Space

Precise measurements by the ESO instrument HARPS now show that the rotation of the Milky Way is simpler than previously thought - the much debated, apparent 'fall' of neighborhood Cepheid stars…

A group of scientists from Durham University say they have found the "missing link" between small and super-massive black holes. The researchers have discovered that a strong X-ray pulse is emitting…

An international team of scientists predict that our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains a disk of ‘dark matter’, in a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Astronomers Dr…

A long-standing scientific belief holds that stars tend to hang out in the same general part of a galaxy where they originally formed. Some astrophysicists have recently questioned whether that is…

Natarajan found that ultra-massive black holes, which lurk in the centers of huge galaxy clusters like the one above, seem to have an upper mass limit of 10 billion times that of the Sun. (Credit:…

Burst Alert! March 19th was an exciting day for NASA. We know “why” it was special, but we don’t know “why why” it was special. They finally explain the why why today, and you can read all about it…

What do you call a supernova that is not as powerful and doesn't destroy the star? A babynova? Subnova? We'll need to think of something, according to Berkeley astronomer Nathan Smith, because that…

GRB 080319B was so intense that, despite happening halfway across the Universe, it could have been seen briefly with the unaided eye. In a Nature paper, Judith Racusin of Penn State University, and…

Astronomers have been able to study planet-forming discs around young Sun-like stars in unsurpassed detail, clearly revealing the motion and distribution of the gas in the inner parts of the disc.…

When scientific terms become part of the cultural fabric they often lose their meaning. Biology has had its share of modern misunderstandings with 'evolution' becoming colloquial rather than…