Gamma-Ray Burst Leaves Most Distant Optical Afterglow
On Thanksgiving Eve in 2018, the Swift observatory caught a short gamma-ray burst (GRB) – the kind of high energy flash that occurs when two neutron stars merge. Only a handful of these occur each year, and each is thought to be accompanied by a flash of optical light that lasts for tens of minutes to a few hours.
Comet NEOWISE Sizzles, Providing a Treat for Observers
I am happy to report that there is a comet in the evening sky. Comet NEOWISE has swung around the sun and is now visible shortly after sunset in the Northwest.
Curiosity Mars Rover’s Summer Road Trip Has Begun / InSight Flexes Its Arm While Its “Mole” Hits Pause
For now, we’re going to have to explore with the telescopes, spacecraft, and rovers we already have, which is fine because, for the most part, they are doing awesome things.
A Plan to Determine if “Planet Nine” Is a Primordial Black Hole
In a new paper to appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Harvard’s Avi Loeb points out that the still-not-found Planet Nine could be a mass that isn’t necessarily a planet.
Milky Way Neutron Star Pair Illuminates Cosmic Cataclysms
In a new paper in the journal Nature, researchers led by Robert Ferdman have modeled how the uneven masses of the two pulsars in the binary PSR J1913+1102 will someday merge and generate their own version of a 2017 event.
Luminous Galaxy Reionizing Surroundings 13 Billion Years Ago
In a new research paper appearing in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society with lead author Romain Meyer, researchers announce the discovery of a massive galaxy shining bright just 800 million years after the Big Bang
Stellar Fireworks Celebrate Birth of Giant Cluster; Snapshot of Cosmic Pyrotechnics
This year, we don’t have any big events, but when it comes to seasonally chosen press releases, the big observatories did not disappoint.
Ground-Based Discovery of Two Strongly Interacting Exoplanets
We have finally spotted one solar system with worlds in resonance, and we can see the orbits changing and the pulls this creates. While this isn’t proof that our solar system had this kind of resonance, it is evidence that this isn’t an uncommon situation.
Quantum Fluctuations Can Jiggle Human-Scale Objects
It had been predicted that objects the size of LIGO’s 40-kg mirrors would jiggle at the smallest level due to the constant popping in and out of existence of virtual particles.
Excess Neutrinos and Missing Gamma Rays? Blame Black Holes!
High-energy cosmic neutrinos are created by energetic cosmic-ray accelerators in the universe, which may be extreme astrophysical objects such as black holes and neutron stars.
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