational Lensing

JWST Reveals Star Formation at Cosmic Noon

Understanding the star formation rate (SFR) in a galaxy is critical to understanding the galaxy itself. Some galaxies are starburst…

1 month ago

No Merger Needed: A Rotating Ring of Gas Creates A Hyperluminous Galaxy

Some galaxies experience rapid star formation hundreds or even thousands of times greater than the Milky Way. Astronomers think that…

3 months ago

Webb Sees Globular Clusters Forming in the Early Universe

Picture the Universe's ancient beginnings. In the vast darkness, light was emitted from a particular galaxy only 460 million years…

4 months ago

Rotation Curves of Galaxies Stay Flat Indefinitely

In his classic book On the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the philosopher Thomas Kuhn posited that, for a new scientific…

4 months ago

If Gravity Can Exist Without Mass, That Could Explain Dark Matter

Dark Matter is Nature's poltergeist. We can see its effects, but we can't see it, and we don't know what…

4 months ago

Gravitational Lenses Could Pin Down Black Hole Mergers with Unprecedented Accuracy

Gravitational wave astronomy has been one of the hottest new types of astronomy ever since the LIGO consortium officially detected…

5 months ago

Formation-Flying Spacecraft Could Probe the Solar System for New Physics

It's an exciting time for the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. Thanks to cutting-edge observatories, instruments, and new techniques,…

6 months ago

The World's Largest Digital Camera is Complete. It Will Go Into the Vera Rubin Observatory

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), was formally proposed in 2001 to create an…

6 months ago

Dwarf Galaxies Banished the Darkness and Lit Up the Early Universe

During the Universe's Dark Ages, dense primordial gas absorbed and scattered light, prohibiting it from travelling. Only when the first…

8 months ago

JWST Sees a Milky Way-Like Galaxy Coming Together in the Early Universe

The gigantic galaxies we see in the Universe today, including our own Milky Way galaxy, started out far smaller. Mergers…

8 months ago