6 Min Read

NASA’s Chandra Finds Unexpected Fireworks in Aftermath of Stellar Explosions

The aftermath of a supernova, a stellar explosion, is usually a slowly fading cloud of hot gas. So when astronomers pointed NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory at the nearby galaxy Messier 83 (M83), they did not expect to find a population of supernova remnants, or the debris from these explosions, showing dramatic changes in their brightness. The new results were presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California, and published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The galaxy M83, located about 15 million light-years from Earth, is forming stars at a high rate. Researchers analyzed 14 years of Chandra data of the galaxy, spanning 2000 to 2014.

Using this extensive set of data, the researchers caught surprising variations in the X-ray brightness of sources previously identified as supernova remnants. The researchers expected supernova remnants older than a century or so to fade gradually in X-rays, but not change dramatically in brightness.

The team found that roughly half of the 22 X-ray sources associated with supernova remnants in their sample showed changes in X-ray brightness over the 14-year span of observations — a result that was completely unexpected.

“We knew that individual X-ray sources could vary dramatically,” said Andrea Prestwich, of the Catholic University of America who led the study. “But finding that so many supernova remnants were behaving this way was a real surprise. Something unusual is going on in these objects. Pinpointing the cause remains a challenge, as M83’s distance limits the detail we can observe.”

One of the 22 variable supernova remnants has a straightforward explanation: SN 1957D, the debris from a supernova first observed nearly 70 years ago, is ramming into material surrounding the explosion site, producing the observed X-ray flares. But this cannot explain the rest of the sample. There is no evidence to suggest that all 22 remnants were formed within the last century. Something else must be driving the variability.

The most likely explanation is that the team has uncovered a population of stellar survivors stars that lived through their partner’s destruction in a supernova explosion. In this scenario, each variable X-ray source began as a pair of massive stars orbiting each other. The more massive star collapsed and exploded as a supernova, leaving behind a black hole or ultra-dense neutron star. Its companion survived.

“It may be that this galaxy contains a collection of supernova remnants where one massive star survives the supernova and becomes locked into an orbit with a black hole or neutron star,” said co-author Michael McCollough of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA). “The neutron star or black hole can then start pulling material from the massive star’s surface.”

That infalling material is superheated by the intense gravitational pull, producing the X-rays Chandra detects. These types of systems, known as high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs), are among the most variable X-ray sources in the universe. Researchers say they may be the cause of the variations seen in M83’s supernova remnants.

Astronomers have known about HMXBs for decades, but the difference with this group in M83 is their connection to supernova remnants. Previously, only a handful of supernova remnants associated with HMXBs had been identified across observations of all galaxies. It is unprecedented to find more than 20 strong candidates in just one galaxy.

The authors found that the variable supernova remnants are in regions with higher concentrations of massive stars than in other parts of the galaxy, increasing the chances of a link between the remnants and HMXBs.

There is another possible explanation: Instead of pulling in material from a companion star, the black hole or neutron star may be recapturing some of the material blasted outward by the original explosion.

“This could be an example of cosmic recycling, where debris from the explosion falls back onto the very object the supernova created,” said co-author Roy Kilgard of Wesleyan University. “And it’s quite possible that both explanations are at play — different sources in our sample may have different origins.”

These results are not unique to M83. A follow-up study of the nearby star-forming galaxy M51 by Zoe Hoiland of Vassar College and Kilgard has uncovered a similar population of variable X-ray sources associated with supernova remnants, suggesting that such systems may be a feature of galaxies undergoing vigorous star formation.

The Chandra data for M83 began with single observations in 2000 and 2001, followed by 10 observations from 2010 to 2011 and another observation in 2014.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Visual Description

This release features a composite image of the nearby galaxy Messier 83, and short timelapse videos of two curious supernova remnants hidden inside.

In the composite image, Messier 83, or M83, is shown to have a spiral structure, viewed straight on. At the center is a brilliant white and yellow pool of light. From that light, spiral arms of hot pink cloud corkscrew out in wide, sweeping arches. The galaxy is covered in a faint grey haze, and flecked with red, green, blue, white, and yellow dots.

In an annotated version of the composite image, two tiny dots to our lower right of center are highlighted by white circles. These are two of the supernova remnants being considered by researchers. Each is examined further in a separate timelapse video.

Over a 14-year period from 2000 to 2014, astronomers pointed NASA’s X-ray observatory at the M83 galaxy. They discovered that about half of the X-ray sources believed to be supernova remnants, the aftermath of stellar explosions, were exhibiting dramatic changes in brightness. This result was entirely unexpected.

Those changes in brightness are highlighted in the timelapse videos. In each video, a series of static images flashes by, focused on one of the two X-ray sources once believed to be supernova remnants. In the videos, the X-ray sources appear as bright blue blobs with glowing cores. But in each image, taken months or years apart, the shapes change, as does the intensity of the blue color, and the brightness of the core. By presenting the substantively different images of the same objects one after another in quick succession, short timelapse videos are created.

The most likely explanation for the changes in brightness is that the team has uncovered a population of stellar survivors, stars that lived through an orbiting partner’s destruction in a supernova explosion. Material is being pulled from the surviving star onto the black hole or neutron star that formed in the supernova, a process known to cause rapid changes in X-ray brightness.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

To learn more about NASA’s Chandra mission, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov

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6 Min Read

NASA’s Chandra Finds Unexpected Fireworks in Aftermath of Stellar Explosions

The aftermath of a supernova, a stellar explosion, is usually a slowly fading cloud of hot gas. So when astronomers pointed NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory at the nearby galaxy Messier 83 (M83), they did not expect to find a population of supernova remnants, or the debris from these explosions, showing dramatic changes in their brightness. The new results were presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California, and published in The Astrophysical Journal.

The galaxy M83, located about 15 million light-years from Earth, is forming stars at a high rate. Researchers analyzed 14 years of Chandra data of the galaxy, spanning 2000 to 2014.

Using this extensive set of data, the researchers caught surprising variations in the X-ray brightness of sources previously identified as supernova remnants. The researchers expected supernova remnants older than a century or so to fade gradually in X-rays, but not change dramatically in brightness.

The team found that roughly half of the 22 X-ray sources associated with supernova remnants in their sample showed changes in X-ray brightness over the 14-year span of observations — a result that was completely unexpected.

“We knew that individual X-ray sources could vary dramatically,” said Andrea Prestwich, of the Catholic University of America who led the study. “But finding that so many supernova remnants were behaving this way was a real surprise. Something unusual is going on in these objects. Pinpointing the cause remains a challenge, as M83’s distance limits the detail we can observe.”

One of the 22 variable supernova remnants has a straightforward explanation: SN 1957D, the debris from a supernova first observed nearly 70 years ago, is ramming into material surrounding the explosion site, producing the observed X-ray flares. But this cannot explain the rest of the sample. There is no evidence to suggest that all 22 remnants were formed within the last century. Something else must be driving the variability.

The most likely explanation is that the team has uncovered a population of stellar survivors stars that lived through their partner’s destruction in a supernova explosion. In this scenario, each variable X-ray source began as a pair of massive stars orbiting each other. The more massive star collapsed and exploded as a supernova, leaving behind a black hole or ultra-dense neutron star. Its companion survived.

