Astronomers think the galaxy NGC1313 may be home to an intermediate-mass black hole. Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA)
(Inside Science) -- If you have a computer and a few spare moments, you can help search the cosmos for an elusive breed of black hole that astronomers once thought didn't exist.
Black holes come in two main types: stellar-mass black holes, which generally have about 10-24 times the mass of our sun, and the much heavier variant known as supermassive black holes, which c ...read more
An artist's rendition shows the dark matter halo (blue) that astronomers believe surrounds the Milky Way. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada)
A massive clump of dark matter may have plowed through a conga line of stars streaming around the Milky Way, according to new research presented Tuesday at the 234th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
The research, led by Ana Bonaca of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, reveals a curious abnormality in an otherwise uniform strea ...read more
The Large Underground Xenon experiment in South Dakota is one of many projects searching for dark matter and coming up empty. (Credit: LUX Collaboration)
Dark matter, the invisible material that so far shows itself only through the pull of its gravity, was first proposed nearly a century ago. It took another half-century to truly ignite the physics community. But at this point, a plethora of highly advanced projects have gone hunting for dark matter and come up empty.
Now scientists arou ...read more
A hoverfly on a cluster of yellow mustard flowers. (Credit: Dave Hansche/Shutterstock)
Billions of hoverflies from Europe descend on southern Britain each spring. The black and yellow striped bugs are no more than half an inch in length but make the long trek to Britain for the summer.
Once they arrive, the hoverflies pollinate flowers and lay eggs. The fly populations have remained stable unlike those of honeybees and other insects, which have dropped in recent years, researchers fi ...read more
Our Milky Way, shown here in an artist's concept, has strange "ripples" in its outlying regions. New research indicates those ripples were caused by a collision with a dwarf galaxy called Antlia 2. (Credit: ESA)
The Milky Way likely collided with a recently discovered dwarf galaxy called Antlia 2 less than a billion years ago, according to new research presented Wednesday at the 234th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
The research, spearheaded by Sukanya Chakrabarti& ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine