Using the largest sample yet of particles called beauty mesons, physicists with the CMS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) refined a decades-old test of the subtle imbalance that let our Universe exist at all.
The post CERN Physicists Take New Look at Why Matter Beat Antimatter appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
Two major mysteries in science, the nature of dark matter and the possible existence of higher dimensions, could be linked, new research suggests. The team behind a new study proposes that dark matter may be so strange and ghost-like because it is in tune with a fifth dimension.
When scientists discuss "extra dimensions," they aren't talking about other universes in which another evil version of you exists (and with a beard). Instead, they refer to dimensions that could be "curled up" with reality alongside the standard four-dimensional spacetime, consisting of the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time.
While these extra dimensions remain highly speculative, they have become a hot topic, especially as string theory, the most popular extension to standard physics, relies upon the existence of at least 11 dimensions. Scientists are more sure that dark matter exists, but proving its existence still remains troubling because, despite its gravity literally holding galaxies together and outweighing ordinary matter by around five to one, it remains effectively invisible because it doesn't interact with light and it simply ghosts through ordinary matter.
"Understanding dark matter would represent a profound advance in humanity's knowledge of the cosmos and what it is made of," team member Yu-Dai Tsai of the University of Sheffield said in a statement.
"Our research gives physicists clear new targets in the search for dark matter, while connecting two of the biggest ideas in fundamental physics: the mystery of dark matter and the existence of hidden dimensions."
Though the main idea is that dark matter may operate in the fifth dimension, this new research expands upon that concept with another theory. It suggests that dark matter exists with another inhabitant of the fifth dimension, a force-carrying particle called a "dark photon."
Standard photons are the constituent particles of electromagnetic radiation, or light; dark photons would be similar but for a hypothetical "dark force."
The team's new proposal would see the unique geometry of the fifth dimension causing the masses of dark matter particles to form an arrangement that gives rise to a "dark matter resonance." This is akin to the intense vibration of a musical instrument at certain notes.
"Dark matter resonance is already known to be a powerful idea, with the potential to change our understanding of how dark matter was produced in the early universe and how we search for it today," team member Yu-Dai Tsai of the University of Sheffield said in a statement. "But many previous resonant dark matter models have treated the resonance as an assumption. This work gives a possible deeper origin for it: the resonance may come directly from the geometry of hidden dimensions."
Tsai explained that while dark matter resonance is a phenomenon that has been explored before, the research conducted by this team differs because it suggests dark matter resonance is not a coincidence. Instead, the possible deeper origin for the resonance sees it emerge directly from the geometry of hidden dimensions. This would allow dark matter to interact strongly shortly after the Big Bang while allowing it to settle into its ghost-like inert existence today.
"This resonance can make dark matter interactions much stronger at crucial epochs in cosmic history, such as in the early universe," Tsai added. "Crucially, the model allows for these strong interactions in the past while still explaining why dark matter appears so inert and hard to detect today."
Of course, it is very early days for the team's theory, but it excitingly offers a way toward solving two of the universe's greatest mysteries.
The team's research was published in the Physical Review D.
Astronomers using ESA’s Euclid space telescope have discovered 31 ancient quasars from a time when the Universe was just 670 to 800 million years old. One of these objects, dubbed EUCL J172902.75+641018.1, sets the new record for the most distant quasar ever reported.
The post Euclid Discovers Earliest Quasars Ever Seen appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid Space Telescope has just revealed new evidence for the existence of more than two-and-a-half dozen objects that are among the oldest and most remote in the universe.
These 31 massive objects, known as quasars, rank among the oldest objects astronomers have ever seen, including two that are believed to originate from a period in the universe when our cosmos was only 5% of its current age.
The discoveries, revealed in a new study appearing in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, provide a remarkable look at the earliest generations of galaxies, as well as a rare look at the dynamics of the ancient black holes that once powered them.
As some of the brightest objects anywhere in our universe, quasars are remote objects resembling stars in appearance that emit unprecedented amounts of energy. They are the result of creation processes that involve enormous quantities of gas and dust, which spiral into supermassive black holes.
During the gravity-driven inward acceleration process, immense friction causes temperatures that can reach millions of degrees, which generates large amounts of energy. The resulting celestial features produce enough light to outshine entire galaxies.
