Latest news with #Astronomers
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Bizarre "Infinity Galaxy" Could Hold the Secrets of Supermassive Black Holes
Astronomers using data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a spectacular cosmic object they're calling the "Infinity Galaxy." The site of an epic head-on collision between two galaxies, it could harbor the secrets to how the heaviest black holes in the universe, the supermassive black holes found at the hearts of galaxies, are born and reach their unbelievable masses — masses extreme enough to organize trillions of stars around them. "Everything is unusual about this galaxy. Not only does it look very strange, but it also has this supermassive black hole that's pulling a lot of material in," Pieter van Dokkum, lead author of a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, said in a statement about the work. "As an unexpected bonus, it turns out that both galaxy nuclei also have an active supermassive black hole," van Dokkum added. "So, this system has three confirmed active black holes: two very massive ones in both of the galaxy nuclei, and the one in between them that might have formed there." The singularity-studded object was found by searching through public data collected in the COSMOS-Web survey, which is designed to document the evolution of galaxies, with data gathered on 800,000 realms and counting. In an image taken with the Webb, two bright spots represent the nuclei of each of the two colliding galaxies, both surrounded by their own ring of stars. This lends it the shape of an infinity symbol, hence its memorable name. What's most striking, though, is what appears between them, revealed in follow-up observations: an enormous supermassive black hole swimming in a sea of ionized gas. It's estimated to contain a mass equivalent to a million times that of our own Sun — and it's still actively growing. "It likely didn't just arrive there, but instead it formed there. And pretty recently," van Dokkum said. "We think we're witnessing the birth of a supermassive black hole — something that has never been seen before." This could be some of the most compelling evidence yet of black holes forming by directly collapsing into a singularity from a huge, heavy cloud of gas. The origins of supermassive black holes are one of the great mysteries of cosmology. They undeniably exist, forming the heart of the largest galaxies, including our own Milky Way — but how they form and gain such unbelievable heft is still hotly debated; the heaviest black holes may weigh hundreds of billions of solar masses. The most well-known way that black holes are born is through the collapse of a very massive star that explodes in a supernova. This might spawn a black hole with several to a hundred times the mass of the Sun, maybe even a thousand. Then, give one of these stellar-mass black holes hundreds of millions to billions of years to devour matter that falls into it, or merge with other black holes, and it might reach a supermassive stature. Astronomers, however, have observed black holes boasting millions of solar masses while existing just 400 million years after the Big Bang, which simply isn't enough time for one to reach its size by gradually accreting matter. That points to another possibility called the "heavy seed theory," explains van Dokkum, "where a much larger black hole, maybe up to one million times the mass of our Sun, forms directly from the collapse of a large gas cloud." This would've been facilitated by the hot conditions of the early universe, allowing a gas cloud to collapse into one large object instead of forming numerous smaller stars. "It's not clear that this direct-collapse process could work in practice," van Dokkum said. But there's compelling reason to believe that the Infinity Galaxy is home to a black hole born through this exact process. The best clue is the central supermassive black hole's velocity, which matches up with the surrounding gas, strongly suggesting it formed right where we're seeing it. If it formed elsewhere in the cosmos and barged into the mix, the velocity would be significantly higher. What astronomers think happened, then, is that when the constituent two galaxies collided, the gas contained in them compressed to form a "dense knot," van Dokkum said, "which then collapsed into a black hole." "We can't say definitively that we have found a direct collapse black hole," van Dokkum concluded. "But we can say that these new data strengthen the case that we're seeing a newborn black hole, while eliminating some of the competing explanations." More on black holes: Scientists Detect Sign of Something Impossible Out in Deep Space Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Orbit of third-known interstellar object
Astronomers have calculated the orbit of our third-known comet, seen here in this visualization. It will be closest to Earth in October.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers Spot a 7-Billion-Year-Old Comet From Beyond the Solar System
