It’s a mind-perplexing 10 billion times stronger than steel.
Twinkle, twinkle: Researchers find new clues about extremely bright neutron stars
These stars are bending the laws of physics.
Gravitational waves show us how gold is formed
I was never really a fan of gold, but knowing where it originates somehow makes it much more beautiful.
Why the gravitational waves splashed by the merger of two dying stars spells a revolution in astronomy
This was an amazing week in science — with much more to come.
We’re made of stardust, but heavier elements are made of black-hole-and-neutron-star dust
It’s not a contest uranium, jeez.
There’s a strange similarity between your cells and neutron stars
Researchers have found an intriguing resemblance between the human cells and neutron stars.
Astronomers may have discovered a new cosmic phenomena — and we don’t really know what it is
What we do know is that it blasts enormously powerful X-rays into the void.
Strange “X-Ray Rainbow” could be used to calculate stellar distances
NASA released the breathtaking image you see below, announcing that it is basically X-ray light echoes reflecting off clouds of dust. But this image does more than thrill us amateur stargazers – it helps astronomers figure out how far away the double star system Circinus X-1 is from Earth. “It’s really hard to get accurate distance measurements in astronomy and we only
Scientists Observe Giant Burst of Radio Waves
Scientists have observed a massive burst of radio waves, helping them narrow down the potential sources of these huge bursts of energy. These events, also called blitzars, last about a millisecond but give off as much energy as the sun does in a million years. These are quite possibly the most interesting and shocking sources of energy in the Universe. It’s
How Gold is made and how it got to our planet
Why gold is important and where it came from. All your questions are answered in this article.
The first Thorne-Zytkow object, a bizarre type of hybrid star, discovered by astronomers
Physicist Kip Thorne and astronomer Anna Zytkow proposed a new theoretical class of stars back in 1975, but it was only very recently that such an example of hybrid star was identified in the universe. The Thorne-Zytkow Objects (TZOs) are a combination between red supergiant and neutron stars, superficially looking like normal red supergiants, for example Betelgeuse in the Orion
Shorties: astronomers detect intergalactic radio signals from 11 billion light years away
The overwhelming part of the universe is still a mystery to astronomers – and most of what we know is a result of deduction and analysis. So it should be no big surprise that when radio waves from 11 billion light years was received, they couldn’t pinpoint its origin. Their brightness and distance suggest that they originated when the Universe
Astronomers observe spinning neutron star suddenly slowing down
In a never-before seen feat, astronomers using NASA’s Swift X-ray Telescope have observed a spinning neutron star suddenly slowing down, something which can provide valuable clues to understanding these mysterious objects. Neutron stars Neutron stars are the cores of former high-mass stars, the remains of supernovae after the blow-up. As the core of the massive star is compressed during a
Physicists discover rare hypernucleus, a component of strange matter
It looks like not all is going bad for Italian researchers, after the trial of the seismologists: physicists from Italy have discovered the first evidence of a nucleus that doesn’t exist in nature and survives only for 10-10 seconds when created in a laboratory. Strange matter Hypernuclei contain all sorts of protons and neutrons, but unlike regular nuclei, they also
Black hole in Dragon’s belly swallows star and everything goes nutty from here
The Draco constellation (which is Latin for Dragon) is located at about 3.8 billion light years from Earth; just like every dragon that has at least some common sense, it breathes fire, especially after carelessly eating a nearby star. Rewind. A mysterious cosmic blast in the Draco constellation is causing waves that continue to be observed long after researchers
Astronomers Pinpoint Origin Of Nature’s Most Powerful Magnetic Bursts
Those bursts are from magnetars. You may have some idea about what a white dwarf is, or a black hole or even a pulsar, but what are magnetars? Magnetars are neutron stars with an extremely powerful magnetic field; their decay powers the emission of copious amounts of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma-rays. They pack the mass of a sun