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This incredible image captures the ghost of a supernova 100 light-years across.
Could elusive axions be gathering in dense clouds around neutron stars? Some scientists certainly think so.
From ancient civilizations to modern day, the allure of gold has never waned. But where does this precious metal actually come from?
Astronomers have called it a "cosmic monster".
New research has shown that mountains on the surface of neutron stars could be millimetres tall.
You wait ages to spot a merger between a neutron star and a black hole and then the two come along at once.
Not only do gravitational waves represent the ultimate confirmation of the theory of General Relativity, they will provide us with a new way to see the cosmos. But what are these ripples in spacetime and where do they come from?
Black holes and neutron stars are the densest and most mysterious objects in the universe, and researchers may have figured out the source of the light they emit.
You like gold? That too may have been forged by the catacylsmic merger of neutron stars millions of years ago.
The findings might help astronomers unravel the dynamics inside neutron stars.
It's a mind-perplexing 10 billion times stronger than steel.
These stars are bending the laws of physics.
I was never really a fan of gold, but knowing where it originates somehow makes it much more beautiful.
This was an amazing week in science -- with much more to come.
It's not a contest uranium, jeez.
Researchers have found an intriguing resemblance between the human cells and neutron stars.
What we do know is that it blasts enormously powerful X-rays into the void.
NASA released the breathtaking image you see below, announcing that it is basically X-ray light echoes reflecting off clouds of dust. But this image does more than thrill us amateur stargazers – it helps astronomers figure out how far away the double star system Circinus X-1 is from Earth. “It’s really hard to get accurate distance measurements […]
Scientists have observed a massive burst of radio waves, helping them narrow down the potential sources of these huge bursts of energy. These events, also called blitzars, last about a millisecond but give off as much energy as the sun does in a million years. These are quite possibly the most interesting and shocking sources of […]
Physicist Kip Thorne and astronomer Anna Zytkow proposed a new theoretical class of stars back in 1975, but it was only very recently that such an example of hybrid star was identified in the universe. The Thorne-Zytkow Objects (TZOs) are a combination between red supergiant and neutron stars, superficially looking like normal red supergiants, for […]
The overwhelming part of the universe is still a mystery to astronomers – and most of what we know is a result of deduction and analysis. So it should be no big surprise that when radio waves from 11 billion light years was received, they couldn’t pinpoint its origin. Their brightness and distance suggest that […]
In a never-before seen feat, astronomers using NASA’s Swift X-ray Telescope have observed a spinning neutron star suddenly slowing down, something which can provide valuable clues to understanding these mysterious objects. Neutron stars Neutron stars are the cores of former high-mass stars, the remains of supernovae after the blow-up. As the core of the massive […]
It looks like not all is going bad for Italian researchers, after the trial of the seismologists: physicists from Italy have discovered the first evidence of a nucleus that doesn’t exist in nature and survives only for 10-10 seconds when created in a laboratory. Strange matter Hypernuclei contain all sorts of protons and neutrons, but […]
The Draco constellation (which is Latin for Dragon) is located at about 3.8 billion light years from Earth; just like every dragon that has at least some common sense, it breathes fire, especially after carelessly eating a nearby star. Rewind. A mysterious cosmic blast in the Draco constellation is causing waves that continue to […]
Those bursts are from magnetars. You may have some idea about what a white dwarf is, or a black hole or even a pulsar, but what are magnetars? Magnetars are neutron stars with an extremely powerful magnetic field; their decay powers the emission of copious amounts of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma-rays. They pack […]