Astronomers have their eyes on a mysterious object zipping through the Solar System, and if their hunch is right, it could be the oldest visitor humanity has ever observed. Comet 31/ATLAS, first detected on July 1, has been identified as only the third confirmed interstellar object to pass through our solar neighborhood. But what sets this icy traveler apart isn't just its origins. It's the staggering possibility that it may be 7 billion years old. That would make 31/ATLAS older than the Solar System itself. Researchers believe the comet may have formed in the thick disk of the Milky Way, a region populated by some of the galaxy's oldest stars. Unlike most comets, which are leftovers from the formation of nearby star systems, this one likely wandered the galaxy for billions of years before crossing paths with us. If that's true, 31/ATLAS could give scientists a rare glimpse into how the early Milky Way, and maybe even planetary systems, came its exact origin remains unknown, researchers at the Royal Astronomical Society's 2025 National Astronomy Meeting presented evidence showing the comet's speed and orbit suggest an ancient, interstellar origin. They used data from ESA's Gaia satellite to simulate the comet's possible journey across the galaxy, analyzing the movements of over a billion stars to back up their findings. Unlike its infamous predecessor 'Oumuamua, which sparked alien theories back in 2017, or the comet 2I/Borisov spotted in 2019, 31/ATLAS appears to have been a frozen planetesimal—one of the original building blocks of how it got here and why it's moving the way it is remain open questions. Scientists hope further observations will reveal whether 31/ATLAS contains particles from some of the earliest stars in the galaxy, essentially making it a cosmic time capsule. For now, the icy wanderer continues its journey past the Sun, carrying billions of years of galactic history along for the Spot a 7-Billion-Year-Old Comet From Beyond the Solar System first appeared on Men's Journal on Jul 17, 2025 Solve the daily Crossword
CBC
6 days ago
- Science
- CBC
Orbit of third-known interstellar object
Astronomers have calculated the orbit of our third-known comet, seen here in this visualization. It will be closest to Earth in October.
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Say Earth May Be Trapped Inside a Huge, Strange Void
Astronomers who examined the sound waves from the Big Bang say that the Earth — and the entire Milky Way galaxy we call home — could be trapped in a huge void billions of light years across. Their study, which was just presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in the UK, could solve one of cosmology's greatest mysteries: the Hubble tension, or why the older universe appears to be expanding more slowly than younger regions. "The Hubble tension is largely a local phenomenon, with little evidence that the expansion rate disagrees with expectations in the standard cosmology further back in time," Indranil Banik, a cosmologist from the University of Portsmouth who led the research, said in a statement about the work. "So a local solution like a local void is a promising way to go about solving the problem." Our universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, but precisely what rate is a matter of intense debate. When astronomers analyze the cosmic microwave background, the light leftover from the Big Bang and the oldest light in the universe, the rate is slower compared to that derived from observations in the nearby universe of Type Ia supernovas and luminous, pulsing stars known as Cepheids. The discrepancy has become undeniable, and its implications are so profound that it's been dubbed a "crisis in cosmology." Is our understanding of the universe wrong? Is there some new physics we are yet unaware of? But this latest research could pump the brakes a little. If the Earth happens to be near the center of a low density "void" in space, approximately a billion light years in radius and roughly 20 percent below the universe's average density, that could neatly explain the discrepancy. Banik explains that such a region "would cause matter to be pulled by gravity toward the higher-density exterior of the void, leading to the void becoming emptier with time." "As the void is emptying out," he continues, "the velocity of objects away from us would be larger than if the void were not there. This therefore gives the appearance of a faster local expansion rate." The idea of a local void has been floated before. But this latest work adds credence to the theory by analyzing baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), or as the researchers call it, the "sound of the Big Bang" — emanations produced as the uniform sea of hot matter that formed from the Big Bang repeatedly contracted and then expanded in a tug of war with gravity, before eventually cooling. "These sound waves traveled for only a short while before becoming frozen in place once the universe cooled enough for neutral atoms to form," Banik said, allowing astronomers to use them as a "standard ruler" to measure cosmos. If this void exists, Banik argues, then it would distort the BAO in a way that we could measure. After analyzing all BAO measurements taken over the last 20 years, that's exactly what Banik says he's found. The biggest problem that this theory runs into, however, is that it defies our understanding of the universe's structure: at the largest scales, it should appear uniform and evenly distributed. A region billions of light years across that's somehow less dense than everything around it is quite clearly in violation of that. Nonetheless, Banik plans to test his local void model with other methods of estimating the universe's expansion. More on space: Mysterious Object Headed Into Our Solar System Is Coming From the Center of the Galaxy