“It may be that this galaxy contains a collection of supernova remnants where one massive star survives the supernova and becomes locked into an orbit with a black hole or neutron star,” said co-author Michael McCollough of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA). “The neutron star or black hole can then start pulling material from the massive star’s surface.”

That infalling material is superheated by the intense gravitational pull, producing the X-rays Chandra detects. These types of systems, known as high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs), are among the most variable X-ray sources in the universe. Researchers say they may be the cause of the variations seen in M83’s supernova remnants.

Astronomers have known about HMXBs for decades, but the difference with this group in M83 is their connection to supernova remnants. Previously, only a handful of supernova remnants associated with HMXBs had been identified across observations of all galaxies. It is unprecedented to find more than 20 strong candidates in just one galaxy.

The authors found that the variable supernova remnants are in regions with higher concentrations of massive stars than in other parts of the galaxy, increasing the chances of a link between the remnants and HMXBs.

There is another possible explanation: Instead of pulling in material from a companion star, the black hole or neutron star may be recapturing some of the material blasted outward by the original explosion.

“This could be an example of cosmic recycling, where debris from the explosion falls back onto the very object the supernova created,” said co-author Roy Kilgard of Wesleyan University. “And it’s quite possible that both explanations are at play — different sources in our sample may have different origins.”

These results are not unique to M83. A follow-up study of the nearby star-forming galaxy M51 by Zoe Hoiland of Vassar College and Kilgard has uncovered a similar population of variable X-ray sources associated with supernova remnants, suggesting that such systems may be a feature of galaxies undergoing vigorous star formation.

The Chandra data for M83 began with single observations in 2000 and 2001, followed by 10 observations from 2010 to 2011 and another observation in 2014.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Visual Description

This release features a composite image of the nearby galaxy Messier 83, and short timelapse videos of two curious supernova remnants hidden inside.

In the composite image, Messier 83, or M83, is shown to have a spiral structure, viewed straight on. At the center is a brilliant white and yellow pool of light. From that light, spiral arms of hot pink cloud corkscrew out in wide, sweeping arches. The galaxy is covered in a faint grey haze, and flecked with red, green, blue, white, and yellow dots.

In an annotated version of the composite image, two tiny dots to our lower right of center are highlighted by white circles. These are two of the supernova remnants being considered by researchers. Each is examined further in a separate timelapse video.

Over a 14-year period from 2000 to 2014, astronomers pointed NASA’s X-ray observatory at the M83 galaxy. They discovered that about half of the X-ray sources believed to be supernova remnants, the aftermath of stellar explosions, were exhibiting dramatic changes in brightness. This result was entirely unexpected.

Those changes in brightness are highlighted in the timelapse videos. In each video, a series of static images flashes by, focused on one of the two X-ray sources once believed to be supernova remnants. In the videos, the X-ray sources appear as bright blue blobs with glowing cores. But in each image, taken months or years apart, the shapes change, as does the intensity of the blue color, and the brightness of the core. By presenting the substantively different images of the same objects one after another in quick succession, short timelapse videos are created.

The most likely explanation for the changes in brightness is that the team has uncovered a population of stellar survivors, stars that lived through an orbiting partner’s destruction in a supernova explosion. Material is being pulled from the surviving star onto the black hole or neutron star that formed in the supernova, a process known to cause rapid changes in X-ray brightness.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

To learn more about NASA’s Chandra mission, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov

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The post NASA’s Chandra Finds Unexpected Fireworks in Aftermath of Stellar Explosions appeared first on NASA Science.

Engineers attached a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket to the company’s Stargazer aircraft at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Friday, June 12.

The rocket will carry LINK, a robotic servicing spacecraft from Katalyst Space, into orbit ahead of an attempt to boost NASA’s sinking Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.

All spacecraft in low Earth orbit experience drag caused by our planet’s atmosphere, which gradually reduces their altitudes unless they have propulsion systems to counteract the effect.

A recent bout of solar activity magnified this effect on Swift, and its orbit has lowered faster than anticipated.

Katalyst selected Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket as the best launch option for reaching the observatory in time for LINK to perform the boost procedure, based on the mission’s orbital and programmatic needs. Northrop Grumman will deploy the rocket using Stargazer, the company’s modified L-1011 airplane.

LINK will launch from Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, later this month.

Learn more about the Swift boost:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/swift/swift-boost-mission/

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The post Rocket Attached to Aircraft for Katalyst-NASA Swift Boost appeared first on NASA Science.

Time seems like one of the most basic parts of everyday life. We use clocks to measure it, plan our days around it, and experience it as a steady flow from the past into the future. But according to some of the deepest theories in physics, time may not actually exist in the way we […]

The post A tiny lab-made universe may help solve the mystery of time appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.

Using Webb’s NIRCam and NIRSpec instruments, astronomers have obtained the deepest spectrum ever taken of a little red dot.

The post Webb Delivers Strongest-Ever Case for ‘Black Hole Stars’ Lurking in Early Universe appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Scientists from Goethe University, Frankfurt, studying alternatives to black holes have suggested a mathematically viable formation mechanism for one proposed alternative called a ‘Gravastar.’

Although the team behind the newly proposed gravastar formation mechanism conceded that black holes still represent the simplest and most natural solution to gravitational collapse, they also suggest that the physics behind the alternative, which doesn’t require a single point where spacetime curves infinitely, called a “singularity,” can make them “easier to accept” than black holes.

If correct, and some or all black holes are, in fact, gravastars that mimic their expected properties, the work would establish a valid formation mechanism that could rewrite decades of accepted science and open a new field of research dedicated to understanding this previously misunderstood phenomenon.

Meet Gravastar: The Black Hole Mimicker without a Singularity

According to standard cosmology theories, black holes form when extremely massive stars stop generating energy, allowing the force of gravity to take over and collapse the remaining matter into a single point, or singularity. Unfortunately, the research team behind the new study notes that “the laws of physics break down” within the singularity, making the formation of the resulting black hole a difficult phenomenon to predict.

“How can spacetime be curved infinitely at that point, the singularity?” asks the team’s statement announcing the new approach. They also note that no information escapes a black hole, including light, making studying its inner workings effectively impossible, and opening up the possibility that “black holes are in fact entirely different objects.”

Some options have been proposed, including ‘horizonless’ black hole mimickers. The team notes that these proposed options are “mathematically consistent alternatives” that also address the physics challenges posed by traditional black holes. 

Still, how these alternative objects form has remained largely unclear. The research team said this lack of a formation mechanism constitutes “a significant open problem” since understanding how they form is the “first step” to determining if they truly exist.

New Model Creates a ‘Big Bang’ Inside a ‘Mini-Universe’

In the new formation model, theoretical physicists Daniel Jampolski and Theoretical Astrophysics Professor Luciano Rezzolla from Goethe University showed that the collapse of a dying star may not go far enough that it reaches the point of no return, where “the collapse to a black hole is inevitable.”

Instead, the collapse slows down near a point scientists call the Schwarzschild radius, then stops. The result is what the team termed a “miniature universe” within the collapsing matter, which they compared to the dynamics of the Big Bang, which most theorists agree formed the entire universe.

