Before we go, I just want to take a moment to share something beautiful. Image credit: Martin Vargic Out of the blue, I received an email from artist and infographic designer Martin Vargic, and I have to admit, few random email have been quite so pleasing. He just wanted to let me know that he’d produced an infographic highlighting vast diversity of worlds that have been discovered since 1992. From pulsar orbiting planets, to gas giants, to earth-like worlds, he has included a little bit of everything in his poster of over 1100 known worlds, in which each world is depicted through a...
JWST Echoes the Hubble Tension
Comparison of Hubble and Webb views of a Cepheid variable star. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Riess (JHU/STScI) Understanding our universe isn’t a straightforward process. For every theory that appears to be beautifully proven out by data, there is another theory...
Gaia Watches the Universe Form
Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Simons Foundation; K. Storey-Fisher et al. 2024 In trying to understand our universe, theorists can build models that describe how the universe formed as a mostly, but not completely, smooth distribution of matter and energy...
100 Million Computer Hours in One Model Universe
Part of the simulated universe. Credit: The AGORA Collaboration In a paper that made me do math, researchers have shared the results of a remarkable new suite of simulations that explore how galaxies are born, live, and evolve. Over 160 researchers from 60...
Galactic Death may not be Permanent
False-colour JWST image of a small fraction of the GOODS South field, with JADES-GS-z7-01-QU highlighted. Credit: JADES Collaboration In a paper in Nature, with Tobias Looser as the first author, researchers discuss a galaxy cataloged as JADES-GS-z7-01-QU. This...
Galaxies are Born Bright
This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows a portion of the GOODS-North field of galaxies. At the lower right, a pullout highlights the galaxy GN-z11, which is seen at a time just 430 million years after the Big Bang. One prominent...
Gluttonous Black Hole Eats One Sun’s Worth of Mass per Day
This illustration provided by the European Southern Observatory in February 2024, depicts the record-breaking quasar J059-4351, the bright core of a distant galaxy that is powered by a supermassive black hole. The supermassive black hole, seen here pulling in...
Early Universe Clues Found Locally
A portion of the dwarf galaxy Wolf–Lundmark–Melotte (WLM) captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera. The image demonstrates Webb’s remarkable ability to resolve faint stars outside the Milky Way. Color translation: 0.9-micron light is shown in...
Galaxy Collision Releases Bubbles of Star Formation
Galaxy AM 1054-325 has been distorted into an S-shape from a normal pancake-like spiral shape by the gravitational pull of a neighboring galaxy, seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image. A consequence of this is that newborn clusters of stars form along a...
Black Holes Formed Before Stars
An illustration of a magnetic field generated by a supermassive black hole in the early universe, showing turbulent plasma outflows that help turn nearby gas clouds into stars. New findings suggest this process might be responsible for accelerated star formation in...
Unexpected Galaxy Photobombs Cluster
A color-composite image of PEARLSDG made with JWST NIRCAM data. Individual stars are visible as small points of light in the image. Its somewhat dull color and lack of many bright stars is consistent with its old age and lack of ongoing star formation. Credit: Image...