As far as odd couples go, this is one for the record books. The ripples in spacetime stirred up by two distant, merging black holes suggest that one of the pair was much bigger than the other. It’s the first definitively mismatched black hole pair spotted by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations, which search for […] More

Jets of high-energy plasma shooting away from supermassive black holes resemble bell-bottom pants — starting out narrow but ending with a flare. The shape can help astrophysicists tease out how such jets are launched and reveal details of their black holes, researchers report in the July Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “From studying […] More

Any extra dimensions are too tiny to create mini black holes that can blink us out of existence POP GOES THE UNIVERSE  If extra dimensions were large enough, a universe with different laws of physics could bubble up from the death of a black hole. That would be bad news for us: The new version […] More

Subatomic particles born in the universe’s first second may imprint their effects on the sky RUN IN CIRCLES  Galaxies in the universe tend to cluster into rings (illustrated), and scientists have found signs that subatomic particles called neutrinos change the way matter is distributed in the circles. Zosia Rostomian/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Share this: This […] More

The burst of light from far away may have been a new type of supernova GLOBAL OBSERVATIONS  An odd stellar flare called the “Cow” was observed by telescopes around the world, including the Australia Telescope Compact Array (shown) near Narrabri, Australia. Alex Cherney, CSIRO Share this: This article is only available to Science News subscribers. […] More