Astronomers Discover Heaviest Stellar Black Hole in the Milky Way
The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Milky Way, but a newly spotted object takes the crown for the most…
Ripples in Spacetime Reveal Mystery Object Colliding With a Star’s Corpse
A leading gravitational wave observatory recently detected ripples in spacetime that scientists say came from the collision of a dead, superdense stellar remnant and an unknown object. Making TV History…
Hell Yeah, We’re Getting a Space-Based Gravitational Wave Observatory
Stay calm, everybody stay calm. But it’s finally happening: The European Space Agency is committing itself to the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a gravitational wave observatory that will study…
Perplexing Pulsar ‘Switching’ Behavior Finally Deciphered by Astronomers
A rapidly spinning dead star’s wacky fluctuations in brightness are due to the extreme environment surrounding the object, according to a team of astronomers who observed it. Watch a Clip…
Breakthrough Gravitational Wave Findings Suggest Supermassive Black Holes Are Constantly Warping Spacetime
Astronomers and astrophysicists at five different pulsar timing array collaborations today announced data that strongly suggests the presence of a gravitational wave background: a constant murmur of low-frequency ripples in…
Massive Black Holes Littered the Early Universe, Simulation Suggests
Since the gravitational waves predicted by Einstein were first detected in 2015, astrophysicists have been pondering the gravitational wave background—the cumulative undulations of these spacetime ripples as they cross the…