At the center of our galaxy is the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. Though it has a history of flickering, it has never glowed like it did in April and May, new research tells us. Twice, both times over the course of four nights, the light around its core glowed at “unprecedented” levels—so much that some astronomers believed they’d discovered a star. Minutes later, the …
A project helmed by an international team of astronomers has resulted in the discovery of some 300,000 “previously unseen light sources” that are believed to be distant galaxies. This new map of the night sky was revealed using the incredibly powerful Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope, with many of the light sources sending radio signals for billions of light years until they reach Earth. (One …
We’ve long known that we could not account for all of the matter in the galaxy—with its evidence visible through gravitational force but its presence simply not observable. Now, two different groups have made a substantial discovery: half of it can be attributed to particles called baryons (rather than dark matter), which links galaxies together “through filaments of hot, diffuse gas,” according to New Scientist. …
