(July 2, 2026)
Faced with observations of early black holes and galaxies that weren’t expected to exist, scientists have come up with a wealth of new theories to explain them. Now they just need to figure out which ones are true.
Archiv: Galaxien / galaxies
Mapping the Cosmic Web
This visualization of a computer simulation showcases the ‘cosmic web’, the large scale structure of the universe. Each bright knot is an entire galaxy, while the purple filaments show where material exists between the galaxies. To the human eye, only the galaxies would be visible, and this visualization allows us to see the strands of material connecting the galaxies and forming the cosmic web. This visualization is based on a scientific simulation of the growth of structure in the universe. The matter, dark matter, and dark energy in a region of the universe are followed from very early times of the universe through to the present day using the equations of gravity, hydrodynamics, and cosmology. The normal matter has been clipped to show only the densest regions, which are the galaxies, and is shown in white. The dark matter is shown in purple. The size of the simulation is a cube with a side length of 134 megaparsecs (437 million light-years). The camera choreography is a straight line path through the simulation. The camera accelerates from a standstill at the start, flies at a constant speed, and then decelerates to a stop at the end. The “cruising speed” of the camera is 250,000 parsecs per frame, or about 20 million light-years per second (at 24 frames per second). That’s more than 600 trillion times the speed of light. Buckle your seatbelts.
SPHEREx
About the mission
Launch date: Late February 2025
The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) is a planned two-year mission that will survey the sky in optical as well as near-infrared light which, though not visible to the human eye, serves as a powerful tool for answering cosmic questions. Astronomers will use the mission to gather data on more than 450 million galaxies, as well as, more than 100 million stars in our own Milky Way.
NASA to Preview Sky-Mapping Space Telescope Ahead of Launch
NASA will host a news conference at 12 p.m. EST Friday, Jan. 31, to discuss a new telescope that will improve our understanding of how the universe evolved and search for key ingredients for life in our galaxy.
Agency experts will preview NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission, which will help scientists better understand the structure of the universe, how galaxies form and evolve, and the origins and abundance of water. Launch is targeted for no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 27.
Giant gravitational waves: why scientists are so excited
On 29 June, four separate teams of scientists made an announcement1–4 that promises to shake up astrophysics: they had seen strong hints of very long gravitational waves warping the Galaxy.
Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time that are generated when large masses accelerate. They were first detected in 2015, but the latest evidence hints at ‘monster’ ripples with wavelengths of 0.3 parsecs (1 light year) or more; the waves detected until now have wavelengths of tens to hundreds of kilometres.
Here Nature reports what these monster gravitational waves could mean for our understanding of the cosmos, and how the field could evolve.
The Cosmos Is Thrumming With Gravitational Waves, Astronomers Find
(June 28, 2023)
The scientists strongly suspect that these gravitational waves are the collective echo of pairs of supermassive black holes — thousands of them, some as massive as a billion suns, sitting at the hearts of ancient galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away — as they slowly merge and generate ripples in space-time.
“I like to think of it as a choir, or an orchestra,” said Xavier Siemens, a physicist at Oregon State University who is part of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, or NANOGrav, collaboration, which led the effort. Each pair of supermassive black holes is generating a different note, Dr. Siemens said, “and what we’re receiving is the sum of all those signals at once.”
Searching for the Nano-Hertz Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background with the Chinese Pulsar Timing Array Data Release I
(Published 29 June 2023)
Observing and timing a group of millisecond pulsars with high rotational stability enables the direct detection of gravitational waves (GWs). The GW signals can be identified from the spatial correlations encoded in the times-of-arrival of widely spaced pulsar-pairs. The Chinese Pulsar Timing Array (CPTA) is a collaboration aiming at the direct GW detection with observations carried out using Chinese radio telescopes. This short article serves as a „table of contents“ for a forthcoming series of papers related to the CPTA Data Release 1 (CPTA DR1) which uses observations from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope. (…)
A Pulsar Timing Array (PTA; Foster & Backer 1990) is an array of pulsars, which are regularly observed. The times-of-arrival (TOAs) are measured for pulses that we see beams of electromagnetic waves emitted by the pulsars sweeping over the Earth. As the directions of the radiation beam and the pulsar rotational axis do not coincide, we observe this radiation as regular pulses synchronized to the pulsar rotation (Gold 1969).
A Unified Model for the Fan Region and the North Polar Spur: A bundle of filaments in the Local Galaxy
We present a simple, unified model that can explain two of the brightest, large-scale, diffuse, polarizedradio features in the sky, the North Polar Spur (NPS) and the Fan Region, along with several otherprominent loops. We suggest that they are long, magnetized, and parallel filamentary structures thatsurround the Local arm and/or Local Bubble, in which the Sun is embedded. We show this modelis consistent with the large number of observational studies on these regions, and is able to resolvean apparent contradiction in the literature that suggests the high latitude portion of the NPS isnearby, while lower latitude portions are more distant. Understanding the contributions of this localemission is critical to developing a complete model of the Galactic magnetic field.
