Philip Plait's Blog, page 37

A six-planet system dances in time to the tune of gravity

Astronomers have found a remarkable solar system, a system of planets orbiting a nearby star. For one thing, there are at least six planets found there. For another, the outer five planets are orbiting the star in synch, moving like dancers to the tune of gravity!

The star is called TOI-178, and it's a hair over 200 light years from Earth. TOI stands for TESS Object of Interest, a star with candidate planets detected by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (making TOI an abbreviation with ...

Hubble's half-dozen cosmic train wrecks

One of the most fantastic statements that can be made about the Universe is: Sometimes, galaxies collide.

A galaxy is an immense thing, billions or even trillions of stars, uncountable clouds of gas and dust, (usually) a huge halo of dark matter, a central supermassive black hole, all in one place and held together by their mutual gravity. A typical galaxy is tens of thousands of light years across, and some, like our home galaxy the Milky Way, well over 100,000. Mind you, a single light year i...

Turns out, you *can* get something out of a black hole... but it’s not easy

One of the defining characteristics of a black hole is that nothing can come out of them. That’s why they’re named such; they’re like an infinitely deep pit, and not even light can escape. A hole that’s black.

But, like so many ideas in science, when you take a closer look, that absolute statement becomes a bit relative. You can get something out of a black hole: Energy. And, it turns out, you can get a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

A new paper has come out showing how magnetic fields can be used to...

So what the heck is StDr 56?

Over the years, I've seen a lot of things in the night sky, oh my, yes I have. Galaxies, planets, moons, satellites, balloons, lanterns, rockets, and so much more. Some have baffled me for a moment, but then a deeper look usually solved the case.

It is very rare for me to see something and actually not be sure at all what it is. It is even more rare for such an object to make me literally gasp out loud when I first see it.

But StDr 56 is precisely such an object. It is profoundly beautiful, ev...

Marshmallow world: WASP-107b is a superpuff planet with a weirdly tiny core

With over 4,300 confirmed exoplanets found — alien worlds orbiting alien stars — there are bound to be a few oddballs.

And then there’s WASP-107b. It’s a “puffball planet,” one with a large size but low mass, making it extremely low density. And new research shows it’s even weirder than that: The core of the planet is likely far smaller than astronomers previously thought a gas giant core could be, making it hard to understand how it even formed in the first place.

WASP-107b was discovered in ...

How do you find when a supernova blew? Run the clock backwards.

About 200,000 years ago, a massive star in a nearby companion galaxy to the Milky Way exploded. Blasting octillions of tons of debris outwards at high velocity, the explosion has been expanding into space ever since. Today it looks like a swirl of cirrus clouds, its huge velocity diminished almost to motionlessness by distance.

But the actual expansion is measurable, and by using a clever technique that runs the clock on it backwards, astronomers have determined when the light of the explosion ...

Another record-breaking quasar with a black hole that’s *too* supermassive

Astronomers have found the most distant quasar yet seen, and, like a handful of others found at this distance, it presents a huge (literally) problem: The black hole powering it is far too big for how long it's been around.

The quasar is named after its coordinates on the sky, J031343.84−180636.4 (let's call it J0313 for short). It was found in a survey of the sky using Pan-STARRS, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, a relatively modest 1.8-meter telescope that nonetheless...

A brain-curdling magnetar superflare seen in a neighboring galaxy

As someone who commonly deals in astronomical destruction, I get a lot of people asking me what scares me most about space. Asteroid impacts? Solar flares? Rogue black holes?

Nope. Not even close. The answer is magnetar superflares.

Why? Well, one was seen recently that, during the one-tenth or so of a second it erupted, emitted up to 100 trillion times the energy of the Sun.

!!!!

The event was spotted by NASA's Fermi satellite, which detects gamma rays from space. These are the highest ener...

Astronomers may be hearing the whisper of billions of black holes merging across the Universe

Have you ever been in a loud, crowded room (remember those?) and thought you heard a familiar voice or your name being called? Something just loud enough to perk your ears up but not so loud you can be sure you heard it?

An international team of astronomers is in that same situation right now. Except that the crowded room is the Universe, the people in it are colossal black holes eating each other, the voices are waves compressing spacetime, and instead of ears astronomers are using several doz...

Tasting neutrinos: Flavor changing in the cores of exploding stars

I have long wondered about the Universe's wry sense of humor. After all, how else can it be that one of the most ethereal and ghostly particles in the cosmos is fundamentally responsible for some of the most colossal and violent explosions in it?

New research indicates that not only do neutrinos play an important role in supernova explosions, but we need to account for all their characteristics to truly understand why stars explode.

Stars generate energy in their cores, fusing lighter elements...