Since the universe’s expansion was driven by dark energy, the new model proposes that the dark energy within the mini-universe establishes an “equilibrium” with the counteracting force of gravity, therefore halting the collapse of the star “before a black hole can form.”

“The Big Bang of the emerging universe can unfold once the star has already collapsed almost to the point of becoming a black hole,” explained Jampolski, who discovered the black hole alternative gravastar solution in his master’s thesis while under the supervision of Professor Rezzolla.

Maintaining an Unbiased Approach Toward “What We Do Not Know”

When discussing the impact of their proposed black hole alternative formation model, Jampolski said that from a mathematical and physics standpoint, it is “easier to imagine that the Big Bang occurs only at a very late stage, when matter has already been compressed to an extreme degree, thereby giving rise to new effects.” The team also notes that the unresolved behavior of matter in this environment “leaves room for new physics.”

Although the team’s model offers a mathematically sound formation for an alternative to black holes, Rezzolla notes that the search for gravastars or other alternatives “should not suggest a skepticism towards black holes,” which, he adds, “still represent the most natural and simplest solution to the fate of gravitational collapse.”

Instead, the Goethe professor explained, his general role as a scientist and his specific discipline as a theoretical physicist make it essential that he and his colleagues “maintain an unbiased approach towards what we do not know and hence explore both the accepted wisdom and the more exotic interpretations.”

“History teaches us that it is not unusual for the latter to become the former,” the professor added.

The paper “Formation of gravastars” was published in the journal Physical Review D.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

Einstein’s equations have withstood every experimental test for more than a century. However, according to one philosopher, they have not withstood careful scrutiny of the language used to describe them.

Daryl Janzen, an astronomer and instructor at the University of Saskatchewan, recently published a philosophical challenge in The Conversation. Janzen’s critique does not question the mathematics but instead focuses on how physicists and philosophers describe the nature of space-time itself. He argues that over the past century, the language used to describe space-time has gradually merged two separate concepts into one.

Existence vs. Occurrence

The main focus of this argument is the idea of the “block universe.” In this view, also known as eternalism, space-time is a fixed, four-dimensional structure. All past, present, and future events are equally real within this block, according to this interpretation. Time does not flow, and there is no single present moment. The block contains everything that has ever occurred.

Janzen does not object to the geometry itself. His concern lies with the way the word “exists” is used in this context.

Janzen distinguishes between existence and occurrence. Objects exist because they endure through time. Events occur at a specific place and moment, and then they are over. For example, an elephant standing in a room exists. A cross-sectional snapshot of that elephant, representing a single instant removed from its timeline and frozen in place, does not exist in the same way; it only occurs.

In the block universe model, space-time holds every moment of the elephant’s existence as a four-dimensional world line. This world line shows the animal’s full path through space and time. A single cross-section, or one slice of that path, is not the elephant itself; it is only a record of what the elephant was doing at a certain moment. Janzen says the block is better understood as a representational framework rather than a physical object in the usual sense.

A Problem of When

This confusion leads to a fundamental problem. The entire block universe is said to exist, but it is unclear when it exists. A timeless structure that never unfolds cannot endure as the elephant endures from moment to moment. Meanwhile, if the whole block occurs at once, like a single flash, there is no internal experience of time that could be considered an illusion. 

To keep the sense of time passing in a block universe, the four-dimensional structure would need to endure in some sense. This would mean adding a fifth dimension, a second time axis outside the block, for the block itself to exist within; however, this extra axis is not part of Einstein’s original theory.

Janzen uses a simpler analogy. He compares the situation to describing a song that exists all at once, complete but unperformed. A song only becomes a song when it unfolds over time.

Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein warned that philosophical problems arise when “language goes on holiday.” Janzen argues that physics has been in this situation for decades, reusing words such as “timeless,” “exist,” and “become” in technical senses without considering their everyday connotations.

Implications for Physics and Philosophy

One of the biggest unsolved problems in physics is how to bring together general relativity, which explains gravity and the large-scale universe, with quantum mechanics, which describes matter at the smallest scales. These two frameworks do not fit together, and every real attempt to unify them demands a clear definition of what space-time actually is.

If the language physicists use to describe space-time has been internally inconsistent for more than a century, Janzen suggests the resulting confusion may extend beyond philosophy. Clarifying what physicists mean when they talk about space-time could influence how researchers think about attempts to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Janzen does not propose a replacement for the current framework but instead suggests that the fundamental question is not how space-time curves, but how to properly define them in the first place.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed a cosmic catastrophe, as winds extinguished a star-forming galaxy in the early universe, offering new insight into earlier strange observations.

Cosmic winds may destroy entire galaxies, according to new JWST research exploring the lingering mystery of why certain parts of the universe are unexpectedly devoid of growth.

The findings were published in a recent paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, revealing galactic-scale death in a universe just one billion years old, and potentially answering questions about previous troubling JWST observations.

James Webb Space Telescope Observation

Observations made by the JWST revealed cold gas, an essential star-forming material, blowing out of the CRISTAL-2 galaxy in a massive plume, severely degrading its ability to produce new stars. According to the researchers, it would take less than 50 million years for the galaxy to be completely dead if this activity keeps up, a mere blink in the scheme of a 13.8 billion-year-old universe.

Astronomers consider galaxies to be “dead” if they are no longer capable of producing fresh stars. Traditionally, astronomers expected that it would take billions of years for an old galaxy to slowly run out of fuel and burn out. However, JWST observations have continually captured events in the early universe that were not expected to occur until much later.

One of these was finding a host of dead galaxies in the early universe shortly after it first became operational in 2022. How galaxies could die so close to the beginning of the universe, without sufficient time to burn through their cold gas supplies, has long perplexed scientists.

Explaining Galaxy Death

As researchers began considering various explanations for the phenomenon, they initially settled on dark energy, essentially explaining one unknown with another. Dark energy is a theoretical substance that scientists believe drives the expansion of the universe and was once a stronger force than it is now. While the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument survey revealed last year that dark energy appears to be weakening over time, an exotic galaxy-killer is not required, according to this latest research.

Instead, researchers offer a much simpler explanation of powerful cosmic winds in the remote past. Conventional thinking has it that such powerful winds could only be generated by a supermassive black hole, yet these new observations challenge that assumption.

JWST Reveals the Culprit

CRISTAL-02 is a galaxy still in the making, composed of several smaller galaxies in the final stages of merging into a single system. Because the early universe was far denser than it is today, such collisions were much more common. During these mergers, gravitational forces funnel vast amounts of gas toward the galactic centers, triggering intense bursts of star formation.

Observations of CRISTAL-02 by the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) revealed a star formation rate roughly twice that of similar galaxies. Ironically, this extraordinary burst of stellar activity is also generating a powerful cosmic wind that is stripping away the very gas needed to form new stars.

Compounding the effect, many of the newly formed stars rapidly exhaust their fuel and end their lives as supernovae, producing additional outflows that further deplete the galaxy’s star-forming material.

Together, these processes appear capable of shutting down star formation far more quickly than astronomers previously believed possible. Going forward, ongoing JWST observations are likely to continue challenging astronomers’ assumptions, as more evidence indicates that nearly half of the early universe’s massive galaxies were interacting—a finding which also suggests early “galactic deaths” like these may not be all that rare, after all.

