Phys.org - Space News
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'Dancing Jets' From Black Hole Reveal an Immense Power Equivalent to 10,000 Suns
Curtin University researchers used an Earth‑spanning radio telescope array to directly measure the instantaneous power of the jets from the Cygnus X‑1 black‑hole binary. The jets were found to emit energy equivalent to the output of 10,000 suns and travel at roughly half the speed of light. By tracking how the supergiant star’s wind bends the jets, the team quantified that about 10 % of the accretion energy is carried away by the jets. The findings validate a key assumption in cosmological simulations of black‑hole feedback.
'Interstellar Glaciers': NASA's SPHEREx Maps Vast Galactic Ice Regions
NASA’s SPHEREx infrared observatory has produced the first all‑sky map of interstellar ice, covering regions over 600 light‑years across the Milky Way. The mission identified vast reservoirs of water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide ice within giant molecular clouds such...
Dark Matter Could Explain the Earliest Supermassive Black Holes
Astronomers have long puzzled over supermassive black holes—up to a billion solar masses—existing less than a billion years after the Big Bang. A new study led by UC Riverside graduate student Yash Aggarwal proposes that decaying dark matter injects tiny...
Alien Life May Hide in Plain Sight: Statistical Patterns Across Exoplanets Move Beyond Traditional Biosignatures
A team from the Institute of Science Tokyo introduced an agnostic biosignature that detects extraterrestrial life by spotting statistical patterns across groups of exoplanets rather than searching for specific gases on individual worlds. Using agent‑based simulations of panspermia and terraforming,...
The Zhamanshin Impact Event Was Likely Much More Destructive than Thought
Researchers using high‑resolution LiDAR and five digital elevation models have re‑estimated the Zhamanshin crater in Kazakhstan to be about 26.5 km in diameter—roughly twice the size previously accepted. The larger dimensions imply an impact energy exceeding 240,000 megaton TNT, comparable to the...
'Bathtub Ring' Hints at Ancient Martian Ocean
Caltech researchers Abdallah Zaki and Michael Lamb have identified a broad, flat band encircling Mars’ northern highlands that resembles Earth’s continental shelf. The feature—dubbed a “bathtub ring”—implies a stable ocean once covered roughly one‑third of the planet’s surface. Supporting evidence...
Research Helps Power Safe Return of Astronauts in Historic Orion Splashdown
NASA’s Orion capsule completed a historic splashdown on April 10, 2026, concluding the Artemis II mission. The safe descent relied on a three‑parachute system whose final design was shaped by Rice University’s fluid‑structure interaction (FSI) simulations. Researchers Tayfun E. Tezduyar and Kenji Takizawa provided the...
Young Stars Dim Quickly in Their X-Ray Output, Potentially Benefiting Orbiting Planets
Scientists using NASA’s Chandra X‑ray Observatory discovered that Sun‑like stars dim their X‑ray emission far more rapidly than previously modeled. By examining eight star clusters aged 45‑750 million years, they found X‑ray output drops to roughly a quarter‑third of expected levels...
Catching Distant Gamma-Ray Explosions with Precisely Aligned X-Ray Optics
Researchers at Kanazawa University have demonstrated a practical alignment technique for the Micro Pore Optics (MPO) used in the EAGLE wide‑field X‑ray monitor, a key instrument on JAXA’s upcoming HiZ‑GUNDAM satellite. By fine‑tuning the tilt of individual lobster‑eye segments with...
Virtual Sunspots Help AI Find Rare Magnetic Matches in Vast Solar Archives
SwRI scientists combined three machine‑learning models to generate realistic solar magnetic patches and used them as queries to retrieve matching real observations, turning generative AI into a data‑interrogation tool for heliophysics. The method links hidden generative space to physical parameters...
Not so Dark with Alena Tensor: Math Framework Could Explain Dark Matter without Invisible Particles
Physicist Piotr Ogonowski’s recent paper introduces Alena Tensor, a mathematical framework that models spacetime curvature and matter dynamics without invoking invisible dark‑matter particles. By extending the model to realistic rotating and interacting matter, it reproduces galaxy rotation curves in roughly 80 %...
Webb Redefines the Dividing Line Between Planets and Stars
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope directly imaged the super‑Jupiter 29 Cygni b, a planet about 15 times the mass of Jupiter. Spectroscopic data revealed strong CO₂ and CO absorption, indicating a metal‑rich atmosphere equivalent to roughly 150 Earths of heavy elements. Precise orbital measurements show...
Shredded Stars Reveal How Black Holes Ignite Trillion-Sun Flares
A new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters uses ultra‑high‑resolution smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations to map how a star is torn apart by a supermassive black hole. By modeling the debris with tens of billions of particles, researchers showed the...
Torsion Balances Set Strongest Direct Limits yet on Ultralight Dark Matter
Researchers have demonstrated that torsion‑balance experiments, originally built to test the equivalence principle, can serve as ultra‑sensitive detectors for sub‑eV dark matter. By exploiting coherent scattering, the team set the strongest direct‑detection limits to date on dark‑matter‑nucleon interactions in the...
Could Dark Matter Be Made of Black Holes From a Different Universe?
New research proposes that black holes formed before the big bang survived a cosmic bounce and now constitute dark matter. The model predicts structures larger than about 90 m could persist through the contraction‑expansion transition, leaving relic black holes, gravitational waves,...
