24 July 2020
A first of its kind white dwarf merger with a dense compact object discovered by students
... up with only one plausible scenario to explain it all; the merger of a white dwarf with either a neutron star or a black hole. “The explosion is likely to be the result of a merger between a white dwarf (the core of a star after it has evolved...
15 March 2018
A shining light in physics is lost
... breaks down and density and gravity become infinite – a point that is theorised to exist deep within a black hole. Hawking also proposed that black holes should emit heat and eventually pop out of existence - a process that for miniature...
29 September 2017
Virgo and LIGO detect fourth gravitational wave signal
... report that a fourth confirmed detection of a binary black hole merger has been recorded. It is the first time...ever detection of gravitational waves resulting from the collision of two black holes in a galaxy a billion light-years away," says France...
13 November 2017
Powerful outburst points to new class of high-energy transients
... houses at the centres of galaxies and they are thought to result from the accretion of matter by a residing supermassive black hole. The international team of astronomers who discovered PS1-10adi have thus looked at whether AGN activity is behind...
22 May 2017
Researchers create largest-ever 3D map of the Universe
... can be measured and used as a ‘standard ruler’ for length scale in cosmology. For this, quasars powered by supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies were used as they appear as a very bright point source in the distant past. Quasars...
19 February 2020
Molecular oxygen detected for the first time in another galaxy
...Quasars are a type of extremely luminous AGN. They derive their energy from material spiralling in towards an enormous black hole at the center of a galaxy forming a disk called an accretion disk. As the gas and dust spirals closer in, it accelerates...