The paper, “Multiphase Images of a Powerful Supernova-Driven Wind in the Early Universe,” appeared in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on June 10, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

The nature of time has long puzzled scientists, and now one researcher at the University of Birmingham has constructed a mini-universe in a laboratory to get to the bottom of this and other fundamental questions about gravity and quantum mechanics.

Revealed in a recent paper published in Physical Review Research, Professor Giovanni Barontini created a universe in a sealed quantum system to answer the lingering questions of “what is time?” with a laboratory model. His work creates an intriguing new testbed for exploring the nature of our universe from beginning to end, and all the phenomena in between.

Creating a Universe

Physicists have long puzzled over how a sequence of events could be understood in a universe without an external clock. The new work demonstrates how to move purely theoretical work into a practical laboratory environment, allowing exploration of deep questions about time and quantum physics.

In the new paper, Professor Barontini describes creating a miniature universe from 24,000 atoms held at just several degrees above absolute zero. Such temperatures are essential to many quantum explorations, including quantum computing technologies.

In this quantum system, the hermetically sealed cloud of ultracold atoms acts like a miniature universe. A thin barrier divides this tiny universe in half, while two lasers set to different frequencies bombarded it to create an observed bright region and an unobserved dark region.

Internal Time

Crucial to the experiment, Barontini did not measure time externally but instead waited for the internal relationship between the particles to generate time within this new universe. This idea comes from theoretical physics concepts such as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, which posits that the universe exists in an ever-steady quantum state exhibiting both wave- and particle-like behavior, without an external time.

Barontini observed the bright side behaving similarly to our universe, albeit on “fast-forward,” repeating a cycle of Big Bangs and Big Crunches, continually expanding and collapsing back in on itself. Since the sequence of events could be reconstructed entirely within the quantum system without reference to a laboratory clock, this shows that time emerges from the system itself, created by the disorder of spreading atoms, rather than being an external function.

Investigating Quantum Time

Time moved forward in a single direction, with the increase or decrease in particles in the bright sector as they moved into the dark sector and back again, indicating an arrow of time. Yet, when the atomic distribution remained steady, Barontini observed a halt in time, leading him to describe what he witnessed as “entropic time.”

While this version of time corrects the order of events, it is not steady; it varies with the system’s entropy level. Notably, Schrödinger’s equation, the linchpin of quantum theory, still works in entropic time.

“In some theories of the universe, especially quantum gravity, time doesn’t appear as a built‑in feature,” Barontini said. “Yet in everyday life, time flows from past to future – why is this so, when most basic laws of physics work the same way forwards and backwards?”

“This study provides the first controlled experimental evidence that ‘time’ can be defined by changes within a system rather than as the external ‘ticking clock’ we think of as time,” Barontini concluded. “It offers new insight into the nature of time in quantum gravity that could be used to describe dynamics just as effectively as conventional time.”

Moving forward, such artificial universes could be used to probe the mysteries of our own universe, including its earliest moments, the emergence of time, and even black holes.

The paper, “Testing the Problem of Time with Cold Atoms,” appeared in Physical Review Research on June 11, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of what astronomers call “little red dots” have intrigued researchers since their discovery in 2022.

Now, new data on the spectra of one of these dots, made possible with imagery obtained by Webb, may hold the answers researchers have long sought.

In a recent paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, a team of astronomers led by the University of Texas at Austin’s Vasily Kokorev revealed their intriguing observations of the little red dot GLIMPSE-17775 using the JWST.

Data collected by the JWST support the BH* scenario, the hypothesis that little red dots are supermassive black holes surrounded by a cloud of partially ionized gas.

JWST and the Little Red Dot

The recent JWST observation of GLIMPSE-17775 is the deepest spectral view of a little red dot ever captured, spanning 40 spectral lines and offering a powerful opportunity to compare the data with various theories about the object’s origins. Born only about 1.8 billion years after the Big Bang, or about 12 billion years ago, the object hails from the universe’s early days.

As with many of science’s most interesting discoveries, this observation was a fortunate accident, captured as the JWST was observing the Abell S1063 galaxy cluster, located in front of GLIMPSE-17775 from our point of view.

Gravitational lensing magnifies GIMPSE-17775, allowing JWST a better look at the object despite its extreme distance, and making the 30-spectrum JWST captured equivalent to hours of observations. 

“When we saw the spectrum for the first time, it was like having all the pieces of a puzzle scattered on the floor,” said Kokorev. “We picked up each piece of the puzzle, measured the lines, and started combining the different pieces into a mosaic. Maybe a few pieces looked like nothing at first, but then a couple of them came together, and we realized that there was something there.”

Explaining Little Red Dots

First appearing at around 600 million years after the Big Bang, the mysterious little red dots have puzzled scientists since they first came to light. The black hole scenario is just one of several that researchers have proposed as a possible explanation, although it is currently gaining the most support as more data comes in.

“I think part of the scientific community is converging on a singular picture — that little red dots can be explained by black hole star models. But none of the previous little red dots have all of the pieces of evidence in the same place,” Kokorev said. “With GLIMPSE-17775, we can test these models because of how deep and amazing this source’s spectrum is.”

The researchers interpret the data as showing a rapidly accreting black hole covered by a dense gas cocoon that reprocesses the black hole’s light into the spectrum observed by JWST.

Comparing the spectra to various models revealed some intriguing evidence for the BH* scenario. The helium, oxygen, and hydrogen lines don’t fit a simple rotating gas cloud model, but do correspond to an electron scattering, a broadening effect associated with a dense, layered gas cocoon.

Other lines, such as the 16 iron lines, suggest a powerful energy source, which could indicate a rapidly accreting black hole. Additionally, helium absorption and fluorescence are seen in the spectrum, signs that a powerful energy source is enveloped in a dense medium.

What JWST Didn’t See

Beyond this incredibly deep spectrum, other little red dot observations have been faint in X-rays, a form of emission that the gas cocoon, in the BH* scenario, is likely to absorb.

One strange quirk of GLIMPSE-17775 is that the spectrum was missing the portion that would indicate the little red dots’ signature dip in light emission, known as a Balmer break. However, supplementary data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope resolved this issue, identifying that interference from a giant host galaxy is the root cause.

“Everything fits, nothing is broken, and I think that makes the puzzle that is our universe even better,” Kokorev concluded. “Looking ahead, I’m eager to dive deeper and learn about what is powering the central engines of little red dots. While we think it’s a black hole, there are some other interesting theories being proposed, which is exciting. Maybe in a year or two, we’ll have the final answer to what powers these sources.”

The paper, “The Deepest GLIMPSE of a Dense Gas Cocoon Enshrouding a Little Red Dot,” appeared in The Astrophysical Journal on June 10, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

Looking somewhat like a swarm of bees returning to their hive, this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy cluster MACS0329-0211. Galaxy clusters like MACS0329-0211 are important signposts in the story of how the structure of the universe evolved, and are the ultimate telescopic lenses, placing gravitationally lensed galaxies from the earliest stages of the universe into our view.

