Topic: Galaxies & Cosmology
Invasion of the Microscopic Black Holes

Invasion of the Microscopic Black Holes

Image credit: Tech Explorist Every once in a while, a story comes along that just makes me giggle, and also forces me to fix some misinformation living in my brain. Consider the microscopic black hole. In my brain, these diminutive creations of the early universe should all have evaporated away thanks to Hawking Radiation. It turns out, however, I was thinking too small. While the tiniest of possible primordial black holes - those measuring hundreds of million tons and smaller - will indeed have evaporated away, those that are a bit bigger - say a billion metric tons or larger - should all...

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Black Holes Formed Before Stars

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

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...

Quasars Spotted Blowing Away Gas

Quasars Spotted Blowing Away Gas

Artist’s impression of an outflow of molecular gas from the quasar J2054-0005. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) Gas dynamics are more than a little complicated no matter where you look. The dynamics of gas in and around forming galaxies makes is particularly...

Explaining Early Bright Galaxies

Explaining Early Bright Galaxies

A composite of Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files from the James Webb Space Telescope. UCLA astrophysicists believe if cold dark matter theories are correct, the Webb telescope should find tiny,...

Distant Black Hole Caught Eating

Distant Black Hole Caught Eating

LST-1 during observations at CTAO-North, La Palma, Spain. Credit: CTAO gGmbH. Credit: CTAO gGmbH Astronomy is theoretically the study of how our universe formed, evolved, and will one day die. But to get answers to those high-concept questions, we need to start by...

Gas Ripples Shake Up Ancient Galaxies

Gas Ripples Shake Up Ancient Galaxies

FIR image of BRI 1335–0417 overlaid with our identified bar ellipses (blue ellipse) and two-armed spiral structure identified in Tsukui & Iguchi (2021, black solid line). Contours start at 2σ but are logarithmically spaced in powers of 2 (2σ, 4σ, 8σ,...)....

One Theory Puts Us Somewhere Special

One Theory Puts Us Somewhere Special

The image shows the distribution of matter in space (blue; the yellow dots represent individual galaxies). The Milky Way (green) lies in an area with little matter. The galaxies in the bubble move in the direction of the higher matter densities (red arrows). The...