Dunlap Astronomer discovers we may be surrounded by tunnel-like structure
(Oct.14, 2021)
Dr. Jennifer West, Research Associate at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, is making a scientific case that two bright structures that are seen on opposite sides of the sky – previously considered to be separate – are actually connected and are made of rope-like filaments. This connection forms what looks like a tunnel around our solar system.
“If we were to look up in the sky,” explains West, “we would see this tunnel-like structure in just about every direction we looked – that is, if we had eyes that could see radio light.”
Riesiger Hohlraum im All entdeckt
Bei der Erstellung dreidimensionaler Karten in der Milchstraße haben Astrophysiker und Astrophysikerinnen einen riesigen Hohlraum entdeckt. Das kugelförmige Gebilde hat einen Durchmesser von rund 500 Lichtjahren.
Radio telescope reveals thousands of star-forming galaxies in early Universe
The LOFAR telescope combines signals from a huge network of more than 70,000 individual antennas in countries from Ireland to Poland, linked by a high-speed fiber optic network.
Using Light to Study Planets
In this activity, students will build a spectrometer using basic materials to observe the light emitted and absorbed by several sources. This will be used as a model for how NASA uses spectroscopy to determine the nature of elements found on Earth and other planets. For higher grades, this activity can also be used to discuss advanced spectroscopic topics, such as how NASA research is advancing spectroscopic techniques to teach us more about plant life on Earth.
We just found a source for one of the most mysterious phenomena in astronomy
Spoiler alert: it’s not aliens. Two new studies published in Nature today strongly suggest that magnetars—highly magnetized neutron stars—are one source of FRBs. The studies also indicate that these bursts are probably much more common than we imagined.
P-ONE: Neues Observatorium im Pazifik für hochenergetische kosmische Neutrinos
Astronomen beobachten das Licht, das von entfernten Himmelsobjekten zu uns kommt, um das Universum zu erkunden. Licht verrät jedoch nichts über hochenergetische Ereignisse außerhalb unserer Galaxie, wie etwa über die Jets aktiver galaktischer Kerne, Gammastrahlenausbrüche oder Supernovae. Denn auf ihrem langen Weg durch das Universum verlieren Photonen mit extrem hohen Energien einen Teil ihrer Energie durch Interaktion mit anderen Teilchen.
No need to Mind the Gap: Astrophysicists fill in 11 billion years of our universe’s expansion history
This map represents the combined effort of more than 20 years of mapping the Universe using the Sloan Foundation telescope. The cosmic history that has been revealed in this map shows that about six billion years ago, the expansion of the Universe began to accelerate, and has continued to get faster and faster ever since. This accelerated expansion seems to be due to a mysterious invisible component of the Universe called “dark energy,” consistent with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity but extremely difficult to reconcile with our current understanding of particle physics.
Millionen Galaxien und Quasare analysiert: Forschende schaffen bisher grösste 3D-Karte des Universums
Im Projekt forschte das Team bis zu elf Milliarden Jahre zurück in die Vergangenheit. Dazu benutzten sie sogenannte Quasare – der aktive Kern einer Galaxie, deren supermassenreiches Schwarzes Loch in ihrem Zentrum durch die darin eingeschlossene Materie extrem hell wird.
Die Karte zeigt, dass sich die Expansion des Universums an einem bestimmten Punkt beschleunigt hat und seither anhält. Die Forschenden machen dafür dunkle Energie verantwortlich.
Large scale structure formation in the Universe simulated
Apr 2, 2009
This is a simulation of structure formation in the Universe using the adhesion approximation. The algorithm is described by Weinberg and Gunn in MNRAS in 1990
The Cosmic Web, or: What does the universe look like at a VERY large scale?
Nov 6, 2010
The Millennium Simulation featured in this clip was run in 2005 by the Virgo Consortium, an international group of astrophysicists from Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and the United States.
Scientists Discovered a Gigantic Structure in a Hidden Zone of Space
(today)
However, this particular structure is located in the “Zone of Avoidance,” which is the region of space right behind the dusty center of the Milky Way from our perspective on Earth. As a result, our galaxy’s bulk has blocked it from view—until now.
Spitzer steps aside
All Spitzer-related articles will be gathered together in an online collection.
An extremely energetic supernova from a very massive star in a dense medium
Here we present a new event, SN2016aps, offset from the centre of a low-mass galaxy, that radiated ≳5 × 1051 erg, necessitating a hyper-energetic supernova explosion.
Rekord-Explosion im Weltall
Beule im Schwarzen Loch: Milchstraße hätte 15 Mal hinein gepasst
I have always been interested in galactic archaeology, but I don‘t think this is what they meant. Did you know that dinosaurs lived on the other side of the Galaxy?
(28.08.2019)
I have always been interested in galactic archaeology, but I don‘t think this is what they meant. Did you know that dinosaurs lived on the other side of the Galaxy?
(28.08.2019)
Astronomers discover massive black hole that „should not even exist“ in the Milky Way galaxy
Astronomers estimate the Milky Way galaxy could be filled with up to 100 million black holes.