Zoom into this galaxy swarm and you will find large, oval-shaped elliptical galaxies, and thin spiral and lenticular galaxies viewed from the edge. We can also see the full, face-on view of spiral galaxies and their curving spiral arms. The image’s upper-right quadrant holds faint arcs of distant galaxies gravitationally lensed by the cluster’s massive gravity. The largest of these arcs appears above the bright oval shape of a giant elliptical galaxy. Closer inspection of the image’s center reveals several bright-white intersecting curves that appear as a distorted figure eight. This may be another distant galaxy whose light was magnified and distorted by this massive cluster’s gravity.

Hubble looked at MACS0329-0211 as part of an observing program of X-ray bright galaxy clusters. Researchers used Hubble’s two main cameras, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and its Wide Field Camera 3, to gather data visible and infrared light from the cluster. Hubble’s ability to see such a broad spectrum of light makes it a valuable tool in understanding the very nature of these galaxy clusters.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble’s Galaxies

Hubble Science Highlights

Hubble Images

Looking somewhat like a swarm of bees returning to their hive, this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy cluster MACS0329-0211. Galaxy clusters like MACS0329-0211 are important signposts in the story of how the structure of the universe evolved, and are the ultimate telescopic lenses, placing gravitationally lensed galaxies from the earliest stages of the universe into our view.

Zoom into this galaxy swarm and you will find large, oval-shaped elliptical galaxies, and thin spiral and lenticular galaxies viewed from the edge. We can also see the full, face-on view of spiral galaxies and their curving spiral arms. The image’s upper-right quadrant holds faint arcs of distant galaxies gravitationally lensed by the cluster’s massive gravity. The largest of these arcs appears above the bright oval shape of a giant elliptical galaxy. Closer inspection of the image’s center reveals several bright-white intersecting curves that appear as a distorted figure eight. This may be another distant galaxy whose light was magnified and distorted by this massive cluster’s gravity.

Hubble looked at MACS0329-0211 as part of an observing program of X-ray bright galaxy clusters. Researchers used Hubble’s two main cameras, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and its Wide Field Camera 3, to gather data visible and infrared light from the cluster. Hubble’s ability to see such a broad spectrum of light makes it a valuable tool in understanding the very nature of these galaxy clusters.

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Hubble

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

Hubble’s Galaxies

Hubble Science Highlights

Hubble Images

The post Hubble Sees Swarm of Galaxies appeared first on NASA Science.

5 Min Read

NASA’s Chandra Discovers Possible Supernova Remnant in Galactic Center

Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers may have found a supernova remnant in an intriguing neighborhood in the middle of our galaxy. A paper describing these new findings published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Supernova remnants are the expanding remains of exploded stars and provide elements – like iron, oxygen, and silicon – that are critical for the formation of planets and for life as we know it to form and flourish.

This new supernova remnant, if confirmed, would be one of the closest ever discovered to the supermassive black hole at the central region of the Milky Way galaxy, an exotic region crammed with massive stars, long threads of magnetic fields and dense clouds of gas orbiting rapidly around the Galactic Center.

A new composite image of this region contains X-rays from Chandra and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton mission (shown in blue) as well as radio data from the MeerKAT telescope (shown in red) in South Africa. These have been combined with an optical image from the Pan-STARRS telescopes in Hawaii (red, green, and blue). The plane of the galaxy runs horizontally from left to right in the image, and the central black hole is off to the left of the image.

The evidence for the new supernova remnant, located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, comes from X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton. The X-ray data reveals a “blob” of X-ray emission that may come from the remains of a massive star that self-destructed as a supernova, buried within the larger cloud of expanding gas.

The location of this suspected supernova remnant in the image is labeled with a circle.

It is in a bubble of gas that has had electrons stripped away from hydrogen – called an “H II region” – surrounding a massive, young star. This bubble is a bright source of radio emission called Sagittarius C.

If this is indeed a supernova remnant, then it is expanding at about two million miles per hour and is at least about 1,700 years old. Previously, observations with NASA’s now-retired SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) mission had shown evidence for an expanding shell of gas surrounding Sagittarius C. This gave astronomers a hint that a stellar explosion had occurred in the same spot.

The long filaments seen in the radio image are caused by energetic particles travelling along magnetic fields that are mostly directed perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy.

The nuclear fusion engines of stars create elements from hydrogen and helium that were abundant at the beginning of the universe. When stars explode at the end of their lives as supernovae, they send these newly synthesized elements into interstellar space and provide material for the next generation of stars and planets.

The team of astronomers searched the X-ray data for signs of increased amounts of key elements in the remnant, which would have been caused by the stellar explosion blasting them into space. While they did not see an enhancement, this could imply that the stellar debris has already mixed with the surrounding gas.

An alternative explanation for the X-ray blob is that the hot gas comes from a collection of massive stars in the region. The authors of the recent study don’t think this explanation is likely, because the X-ray emission from the blob is more than ten times brighter than the X-ray emission of large, known stellar clusters with bright, massive stars.

An additional image shows data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope added to the X-ray and radio data. The light blue color represents infrared light from gas in the H II region, and the darker blue depicts X-rays from the supernova remnant candidate, on the right side of the image. X-rays near the center of the image are associated with the H II region, possibly caused by material blown away by massive stars that has heated gas to millions of degrees, producing X-rays.

The study’s authors are Zhenlin Zhu and Mark Morris of the University of California, Los Angeles; Gabriele Ponti of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics; and Ping Zhou of Nanjing University in China.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Visual Description

This release features a composite image of colorful, overlapping clouds, which suggests to astronomers that a supernova remnant may be buried in gas near the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

Set against a backdrop packed with distant stars and other specks of light are two distinct, overlapping clouds. The larger, visually dominant cloud, is red and multifaceted. It has an irregular shape, and features patches of different textures, including pockets that resemble wispy smoke, tangles of faint red veins, and clear streaking lines. This large cloud of expanding gas represents radio data from the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa.

Overlapping with that red cloud is a cloudy blue blob representing X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. Astronomers suggest that this blue blob of X-ray emissions is the remains of a massive star destroyed by a supernova.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

To learn more about NASA’s Chandra mission, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov

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The post NASA’s Chandra Discovers Possible Supernova Remnant in Galactic Center appeared first on NASA Science.

5 Min Read

NASA’s Chandra Discovers Possible Supernova Remnant in Galactic Center

Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers may have found a supernova remnant in an intriguing neighborhood in the middle of our galaxy. A paper describing these new findings published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Supernova remnants are the expanding remains of exploded stars and provide elements – like iron, oxygen, and silicon – that are critical for the formation of planets and for life as we know it to form and flourish.

This new supernova remnant, if confirmed, would be one of the closest ever discovered to the supermassive black hole at the central region of the Milky Way galaxy, an exotic region crammed with massive stars, long threads of magnetic fields and dense clouds of gas orbiting rapidly around the Galactic Center.

A new composite image of this region contains X-rays from Chandra and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) XMM-Newton mission (shown in blue) as well as radio data from the MeerKAT telescope (shown in red) in South Africa. These have been combined with an optical image from the Pan-STARRS telescopes in Hawaii (red, green, and blue). The plane of the galaxy runs horizontally from left to right in the image, and the central black hole is off to the left of the image.

The evidence for the new supernova remnant, located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, comes from X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton. The X-ray data reveals a “blob” of X-ray emission that may come from the remains of a massive star that self-destructed as a supernova, buried within the larger cloud of expanding gas.