Despite their brightness, the 31 newest additions to our growing collection of known quasars were difficult for astronomers to spot, given their extreme distances from Earth. The light that documents their ancient presence in the universe has traveled more than 13 billion years to make its way here, causing it to be extremely faint, and thereby very difficult to distinguish from surrounding stars whose light normally outshines them with ease.
A dozen of the newly discovered collection of quasars date to within the first 770 million years our universe existed. Add to that the fact that two of the ancient objects are believed to have formed just 670 million years after the Big Bang—at such ages, these quasars are among the oldest astronomers have ever observed.
The weight of the discoveries goes beyond just record-breaking astronomical observations, since the data they provide could help astrophysicists unravel some of the most enduring mysteries of cosmology. For instance, these quasars could help to reveal answers to questions about how supermassive black holes grew so quickly while the universe was still in its infancy.
Additionally, studying these energetic ancient giants could help to provide new insights into the formation of the earliest galaxies and the evolution of the universe while it was still in its relative infancy.
The recent research, led by the ESA and with contributions from its partners at NASA, has helped to place the Euclid mission in an ideal place to carry out its mission of mapping billions of galaxies. Doing so may help scientists uncover clues about the questions surrounding mysterious dark energy, which is widely believed to be the force behind the accelerating expansion of the cosmos.
Additionally, the Euclid mission’s findings could be pivotal in helping shape the future work of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will continue the quest to unravel the nature of dark energy and help astronomers understand the nature of the universe at large scales. Additional details about the recent quasar discoveries by Euclid can be found at the ESA’s website and on NASA’s FAQ page.
The new findings were detailed in a recent study, “Euclid: Discovery of 31 new quasars at 6.6 < z < 7.8” published in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS carries a chemical fingerprint unlike anything in our Solar System, and it may have formed 10 to 12 billion years ago, before our Sun even existed, according to two papers published in the journal Nature.
The post Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Formed Up To 12 Billion Years Ago, New Observations Suggest appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
The expansion of the universe is still accelerating under the influence of dark energy, despite recent claims to the contrary, according to new research. This means that dark energy, the mysterious force that dominates the universe, is not weakening but continues to get stronger, considered something of a "cosmological crisis" as it was so against expectations.
In 1998, via the study of cosmic explosions called Type Ia supernovas, astronomers discovered that not only is the universe expanding, but that the speed of that expansion is increasing. "Dark energy" was the name given to the mysterious force driving this accelerating expansion. Since then, scientists have discovered that dark energy accounts for around 70% of the universe's matter and energy.
In November 2025, research was published that suggested the expansion of the universe was slowing, meaning dark energy would be weakening. But this new research suggests that these findings from last year might not be a cosmic hand grenade thrown into the cosmological apple cart, but instead may have actually emerged from a scientific misunderstanding.
"Thankfully, we have averted this crisis, but the mystery about why the rate of expansion of the universe is still accelerating remains," lead author of the new refuting research, Phil Wiseman, from the University of Southampton in the UK, said in a statement. "The previous and well-accepted measurements were, in fact, fine, and our current understanding of the fate of the universe remains robust. By proving our measurements are correct, we can get back to trying to understand what this dark energy actually is, rather than wondering if it exists at all."
The research from 2025 that suggested dark energy was weakening was based upon a reassessment of the brightness of Type Ia supernovas, which occur when a dead star called a white dwarf overfeeds on a companion star. This causes a runaway nuclear explosion of such uniform brightness that it can be used to measure cosmic distances. In fact, these explosions are so uniform that astronomers refer to them as "standard candles."
This prior research determined, incorrectly it now seems, that as the universe has aged, the brightness of Type Ia supernovas had changed, leading to incorrect measurements of distances based on them as well as incorrect estimates of the speed of the universe's expansion. Both of these led to the suggestion that dark energy is weakening.
But Wiseman and colleagues found this previous team had made an error in how they calculated the ages of exploding white dwarfs, finding they had assumed the ages of these stars would be the same as the ages of the galaxies in which they exploded.
They also found the 2025 research hadn't accounted for a common correction used in cosmology that factors in the masses of galaxies in which Type Ia supernovas occur.
