black hole
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Mystery Object in Deep Space Is Confounding Astronomers
The super-dense object doesn’t quite fit with what we know about black holes or neutron stars.
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X-Ray Telescope Spots Black Hole Slowly Devouring a Star
On June 22, 2022, NASA’s Swift Observatory spotted something curious in a galaxy over 500 million light-years away. It was a routine outburst of gas that a team studying the data now believes is evidence of a black hole intermittently gobbling up a star each time the latter draws near. The black hole and its…
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Scientists Propose Webb Telescope Has Detected Stars Powered by Dark Matter
Astronomers looking at ancient light seen by the Webb Space Telescope have found three pinpricks that they think could be “dark stars,” theoretical objects powered by dark matter. Dark matter makes up about 27% of the universe; its partner in ambiguity, dark energy, makes up about 68%. You can do the math: we know stunningly…
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Massive Black Holes Littered the Early Universe, Simulation Suggests
Since the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein were first detected in 2015, astrophysicists have been pondering the gravitational wave background — the cumulative undulations of these spacetime ripples as they cross the cosmos.