The location of this suspected supernova remnant in the image is labeled with a circle.

It is in a bubble of gas that has had electrons stripped away from hydrogen – called an “H II region” – surrounding a massive, young star. This bubble is a bright source of radio emission called Sagittarius C.

If this is indeed a supernova remnant, then it is expanding at about two million miles per hour and is at least about 1,700 years old. Previously, observations with NASA’s now-retired SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) mission had shown evidence for an expanding shell of gas surrounding Sagittarius C. This gave astronomers a hint that a stellar explosion had occurred in the same spot.

The long filaments seen in the radio image are caused by energetic particles travelling along magnetic fields that are mostly directed perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy.

The nuclear fusion engines of stars create elements from hydrogen and helium that were abundant at the beginning of the universe. When stars explode at the end of their lives as supernovae, they send these newly synthesized elements into interstellar space and provide material for the next generation of stars and planets.

The team of astronomers searched the X-ray data for signs of increased amounts of key elements in the remnant, which would have been caused by the stellar explosion blasting them into space. While they did not see an enhancement, this could imply that the stellar debris has already mixed with the surrounding gas.

An alternative explanation for the X-ray blob is that the hot gas comes from a collection of massive stars in the region. The authors of the recent study don’t think this explanation is likely, because the X-ray emission from the blob is more than ten times brighter than the X-ray emission of large, known stellar clusters with bright, massive stars.

An additional image shows data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope added to the X-ray and radio data. The light blue color represents infrared light from gas in the H II region, and the darker blue depicts X-rays from the supernova remnant candidate, on the right side of the image. X-rays near the center of the image are associated with the H II region, possibly caused by material blown away by massive stars that has heated gas to millions of degrees, producing X-rays.

The study’s authors are Zhenlin Zhu and Mark Morris of the University of California, Los Angeles; Gabriele Ponti of Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics; and Ping Zhou of Nanjing University in China.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

Visual Description

This release features a composite image of colorful, overlapping clouds, which suggests to astronomers that a supernova remnant may be buried in gas near the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

Set against a backdrop packed with distant stars and other specks of light are two distinct, overlapping clouds. The larger, visually dominant cloud, is red and multifaceted. It has an irregular shape, and features patches of different textures, including pockets that resemble wispy smoke, tangles of faint red veins, and clear streaking lines. This large cloud of expanding gas represents radio data from the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa.

Overlapping with that red cloud is a cloudy blue blob representing X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. Astronomers suggest that this blue blob of X-ray emissions is the remains of a massive star destroyed by a supernova.

Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory

To learn more about NASA’s Chandra mission, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/chandra

https://chandra.si.edu

News Media Contact

Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu

Joel Wallace
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
joel.w.wallace@nasa.gov

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The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is NASA’s first mission to study the polarization of X-rays.

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Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

A new type of gamma-ray sensor developed by NASA, called AstroPix, will take part in a robotic arm demonstration on the agency’s upcoming Fly Foundational Robots mission, set to launch in late 2027.

Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light. Scientists observe them coming from events like lightning in Earth’s atmosphere, powerful solar flares from our Sun, and cosmic collisions in distant galaxies. The sensors on the AstroPix technology demonstration are designed to measure gamma rays between 20,000 and 700,000 electron volts. For comparison, visible light’s energy falls between 2 and 3 electron volts.

Current NASA missions, including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, also observe gamma rays, including those with even higher energies.

But for energies between 500,000 to 1 million electron volts, existing detectors are less sensitive. This range is where many powerful explosions called gamma-ray bursts shine the brightest. It’s also where astronomers expect to see the strongest glow from the most massive and distant active galaxies powered by black holes. By stacking AstroPix detectors in future missions, scientists could bridge this gap and improve observations of these cosmic objects to better understand the processes that create and drive them.

“The Fly Foundational Robots spacecraft is also a technology demonstration, so the projects were a good fit for each other,” said Dan Violette, an AstroPix team member and post-doctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We need to thoroughly test AstroPix’s performance before we can use the sensors in future science missions. We’ve flown comparable technologies on a scientific balloon mission, and the current prototype eventually will be part of a sounding rocket payload. Many of those flight opportunities only reach near space, though. It’s not often that technology demonstrations like ours can find a ride into orbit.”

Each AstroPix chip contains four silicon pixel gamma-ray detectors, and each detector incorporates 1,225 pixels. The chips function similarly to the sensors in cell phone cameras.

The AstroPix Satellite Technology dEmonstration Payload, also known as A-STEP, will be hosted within the Fly Foundational Robots mission’s Orbital Replacement Unit, a movable module built by Rocket Lab Robotics. Rocket Lab Robotics also will provide a robotic arm that will pick up and reposition the unit during flight and perform in-orbit operations as part of a robotic servicing demonstration. The A-STEP payload will collect its data following the repositioning. Astro Digital will provide the spacecraft.

The Orbital Replacement Unit was designed to support power and data interfaces for a payload, but the original plan called for the robotic arm to reposition the module without one. As mission development progressed, however, the Fly Foundational Robots team identified an opportunity to further maximize the mission’s value by integrating an additional technology demonstration that could fit within the 11.8-inch (30-centimeter) cube.

“The unit already had the volume, power, and data needed to support the AstroPix team’s design,” said Bo Naasz, senior technical lead, In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing in the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “One of our major goals with Fly Foundational Robots is to demonstrate robotic changeout of payloads in orbit, enabling upgrades or improvements to satellites and space instruments at a fraction of the cost of a full mission. Allowing AstroPix to complete its own technology demonstration in orbit is a bonus.”

The AstroPix team is working to deliver their hardware this September, and it will be integrated into the Fly Foundational Robots payload before final integration onto the spacecraft. The Orbital Replacement Unit will hold the chips and all the associated electronics needed to provide power, and collect and transmit data during flight.

NASA’s Fly Foundational Robots mission is funded through the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s ISAM portfolio, managed at NASA Goddard. Rocket Lab Robotics will supply the mission’s robotic arm system through a NASA Small Business Innovation Research Phase III award. Astro Digital will host the orbital flight test of the arm through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, managed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The development of AstroPix was supported by NASA’s Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, through the agency’s Astrophysics Research and Analysis Program, and funded through the Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship.

To learn more, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/3R28tWE

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The post NASA Robotic Tech Demo Will Advance Prototype Gamma-Ray Detectors appeared first on NASA Science.

A new type of gamma-ray sensor developed by NASA, called AstroPix, will take part in a robotic arm demonstration on the agency’s upcoming Fly Foundational Robots mission, set to launch in late 2027.

Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light. Scientists observe them coming from events like lightning in Earth’s atmosphere, powerful solar flares from our Sun, and cosmic collisions in distant galaxies. The sensors on the AstroPix technology demonstration are designed to measure gamma rays between 20,000 and 700,000 electron volts. For comparison, visible light’s energy falls between 2 and 3 electron volts.

Current NASA missions, including the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, also observe gamma rays, including those with even higher energies.

But for energies between 500,000 to 1 million electron volts, existing detectors are less sensitive. This range is where many powerful explosions called gamma-ray bursts shine the brightest. It’s also where astronomers expect to see the strongest glow from the most massive and distant active galaxies powered by black holes. By stacking AstroPix detectors in future missions, scientists could bridge this gap and improve observations of these cosmic objects to better understand the processes that create and drive them.

