There’s a new contender for the universe’s earliest first-generation stars. A bright clump seen about 450 million years after the Big Bang has the chemical hallmarks of first-generation stars — notably that it
Physicists have just dropped a new precise measurement for gravity. The newly published value for the strength of gravity, known as “G” or “Big G”, is significantly smaller than some previous measurements, researchers
A puzzling ultraviolet light seen across the Milky Way could come from the destruction of nuggets of dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up around a quarter of the matter and energy
Small, icy moons might be boiling under their surface. Many moons in the outer solar system are thought to harbor subsurface oceans beneath their icy crusts. New computer simulations, reported November 24 in
When one supernova commenced, it looked like an olive — at least before it got shaken and stirred. This insight, reported in the Nov. 12 Science Advances, comes from new observations taken in
The magnetic field swirling around an enormous black hole, located about 55 million light-years from Earth, has unexpectedly switched directions. This dramatic reversal challenges theories of black hole physics and provides scientists with
Hidden cozied up to Betelgeuse, a bright red star in the constellation Orion, astronomers may have finally found the giant star’s long-sought companion. This close-orbiting partner, first postulated over a century ago, matches
Astronomers have found a giant interstellar cloud surprisingly close to Earth. Lurking about 300 light-years from our solar system, this immense cloud of gas and dust is the closest of its kind ever
A potential dark galaxy — one made primarily of dark matter — may have been spotted in the local universe. Dark galaxies are theoretical, starless systems whose discovery could help astronomers better understand
The tug-of-war between quantum computers and classical computers is intensifying. In just minutes, a special quantum processor, called a quantum annealing processor, solved a complex real-world problem that a classical supercomputer would take