"Extraordinary claims require especially careful testing," team member Adam Riess, who in 2011 shared the Nobel Prize for the discovery of dark energy, said. "What we find is that when we calibrate these supernovae, accounting for different host environments and populations, the evidence for cosmic acceleration remains remarkably consistent."
While the challenge to dark energy's growing dominance over the universe seems now to have been refuted, the back and forth on this topic shows how ideas in science aren't dogma and remain open for revision.
"This is how progress is made," team member Mark Sullivan, also from the University of Southampton, said. "Although this idea did not turn out to be correct, it has opened up new ways of thinking about how supernovae explode and how we can measure dark energy more accurately."
The team's research was published on June 10 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
One of the most hotly debated mysteries in astronomy is set to continue, as new research fails to rule out self-annihilating dark matter as the source of gamma-ray emissions from the heart of the Milky Way. Known as the Galactic Center Excess, a spherical gamma-ray glow extending out for thousands of light-years from the core of our galaxy, this high-energy light has baffled researchers for over a decade.
While several possible explanations for the Galactic Center Excess have been put forward, including a population of rapidly spinning neutron stars called pulsars, one of the most prevalent has been a specific type of dark matter particle. Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that accounts for 85% of the universe's matter. It is effectively invisible because it doesn't interact with light or with "ordinary" matter composed of atoms. That fact has led to many possible dark matter candidate particles being proposed, including some that self-annihilate. This is akin to what happens when an electron meets its antimatter counterpart, or positron. The two annihilate each other, releasing energy into the cosmos.
For self-annihilating dark matter, these particles would be their own antiparticles, meaning when they interact, they would annihilate and release energy as gamma rays. With dark matter outweighing ordinary matter by a ratio of five to one, one might expect this annihilation to be occurring constantly, flooding the cosmos with gamma rays, but dark matter rarely interacts with itself in this model. Thus, dark matter annihilation is only a factor when this mysterious stuff is densely clustered in a region like the heart of a galaxy.
Unfortunately, investigating the heart of the Milky Way is challenging indeed.
"Interpreting the signal is particularly difficult because the Galactic Center is an exceptionally bright and crowded region of the gamma-ray sky," team member and University of Vienna researcher Florian List said in a statement.
To investigate if annihilating dark matter could indeed account for the Galactic Center Excess, List and colleagues turned to machine learning trained on more than a million simulated gamma-ray observations. Previous similar approaches had pointed to comparatively bright, unresolved light sources as a potential source of the Galactic Center Excess. However, this new research showed that these point sources, including pulsars, would be extremely faint, and that is good news for scientists who favor annihilating dark matter as the cause of these gamma rays.
That is because, whereas previous research has suggested just a few hundred pulsars could be enough to account for the Galactic Center Excess, these findings indicate that the pulsar population at the heart of the Milky Way would have to be greater than 35,000.
"Our new analysis shows that the sources would have to be so faint that they would be almost indistinguishable from the emission expected from annihilating dark matter," team member Nick Rodd, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said.
While this research may keep dark matter in the game as a plausible explanation, it far from confirms the annihilation of this mysterious stuff as the source of the Galactic Center Excess. "The origin of the Galactic Center Excess is one of the longest-running debates in astrophysics," List said. "Our work does not show that dark matter is responsible for the signal. However, it suggests that it is still too early to rule out this possibility."
The team's research was published on Thursday (Feb. 5) in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Astronomers have used a technique called echo mapping to detect hints that supermassive black holes, such as the cosmic titan at the heart of the Milky Way, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), are surrounded by dense clouds and clusters of dark matter. The research could teach us more about this mysterious substance and the environments around supermassive black holes.
Dark matter is the universe's most mysterious stuff, outweighing ordinary matter in the cosmos by a ratio of five to one — but remaining effectively invisible because it doesn't interact with electromagnetic radiation, including the light we use to see. The only way scientists can even infer the presence of dark matter is via its interaction with gravity, and the impact that this interaction has on objects made of traditional matter like stars. For instance, the gravitational effect of dark matter allows stars at the edges of galaxies to whip around at much greater speeds while not flying loose than the visible matter of those galaxies would allow.