“The Fly Foundational Robots spacecraft is also a technology demonstration, so the projects were a good fit for each other,” said Dan Violette, an AstroPix team member and post-doctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We need to thoroughly test AstroPix’s performance before we can use the sensors in future science missions. We’ve flown comparable technologies on a scientific balloon mission, and the current prototype eventually will be part of a sounding rocket payload. Many of those flight opportunities only reach near space, though. It’s not often that technology demonstrations like ours can find a ride into orbit.”

Each AstroPix chip contains four silicon pixel gamma-ray detectors, and each detector incorporates 1,225 pixels. The chips function similarly to the sensors in cell phone cameras.

The AstroPix Satellite Technology dEmonstration Payload, also known as A-STEP, will be hosted within the Fly Foundational Robots mission’s Orbital Replacement Unit, a movable module built by Rocket Lab Robotics. Rocket Lab Robotics also will provide a robotic arm that will pick up and reposition the unit during flight and perform in-orbit operations as part of a robotic servicing demonstration. The A-STEP payload will collect its data following the repositioning. Astro Digital will provide the spacecraft.

The Orbital Replacement Unit was designed to support power and data interfaces for a payload, but the original plan called for the robotic arm to reposition the module without one. As mission development progressed, however, the Fly Foundational Robots team identified an opportunity to further maximize the mission’s value by integrating an additional technology demonstration that could fit within the 11.8-inch (30-centimeter) cube.

“The unit already had the volume, power, and data needed to support the AstroPix team’s design,” said Bo Naasz, senior technical lead, In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing in the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “One of our major goals with Fly Foundational Robots is to demonstrate robotic changeout of payloads in orbit, enabling upgrades or improvements to satellites and space instruments at a fraction of the cost of a full mission. Allowing AstroPix to complete its own technology demonstration in orbit is a bonus.”

The AstroPix team is working to deliver their hardware this September, and it will be integrated into the Fly Foundational Robots payload before final integration onto the spacecraft. The Orbital Replacement Unit will hold the chips and all the associated electronics needed to provide power, and collect and transmit data during flight.

NASA’s Fly Foundational Robots mission is funded through the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s ISAM portfolio, managed at NASA Goddard. Rocket Lab Robotics will supply the mission’s robotic arm system through a NASA Small Business Innovation Research Phase III award. Astro Digital will host the orbital flight test of the arm through NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, managed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The development of AstroPix was supported by NASA’s Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, through the agency’s Astrophysics Research and Analysis Program, and funded through the Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship.

To learn more, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/3R28tWE

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

A new study has taken a fresh look at a late 2025 Yonsei University study claiming the universe’s expansion is stalling out and instead has found that the universe is still expanding as previously believed.

Led by researchers from the University of Southampton, the team behind the new analysis acknowledged the scientific value of the 2025 team’s work, noting that their calculations were not wrong but lacked the additional data needed to confirm the universe’s expansion rather than refute it.

The lead author of the 2025 study, Dr. Chul Chung, told The Debrief that he and his colleagues “have already submitted our response to Wiseman, Riess et al. 2026 on May 14,” adding that the paper, “Still accelerating: age bias correction in supernova cosmology is robust to host-progenitor age mapping,” has also been posted on arXiv.

“The abstract summarizes the two main issues we identify in Wiseman et al., so I think it provides a concise overview of our position,” Chung told The Debrief.

Challenging Universal Expansion

According to a statement announcing the findings, scientists first confirmed the universe’s expansion was accelerating in 2011, a discovery that won astrophysicists Professor Adam Riess and Professor Brian Schmidt the Nobel Prize in Physics. Since that discovery, cosmological models have incorporated this accelerating expansion, with experiments on dark matter and dark energy attempting to explain it.

Then last year, a separate team of astronomers announced that a new analysis of stellar phenomena indicated that the universe was no longer expanding. Adding to the controversy was the team’s claim that dark energy may not exist, citing the lack of concrete evidence for a universe undergoing accelerating expansion.

According to the Southampton-led team behind the new study, the 2025 study suggested that previous methods used to measure the universe’s expansion, such as measuring supernovae, “were fundamentally flawed.”

“This points to a time-varying dark energy and a universe that is no longer accelerating, representing a potential paradigm shift in cosmology if confirmed,” explained Professor Chul Chung, co-lead author on the study, in a 2025 email to The Debrief.

The claims sent shockwaves through the scientific community, a result that the researchers note could have dismantled the Nobel Prize-winning team’s historic findings, and “nearly three decades of astronomical progress.”

When discussing the 2025 team’s work, the lead author of the new study, Dr Phil Wiseman, said the team’s findings and the resulting debate were not necessarily incorrect. Instead, the Southampton researcher said it was primarily a result of a scientific understanding.

“The previous and well-accepted measurements were, in fact, fine and our current understanding of the fate of the universe remains robust.”

Recalculating Galaxy Masses and White Dwarf Star Ages Reestablishes Expansion

In their reanalysis, the Southampton-led team recalibrated the original data to account for variables not in the original study. According to Wiseman, these included “different host environments and populations.”

For example, the research team looked at Type 1a supernovae, which are violet, extremely bright explosions of white dwarf stars. The authors of the 2025 study claimed that this class of supernova had “different maximum brightness,” which had tricked astronomers into thinking the cosmos was accelerating, when their analysis said it was actually slowing down.

When they took a fresh look at the data, the Southampton team found that they had incorrectly estimated the age of these stars. The new study also says the 2025 team didn’t account for the mass of the galaxies hosting these cosmological phenomena, which they described as “a standard correction used in modern cosmology to prove accuracy.”

When his team factored those data points in, Wiseman said the evidence for a stalling expansion was not supported. Instead, the researcher observed that “the evidence for cosmic acceleration remains remarkably consistent.”

In their reply on ArXiv, the Yonsei University team said the new research failed to factor in two variables of their own, adding that “when these two effects are consistently combined in computing the redshift-dependent magnitude correction, the final correction, and hence the resulting cosmological impact, remain largely unchanged,” from the original 2025 calculations.

“Extraordinary Claims Require Especially Careful Testing”

When discussing the new study’s findings, Southampton Professor Mark Sullivan highlighted the benefits of scientific review, noting that “this is how progress is made.”

“Although this idea did not turn out correct, it has opened up new ways of thinking about how supernovae explode and how we can measure dark energy more accurately,” the researcher added.

Paper co-author, Dr Brodie Popovic agreed, noting that the 2025 study provided astronomers a good opportunity to “go back over all of our assumptions,” adding that “it turns out, yes, we do understand this stuff, and we’re accounting for it in our cosmology measurement.”

In a salute to the Sagan Standard established by astronomer Carl Sagan, which says “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” Reiss seemed to celebrate the new findings that reestablish his original work by quipping that “extraordinary claims require especially careful testing.”

With the accelerating expansion of the universe seemingly reestablished, at least for now, Dr Wiseman said: “we can get back to trying to understand what dark energy actually is, rather than wondering if it exists at all.”

“Thankfully we have averted this crisis, but the mystery about why the universe is still accelerating in size remains,” he added. 

