Gravitational Waves
Simulating the Last Moments Before Neutron Stars Merge
When stars reach the end of their life cycle, they shed their outer layers in a supernova. What is left…
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…
Colliding Neutron Stars are the Ultimate Particle Accelerators
Gamma-ray telescopes observing neutron star collisions might be the key to identifying the composition of dark matter. One leading theory…
Gravitational Waves Could Show us the First Minute of the Universe
Astronomers routinely explore the universe using different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum from the familiar visible light to radio waves…
Simulation Perfectly Matches What We See When Neutron Stars Collide
There are many mysteries in the world of astronomy and a fair number relate to the processes during the end…
Vampire Stars Get Help from a Third Star to Feed
Some stars are stuck in bad binary relationships. A massive primary star feeds on its smaller companion, sucking gas from…
Vera Rubin Will Find Binary Supermassive Black Holes. Here’s How.
When galaxies merge, we expect them to produce binary black holes (BBHs.) BBHs orbit one another closely, and when they…
New Telescopes to Study the Aftermath of the Big Bang
The NSF just awarded researchers at UChicago to start developing the CMB-S4 experiment, which will map the earliest moments of…
A Black Hole Switched On in the Blink of an Eye
A new study describes how astronomers discovered a supermassive black hole that suddenly "switched on" and became
Gravitational Waves Can Be Gravitationally Lensed, and This Could Provide Another Way to Measure the Expansion of the Universe
Astronomers can never have enough ways to measure the expansion in the Universe, from nearby stars to distant quasars. A…