WhyCosmo

  Galaxies Just Got Bigger! 🌌 Recent breakthroughs have unveiled something astonishing—galaxies, including our Milky Way, are far more extensive than previously thought! For the first time, astronomers have captured an image of the gas halo surrounding a galaxy, and it's a game-changer. This discovery shows that galaxies are not just clusters of stars but massive gas reservoirs extending much farther than imagined. The gas shroud around starburst galaxy IRAS 08339+6517. Credit: Cristy Roberts ANU/ASTRO 3D. Using the Keck Cosmic Web Imager in Hawai'i, scientists studied the galaxy IRAS 08339+6517, located 260 million light-years away. The new imaging reveals that its gas halo stretches to 100,000 light-years, dwarfing the stellar disc, which is just 7,800 light-years across. The study also indicates that the Milky Way already interacts with the Andromeda Galaxy, which lies just 2.5 million light-years away. Gas flows into galaxies along spiralling filaments. This image of a ga...

  Like two cosmic sumo wrestlers, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory have detected the closest-ever pair of supermassive black holes . Located in the galaxy MCG-03-34-64 , these two giants are just 300 light-years apart and are about to embark on a galactic dance that will eventually end in a massive collision . As they devour gas and dust from their surroundings, they glow brightly as active galactic nuclei (AGN) , giving us a rare peek into the process of galaxy mergers . This is an artist's depiction of a pair of active black holes at the heart of two merging galaxies. They are both surrounded by an accretion disk of hot gas. Some of the material is ejected along the spin axis of each black hole. Confined by powerful magnetic fields, the jets blaze across space at nearly the speed of light as devastating beams of energy. NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI) This discovery is even more exciting because such close black hole pairs are scarce in our local un...

  NASA 's current Juno mission has revealed unprecedented details about Jupiter's volcanic moon Io . However, more questions arise with each discovery, pushing scientists to propose dedicated missions to study this unique world. Io, the most geologically active body in the Solar System, has over 400 active volcanoes shaped by Jupiter's intense gravitational pull. This tidal force heats Io's interior, creating magma and driving its explosive volcanic eruptions. Juno captured this image of Io during Perijove 57. Juno's images of the volcanic moon are adding momentum to the calls for a mission to the moon. Is it time? Image Credit: NASA / SWRI / MSSS / Jason Perry © cc nc sa This schematic of Jupiter’s magnetic environments shows the planet’s looping magnetic field lines, Io and its plasma torus, and Io’s flux tube. Credit: John Spencer / Wikipedia CC-BY-SA3.0 with labels by the author There are now two proposed missions aimed at uncovering Io's mysteries. The ...

  Have you ever heard of a "space hurricane" ? These mysterious storms are swirling high above Earth's magnetic poles , and unlike typical hurricanes, they don't rainwater—they rain electrons ! Dozens of space hurricanes (one illustrated) develop each year high above both of Earth’s magnetic poles, largely in summer. These plasma cyclones may be driven by snappy magnetic-field lines. First observed in 2021, space hurricanes are cyclonic-shaped auroras in the ionosphere, an upper layer of our atmosphere charged by solar radiation. Recent research has uncovered that these space storms are not limited to the northern hemisphere—they also happen above the southern magnetic pole! Between 2005 and 2016, scientists identified 259 space hurricanes, an average of 23 per year. The solar wind drives these space hurricanes. When the charged particles from the sun collide with Earth's magnetic field, the magnetic field lines split and reconnect. This dynamic process churns up ...

The Universe operates under four fundamental forces— gravity, strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces . While we have understood the particles governing most of these forces, the mysterious graviton , thought to explain gravity, remains elusive. But that might change soon. It’s thought that gravity consists of minute quantum building blocks called gravitons, but so far they have been too elusive to observe. A new result from Pikovski’s Research Group now shows that next-generation quantum sensors can catch a single one. A team of researchers, led by Professor Igor Pikovski from the Stevens Institute of Technology, is testing a revolutionary method to detect individual gravitons using a quantum sensor combined with an acoustic resonator. Inspired by previous gravitational wave detections from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), this new method aims to identify the building block of gravity. Portrait of Newton in 1702, painted by Godfrey Kneller. Credit: Na...

 Scientists from the University of Helsinki have cracked a major cosmic puzzle! Through cutting-edge supercomputer simulations , they’ve discovered how magnetic fields around black holes cause chaotic turbulence that heats plasma and produces the X-ray radiation that we can observe from Earth. This breakthrough could change how we understand the dynamics of these mysterious cosmic giants. Visualization shows how the turbulent plasma moves in the magnetized accretion disk corona. Credit: Jani Närhi The Science Behind Black Holes Black holes are formed when massive stars collapse, creating an object so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape its grasp. Though we can't see black holes directly, their influence on nearby stars and gas reveals their presence. In a binary system, black holes slowly consume their companion stars, forming a glowing disk of matter known as an accretion disk. These disks are sources of intense X-rays, helping us observe the otherwise invisible bla...

  Scientists may have found a solution to the " final parsec problem ," which has made it difficult to explain how supermassive black holes (SMBHs) form. This breakthrough points to a mysterious form of dark matter as the key to resolving the issue. An illustration of two supermassive black holes about to collide.   (Image credit: Getty) Supermassive black holes grow through repeated mergers of smaller holes, but their formation has been puzzling due to a persistent problem. When black holes get close, they seem to orbit indefinitely instead of merging. Known as the "final parsec problem," this issue occurs when the black holes reach a separation of about one parsec (3.26 light-years) and become stuck, unable to lose enough energy to collide and merge. A pair of giant black holes about 3,000 light-years apart in the galaxy NGC 6240, 400 million light-years away. The galaxy's butterfly shape was caused by the collision of two smaller galaxies.  (Image credit: ...