How a dying star is similar to a lava lamp

Three yellow circles filled with different patterns of light and dark

For the first time, astronomers have watched gas boil and bubble on the surface of a distant star. Scientists observed the red giant star R Doradus with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, in Chile over the course of four weeks in July and August 2023. The series of images shows large cells of … Ler mais

Meet Porphyrion, the largest pair of black hole jets ever seen

A fiery beam of light — emerging from two sides of a black hole — shoots across a dark background strewn with scattered silvery wisps and occasional bright dots representing galaxies.

Opposing fountains of plasma and particles spanning 23 million light-years are the longest pair of black hole jets ever seen. That’s far enough to influence the evolution of the universe on cosmic scales, astronomers report September 18 in Nature. “Traditionally, astronomers believed all jets remain within, or at least very close to, their host galaxy,” … Ler mais

A neutrino mass mismatch could shake cosmology’s foundations

Bright points are scattered in a weblike pattern over a dark background in a computer simulation of the cosmic web.

As the youthful universe congealed under the pull of gravity, matter knotted itself into galaxies, galaxy clusters and filaments, weaving a dazzlingly intricate cosmic web. This web’s structure is thanks, in part, to the handiwork of neutrinos — lightweight, subatomic particles that surge through the cosmos in unimaginable numbers. Because they streak about at high … Ler mais