News by Subject Space & Planetary

Observations have shown that stellar black holes typically have masses of about ten times that of the Sun. Recently, Chinese astronomers claimed to have discovered a black hole as massive as 70 solar masses, which, if confirmed, would challenge the current view of stellar evolution. Astronomers from the Universities of Erlangen-Nürnberg and Potsdam discovered that it may not necessarily be a black hole at all, but possibly a massive neutron star or an 'ordinary' star.

In 2017, a massive new region of magnetic field erupted on the sun's surface next to an existing sunspot. The powerful collision of magnetic energy produced a series of solar flares, causing turbulent space weather conditions at Earth. Scientists have now pinpointed for the first time exactly when and where the explosion released the energy that heated spewing plasma to energies equivalent to 1 billion degrees in temperature.

Warm, cold, just right? Physicists at UC Davis are using gravitational lensing to take the temperature of dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up about a quarter of our universe.

UCLA astronomers have discovered a new class of bizarre objects at the center of our galaxy, not far from the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*. 'Mergers of stars may be happening in the universe more often than we thought, and likely are quite common,' said Andrea Ghez, UCLA's Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics. She believes the objects were binary stars that merged because of the black hole's gravitational force.

An analysis of cyclical changes in the light spectrum emitted by Proxima Centauri, the star closest to the Sun, suggests it may be orbited by a second planet. Mario Damasso and colleagues present data suggesting that this candidate planet orbits Proxima Centauri every 5.2 years and may be a 'super-Earth,' with a mass higher than Earth's, though much lower than that.