The study “Still Accelerating: Type Ia supernova cosmology is robust to host galaxy age evolution” was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

Engineers completed installation of Katalyst Space’s LINK robotic servicing spacecraft into a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket on Tuesday, June 9, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Launch is anticipated later this month.

NASA contracted Katalyst to build and launch LINK to raise the altitude of the agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.

Our planet’s atmosphere creates drag for spacecraft in low Earth orbit, gradually reducing their altitudes if they don’t have propulsion systems to counteract the effect.

Recent solar activity magnified this effect on Swift, and its orbit decayed faster than anticipated.

Based on the orbital and programmatic needs of the mission, Katalyst selected the air-launched Pegasus XL as the best means of reaching the observatory in time to perform the boost maneuver.

Northrop Grumman will launch the rocket using Stargazer, its modified L-1011 aircraft.

NASA has previously used similar versions of this launch vehicle to deploy its ICON (Ionospheric Connection Explorer) and NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) spacecraft.

Next, Northrop Grumman engineers will attach Pegasus XL to Stargazer, which will carry it from NASA Wallops to Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean, for launch.

Learn more about the Swift boost at:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/swift/swift-boost-mission/

By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The post Rocket Integration Complete for Katalyst-NASA Swift Boost appeared first on NASA Science.

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NASA Webb Finds Strongest Evidence Yet for ‘Black Hole Stars’

The complex puzzle known as little red dots has become more complete since their initial discovery by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in 2022. Now a particular little red dot’s spectrum is helping connect many of the pieces.

A team of astronomers led by Vasily Kokorev at the University of Texas at Austin identified the lucky dot in question: GLIMPSE-17775. By carefully analyzing the dot’s spectrum captured by Webb — the deepest spectrum to date of a little red dot — the research team has identified multiple lines of evidence, all of which support the interpretation that GLIMPSE-17775 is a supermassive black hole enveloped in a dense cocoon of partially ionized gas, a model referred to as the BH* (black hole star) scenario. A paper describing the results was published today in The Astrophysical Journal.

“I think part of the scientific community is converging on a singular picture — that little red dots can be explained by black hole star models. But none of the previous little red dots have all of the pieces of evidence in the same place,” said Kokorev, lead author of the study. “With GLIMPSE-17775 we can test these models because of how deep and amazing this source’s spectrum is.”

Image: Abell S1063 with Pullout of GLIMPSE-17775 (NIRCam Image)

Connecting puzzle pieces

Soon after Webb first began science operations, it discovered a new, mysterious type of object in the very early universe – abundant red objects that emerged about 600 million years after the big bang. Scientists have explored multiple explanations for these little red dots, including the black hole star scenario.

A set of fortunate circumstances brought about this new, elaborate spectrum of a little red dot. The little red dot that would come to be known as GLIMPSE-17775 was fortunately included in Webb’s imaging and spectroscopy efforts for a project that sought to look for Population III stars and faint galaxies in galaxy cluster Abell S1063. This little red dot is more distant than the galaxy cluster and magnified by gravitational lensing. (GLIMPSE-17775 has a cosmological redshift of 3.5, meaning it existed about 1.8 billion years after the big bang.)

While Webb provided a 30-hour spectrum of the little red dot, the effect of gravitational lensing made it equivalent to 80 hours of telescope time. This combination of Webb’s infrared sensitivity and nature’s own “magnifying glass” amplified the amount of detail that could be gleaned from GLIMPSE-17775. The result was more than 40 spectral lines from this small, red source, which is the most detailed little red dot spectrum to date.

“When we saw the spectrum for the first time, it was like having all the pieces of a puzzle scattered on the floor,” said Kokorev. “We picked up each piece of the puzzle, measured the lines, and started combining the different pieces into a mosaic. Maybe a few pieces looked like nothing at first, but then a couple of them came together, and we realized that there was something there.”

The spectroscopic data collected by Webb contains multiple lines of evidence that support the interpretation that little red dot GLIMPSE-17775 is a black hole star: a rapidly accreting, or growing, black hole enveloped in a dense gas cocoon, which is reprocessing the light emitted from near the black hole and producing the features seen in the spectrum.

Image: Evidence of a ‘Black Hole Star’

Lines of evidence

Among the 40-plus lines that the team detected in GLIMPSE-17775’s spectrum were various independent indicators that all align with the BH* scenario. For example, the team found that many of the spectral lines, such as hydrogen, oxygen, and helium, do not fit a simple model of a rotating gas cloud. Instead, the best fit model includes a broadening effect known as electron scattering, a telltale sign that a dense, layered gas cocoon is enshrouding this source. 

The strength and ratios of certain lines to each other, most notably the 16 iron lines that compose what the team has dubbed an “iron forest” and certain oxygen lines, require a high-energy source to produce them, like a rapidly accreting black hole. Additionally, astronomers noted the fluorescence and absorption of helium in the spectrum, both of which individually suggest that there is a dense medium enveloping a powerful source.

The BH* scenario not only fits GLIMPSE-17775; it also accounts for why most little red dots are faint in X-rays, since any such emission is likely absorbed by the dense gas cocoon.

One missing element of the GLIMPSE-17775 puzzle piece is the part of the spectrum that would reveal what’s known as a Balmer break, or a strong dip in the emitted light that’s a signature characteristic of little red dots. To build a more comprehensive understanding of this little red dot, the team incorporated ancillary data from two observing programs that used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope: the Frontier Fields and BUFFALO (Beyond Ultra-deep Frontier Fields And Legacy Observations) programs.

The Webb and Hubble data together help explain why the Balmer break is weaker than what typically is found in other little red dots: A giant host galaxy is surrounding GLIMPSE-17775. Although a little red dot’s host galaxy is not something that has been usually seen at such scale before, it isn’t inconsistent with the dense gas cocoon model. The black hole star model of little red dots attributes excess blue light to stars in the host galaxy.

When Webb first discovered little red dots, some researchers thought these objects had “broken cosmology,” unsure how galaxies could have grown so big so quickly in the early universe to account for all this light coming from their stars. However, the team believes the GLIMPSE-17775 puzzle piece fits nicely in the existing framework of the universe’s evolutionary history, because black hole masses don’t need to be as high in order to explain the broad emission lines.

“Everything fits, nothing is broken, and I think that makes the puzzle that is our universe even better,” said Kokorev. “Looking ahead, I’m eager to dive deeper and learn about what is powering the central engines of little red dots. While we think it’s a black hole, there are some other interesting theories being proposed, which is exciting. Maybe in a year or two, we’ll have the final answer to what powers these sources.” 

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

To learn more about Webb, visit:

https://science.nasa.gov/webb

Downloads & Related Information

The following sections contain links to download this article’s images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.

Related Images & Videos

Abell S1063 with Pullout of GLIMPSE-17775 (NIRCam Image)

While the primary purpose of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of galaxy cluster Abell S1063 was to look for a certain population of stars, scientists obtained a detailed spectrum of GLIMPSE-17775 from the dataset. This little red dot is located behind Abell S1063.

Evidence of a ‘Black Hole Star’

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured the deepest spectrum to date of a little red dot. More than 40 spectral lines have been discerned from the data, many of which independently support the theory that GLIMPSE-17775 is a black hole enshrouded by a hot, dense gas cocoon.

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