BALTIMORE — The James Webb Space Telescope is living up to its promise as a wayback machine. The spectacularly sensitive observatory is finding and confirming galaxies more distant, and therefore…
Category: Astronomy
A bizarre gamma-ray burst breaks the rules for these cosmic eruptions
Astronomers have spotted a bright gamma-ray burst that upends previous theories of how these energetic cosmic eruptions occur. For decades, astronomers thought that GRBs came in two flavors, long and…
In 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope brought us new views of the cosmos
This year marked the end of a decades-long wait for astronomers. The James Webb Space Telescope is finally in action. The telescope, which launched in December 2021, released its first…
A new supercomputer simulation animates the evolution of the universe
The infant universe transforms from a featureless landscape to an intricate web in a new supercomputer simulation of the cosmos’s formative years. An animation from the simulation shows our universe…
Here’s why some supermassive black holes blaze so brightly
For the first time, astronomers have observed how certain supermassive black holes launch jets of high-energy particles into space — and the process is shocking. Shock waves propagating along the…
These are our top space images of all time
We’ve never seen images of space as astounding as those from the James Webb Space Telescope, which shared its first cosmic vistas in July. The pictures have left us dazzled,…
Part of a lost, ancient star catalog has now been found
Fragments of a star catalog from the second century B.C. have turned up in a manuscript that had been erased and written over centuries later. A new analysis of the…
Astronomers have found the closest known black hole to Earth
The closest black hole yet found is just 1,560 light-years from Earth, a new study reports. The black hole, dubbed Gaia BH1, is about 10 times the mass of the…
Meet the BOAT, the brightest gamma-ray burst of all time
The brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded recently lit up a distant galaxy — and astronomers have nicknamed it the BOAT, for Brightest of All Time. “We use the boat emoji…
Particles from space provide a new look inside cyclones
Particles raining down from space offer 3-D views inside swirling tropical storms. Muons created from cosmic rays that smash into Earth’s upper atmosphere have revealed the inner workings of cyclones…