This team decided to test the gravitational influence of dark matter at the hearts of galaxies, environments dominated by supermassive black holes which can have masses millions or even billions of times that of the sun. Ordinary matter around these supermassive black holes is often very visible, especially when spiraling into the maw of one of these cosmic titans from a flattened cloud called an accretion disk. This is because the gravitational influence of those black holes generates immense amounts of friction, causing them to grow brightly. That wouldn't work for dark matter; it can't feel friction because it doesn't interact with itself or with ordinary matter, and it can't glow because it doesn't absorb or emit light.
Clearly, dark matter can't be spotted around supermassive black holes even using the most advanced telescopes such as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which has captured glowing rings of material around Sgr A* and around a more distant supermassive black hole that rules the heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87).
While discussing the problem of detecting dark matter around supermassive black holes, Mayank Sharma, a physics graduate student at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), hit on an interesting solution.
"We could actually test this prediction using a technique in astronomy, which allows you to measure the distance to the surrounding gas by looking for echoes of light," Sharma said in a statement. The technique Sharma refers to is "reverberation mapping," and it has become a trusted method of determining the mass of black holes.
Reverberation mapping is based upon the fact that as matter falls into a black hole, it releases a burst of energy that causes the accretion disk it comes from to pulse. This pulse of light travels from the accretion disk to gas in the wider environment of the black hole. This gas absorbs that light and also pulses, with this secondary pulse serving as an echo of the first.
Because we know the speed of light, when astronomers see the first pulse of light and then its echo, they can use the time between pulses to estimate the distance between the black hole and the gas on the outskirts of its environment. The size of a black hole and the distance between it and outer gas clouds can be used to determine its mass, and could also be used to determine the mass of dark matter clustered around it.
The team applied their method to 14 different galaxies, finding in five cases that mass increases moving away from the central black hole in a way that couldn't be accounted for by visible matter alone. Despite the early success of this research, it far from proves that supermassive black holes are indeed gathering places for dark matter. The team's findings do point an interesting way forward for the investigation into the universe's most mysterious substance and its most mysterious regions.
"These galaxies are definitely showing a hint that there is extra material that cannot be explained by just the supermassive black hole," Sharma said. "The prospects are exciting."
The team's research was published in the journal Physical Review D.
An airplane carrying a rocket loaded with a robotic spacecraft designed to raise NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory departed the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Thursday, June 18.
Stargazer, a modified L-1011 operated by Northrop Grumman, took off for Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Attached to the belly of the aircraft was one of the company’s Pegasus XL rockets with LINK inside.
NASA contracted Katalyst Space to design and build LINK to rendezvous and dock with Swift and lift it back to a higher altitude.
Spacecraft in low Earth orbit experience drag caused by our planet’s atmosphere, which gradually reduces their altitude if they do not have propulsion systems to counteract the effect.
Recent solar activity magnified this effect on Swift, which began to sink faster than anticipated.
Katalyst selected Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL launch vehicle as the best means of reaching Swift on a short timeline based on orbital and programmatic needs.
Later this month, Stargazer will carry the rocket to an altitude of around 40,000 feet before releasing it.
After several seconds in free-fall, Pegasus XL will fire the first of its three-stage rocket motors, delivering LINK into orbit in about 10 minutes.
Learn more about the Swift mission at:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/swift/swift-boost-mission/
By Jeanette Kazmierczak
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
The post Aircraft Carrying Swift Boost Satellite Takes off From NASA Wallops appeared first on NASA Science.
A new cosmic bounce model suggests that remnants from a pre-Big Bang Universe may still exist today. What if some of the Universe’s oldest objects are actually older than the Big Bang itself? A new study from the University of Portsmouth suggests that ancient black holes may have survived from a time before the Universe [...]2 min read
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy cluster, called CL0016+1609 or MACS J0018.5+1626, that is very bright at X-ray wavelengths and is one of the most extensively studied clusters at X-ray and radio wavelengths. The X-ray observations of this cluster revealed that it is two clusters merging along our line of sight.
Researchers requested time to observe CL0016+1609 with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys because that data would help them accurately measure the cluster’s dark-matter distribution, which helps them study the merger and the role of CL0016+1609 in the large-scale structure of the universe. Hubble can’t directly see dark matter, but its infrared and visible light observations can detect dark matter’s gravitational lensing effects on the normal matter Hubble observes.
