Summaries | Headlines

Milky Way Black Hole May Be A Colossal 'Particle Accelerator' (February 28, 2007) -- The black hole at the center of our Milky Way could be working like a cosmic particle accelerator, revving up protons that smash at incredible speeds into lower energy protons and creating ... > full story

Magnetic Explosions In The Distant Universe (February 9, 2007) -- A new theory to explain the high-energy gamma-ray emissions from collapsing stars has been put forward by an international team of researchers. Their results will be published shortly in the Monthly ... > full story

Integral Sees The Galactic Centre Playing Hide And Seek (January 18, 2007) -- The European Space Agency's gamma ray observatory Integral has caught the centre of our galaxy in a moment of rare quiet. A handful of the most energetic high-energy sources surrounding the black ... > full story

Triple Interactions Of Supermassive Black Holes Found To Be Common In Early Universe (January 10, 2007) -- New cosmological computer simulations produced by a team of astronomers from Northwestern University, Harvard University and the University of Michigan show for the first time that supermassive black ... > full story

Chandra Discovers Light Echo From The Milky Way's Black Hole (January 10, 2007) -- Like cold case investigators, astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to uncover evidence of a powerful outburst from the giant black hole at the Milky Way's ... > full story

Quasar Light Variability Linked To Black Hole Mass (January 10, 2007) -- Quasars are some of the most luminous and distant objects in the universe -- and appear to have something in common with ordinary light bulbs, say researchers at the University of Illinois at ... > full story

Astronomers Detect Black Hole In Tiny 'Dwarf' Galaxy (January 8, 2007) -- Astronomers have found evidence of a supermassive black hole at the heart of a dwarf elliptical galaxy about 54 million light years away from the Milky Way galaxy where Earth ... > full story

Black Hole Boldly Goes Where No Black Hole Has Gone Before (January 4, 2007) -- Astronomers have found a black hole where few thought they could ever exist, inside a globular star cluster. The finding has broad implications for the dynamics of stars clusters and also for the ... > full story

The Universe's Dark Side: New Way To Form Black Hole Uncovered (December 28, 2006) -- Nature has again thrown astronomers for a loop. Just when they thought they understood how gamma-ray bursts formed, they have uncovered what appears to be evidence for a new kind of cosmic explosion. ... > full story

No Matter Their Size Black Holes 'Feed' In The Same Way (December 28, 2006) -- Research by UK astronomers reveals that the processes at work in black holes of all sizes are the same and that supermassive black holes are simply scaled up versions of small Galactic black holes. ... > full story

New Type Of Massive Stellar Death (December 24, 2006) -- So far we have thought that the signature of the death of a massive star was an energetic explosion called a "supernova." New observations show that this is not always the case. On the contrary, a ... > full story

New Kind Of Black Hole Explosion Discovered (December 20, 2006) -- Scientists using NASA data are studying a newly recognized type of cosmic explosion called a hybrid gamma-ray burst. As with other gamma-ray bursts, this hybrid blast is likely signaling the birth of ... > full story

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Black hole -- A black hole is a concentration of mass great enough that the force of gravity prevents anything from escaping it except through quantum tunnelling behaviour (known as Hawking Radiation). The ... > full article

Quasar -- A quasar is an astronomical source of electromagnetic energy, including light, which shows a very high redshift. The scientific consensus is that this high redshift is the result of Hubble's law. ... > full article

Stellar evolution -- In astronomy, stellar evolution is the sequence of changes that a star undergoes during its lifetime; the hundreds of thousands, millions or billions of years during which it emits light and heat. ... > full article

Astrophysics -- Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties (luminosity, density, temperature and chemical composition) of astronomical ... > full article

Gravitation -- Gravity is a force of attraction that acts between bodies that have mass. Gravity is the reason for the very existence of the earth, the sun and other celestial bodies; without it matter would not ... > full article

General relativity -- General relativity (GR) is the geometrical theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915. It unifies special relativity and Sir Isaac Newton's law of universal gravitation with the ... > full article

Introduction to general relativity -- General relativity (GR) is the geometrical theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It unifies Einstein's earlier special relativity with Sir Isaac Newton's law of universal ... > full article

Chandra X-ray Observatory -- Chandra X-ray Observatory is a satellite launched on STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999. It was named in honor of Indian-American physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar who is known for determining the ... > full article

Spacetime -- In physics, spacetime is a model that combines 3-D space and 1-D time into a single construct called the space-time continuum (the 4th ... > full article

Gravitational wave -- In physics, in terms of a metric theory of gravitation, a gravitational wave is a fluctuation in the curvature of space-time which propagates as a wave, traveling outward from a moving object or ... > full article

Redshift -- In physics and astronomy, redshift is an observed increase in the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation received by a detector compared to that emitted by the source. For visible light, red is the ... > full article

Physical cosmology -- Physical cosmology, as a branch of astrophysics, is the study of the large-scale structure of the universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. Cosmology ... > full article

Galaxy -- A galaxy is a massive gravitationally bound system of stars, interstellar gas and dust, and dark matter. Typical galaxies contain ten million to one trillion stars, all orbiting a common center of ... > full article

Black body -- In physics, a black body is an object that absorbs all electromagnetic radiation that falls onto it. No radiation passes through it and none is reflected, yet in classical physics, it can ... > full article

Particle accelerator -- A particle accelerator is a device that uses electric fields to propel electrically charged particles to high speeds and magnetic fields to contain them. An ordinary CRT televison set is a simple ... > full article

Stephen Hawking -- Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS (born 8 January 1942) is a theoretical physicist. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Gonville and ... > full article

Gamma ray burst -- Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous physical phenomena in the universe known to the field of astronomy. They consist of flashes of gamma rays that last from seconds to hours, the longer ones being ... > full article

Quantum number -- A quantum number describes the energies of electrons in atoms. Each quantum number specifies the value of a conserved quantity in the dynamics of the quantum system. Since any quantum system can have ... > full article

Globular cluster -- A globular cluster (sometimes known more simply as a globular) is a spherical collection of stars that orbits a galaxy as a satellite. Globular clusters are very tightly bound by gravity, which gives ... > full article

Dark matter -- In cosmology, dark matter refers to hypothetical matter particles, of unknown composition, that do not emit or reflect enough electromagnetic radiation to be detected directly, but whose presence can ... > full article