The data in this image also includes observations with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 taken as part of an observing program that obtained the first Hubble infrared images of 46 massive galaxy clusters and looked for distant galaxies gravitationally lensed by these clusters. Called RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey), this survey found some 300 high-redshift candidate galaxies lensed by these clusters.
You can see the faint vertical arc of one of these distant galaxies in the image above. Look for it just to the left of the large elliptical galaxies in the center of the image. Another brighter, though shorter arc is visible just above and to the right of the large elliptical galaxies in the center of the image.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
6 min read
A new study of two supernova remnants, the debris left behind after stars explode, suggests the explosions came from stellar siblings that once orbited each other. The first star’s detonation sent its binary companion hurtling through space, and then, after traveling for thousands of years, the surviving star blew up too.
“Using 16 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, our analysis uncovered gamma rays associated with a supernova remnant that was hidden in the glare of its neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula, one of the brightest gamma-ray-emitting supernova remnants known,” said Miltiadis Michailidis, a postdoctoral fellow in the physics department at Stanford University in California. “There are so many striking connections between the two remnants that we conclude they’re likely related, giving us the first known example of a binary system where both stars have undergone supernova explosions.”
Michailidis presented the findings Wednesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California. A paper describing the results will appear in a future edition of Nature Communications.
The study focused on a faint supernova remnant called G189.6+3.3, which is mainly visible in X-rays. It is upstaged by its brighter and better-known neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443). The two star wrecks, both located in the constellation Gemini, appear to partially overlap as seen in X-rays. Recent X-ray evidence suggests that hot plasma likely associated with G189.6+3.3 may extend across the entire region, a hint that the overlap may be nearly total.
A massive star explodes when its energy-producing core runs out of fuel and collapses under its own weight, triggering an explosion that blows the star apart. The explosion’s shock wave encloses a hot cloud of debris that rapidly expands into space. So far, astronomers have cataloged about 300 supernova remnants in our galaxy.
The Fermi mission is part of NASA’s fleet of observatories monitoring the changing cosmos to help humanity better understand how the universe works. More than a decade ago, observations from Fermi’s LAT (Large Area Telescope) showed that the shock waves of supernova remnants accelerated particles to within a fraction of the speed of light, a process first proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi — the mission’s namesake — in 1949.
These high-speed particles, called cosmic rays, interact with interstellar gas to produce gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. Protons make up 99% of cosmic ray particles. To prove that accelerated protons are responsible for the glow, astronomers search for a specific gamma-ray feature. When cosmic-ray protons smash into interstellar gas, they produce a short-lived particle called a neutral pion, which almost immediately decays into a pair of gamma rays. This emission occurs within a specific band of energies associated with the neutral pion’s mass and lies within the range detected by Fermi’s LAT instrument.
In 2013, Fermi observations proved that the Jellyfish Nebula, which is interacting with part of a glowing cloud of hydrogen gas known as Sharpless 249, produced gamma rays through this mechanism. Its neighbor, G189.6+3.3, was discovered in 1994 as part of an X-ray survey by the German-led ROSAT (Roentgen Satellite) mission.
A bright filament of gas lies between the overlapping remnants. New observations of this feature reveal that the shock wave from G189.6+3.3 slammed into dense interstellar gas there and dramatically slowed, key evidence that both remnants are interacting with the same cloud system.
Astronomers think the Jellyfish Nebula is also a candidate PeVatron, a cosmic particle accelerator capable of boosting protons to energies so high they could nearly escape our galaxy. Such particles can produce gamma rays with trillions of times more energy than visible light. Finding a second particle accelerator near the Jellyfish Nebula could offer scientists new clues for how supernova remnants develop into PeVatrons.
“The overlapping remnants, a connecting gas filament, and the availability of data from Fermi and other facilities motivated us to delve into this complex but little-studied region,” said co-author Marianne Lemoine-Goumard, an astrophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the University of Bordeaux. “With Fermi’s LAT instrument, we found gamma-ray emission associated with accelerated protons in the northern part of the fainter remnant. If both remnants are interacting with the same structure, then they must share a common distance from us.”
The team concludes the remnants lie about 6,000 light-years away, their explosion centers are separated by roughly 40 light-years projected onto the plane of the sky, and the original stars may have been 20 or more times the Sun’s mass.
Estimates of the remnants’ ages vary widely, but the team concludes that the age of the Jellyfish Nebula is 8,000 to 9,000 years, while G189.6+3.3 is between 20,000 to 110,000 years old. This means the delay between the explosions could have extended for up to 100,000 years.
In addition, the team conducted computer simulations of a million massive binary systems. They show that systems where the stars orbit close enough to exchange matter and interact during their lives can readily produce dual supernova explosions with similar separations and time delays as those found for the remnants. The team also estimated that the chance of randomly encountering this combination of observed spatial alignment and compatible distances to be less than 1%, strongly supporting a physical association.
“The evidence we’ve compiled — including observations across the spectrum, the chemical and physical properties of the remnants, simulations, and more — paints a compelling picture of a dual supernova event,” said Michailidis.
This study identifies a unique possible example of a binary system where both stars exploded as supernovae and left behind separate, detectable supernova remnants. Astronomers think that most massive stars form in binary or multiple-star systems. The Jellyfish Nebula/G189.6+3.3 complex offers astronomers a rare opportunity to study how massive binary stars evolve, exchange matter, explode, and experience velocity changes — called kicks — induced by the supernova blast. It also provides a powerful new laboratory for understanding how coupled supernova remnants behave, including how they accelerate particles, generate gamma rays, and shape their surrounding environments.
“Fermi’s gamma-ray observations of supernova remnants continue to reveal the dynamic lives of stars,” said Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We can now connect the glowing remains of two massive stars to a powerful pair that evolved together over thousands of years.”
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
2 min read
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy cluster, called CL0016+1609 or MACS J0018.5+1626, that is very bright at X-ray wavelengths and is one of the most extensively studied clusters at X-ray and radio wavelengths. The X-ray observations of this cluster revealed that it is two clusters merging along our line of sight.
Researchers requested time to observe CL0016+1609 with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys because that data would help them accurately measure the cluster’s dark-matter distribution, which helps them study the merger and the role of CL0016+1609 in the large-scale structure of the universe. Hubble can’t directly see dark matter, but its infrared and visible light observations can detect dark matter’s gravitational lensing effects on the normal matter Hubble observes.
The data in this image also includes observations with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 taken as part of an observing program that obtained the first Hubble infrared images of 46 massive galaxy clusters and looked for distant galaxies gravitationally lensed by these clusters. Called RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey), this survey found some 300 high-redshift candidate galaxies lensed by these clusters.
You can see the faint vertical arc of one of these distant galaxies in the image above. Look for it just to the left of the large elliptical galaxies in the center of the image. Another brighter, though shorter arc is visible just above and to the right of the large elliptical galaxies in the center of the image.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
The post Hubble Glimpses Merging Galaxy Clusters appeared first on NASA Science.
Scientists are exploring a fascinating idea: some of the brilliant stellar explosions seen across the universe may have been triggered by tiny black holes formed shortly after the Big Bang. A new study led by researchers at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) suggests that these mysterious objects, called primordial black […]
The post Ancient black holes may be triggering exploding stars across the universe, study finds appeared first on Knowridge Science Report.
JCMT0402-0424, a dusty starburst galaxy around 11 billion light-years away, is the strongest candidate yet for the source of the high-energy neutrino event IC 210922A, according to a team of astronomer led by Yuji Urata of MITOS Science Co.
The post Astronomers Trace Elusive High-Energy Neutrino to Star-Forming Galaxy in Early Universe appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
6 min read
A new study of two supernova remnants, the debris left behind after stars explode, suggests the explosions came from stellar siblings that once orbited each other. The first star’s detonation sent its binary companion hurtling through space, and then, after traveling for thousands of years, the surviving star blew up too.
“Using 16 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, our analysis uncovered gamma rays associated with a supernova remnant that was hidden in the glare of its neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula, one of the brightest gamma-ray-emitting supernova remnants known,” said Miltiadis Michailidis, a postdoctoral fellow in the physics department at Stanford University in California. “There are so many striking connections between the two remnants that we conclude they’re likely related, giving us the first known example of a binary system where both stars have undergone supernova explosions.”
Michailidis presented the findings Wednesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California. A paper describing the results will appear in a future edition of Nature Communications.
The study focused on a faint supernova remnant called G189.6+3.3, which is mainly visible in X-rays. It is upstaged by its brighter and better-known neighbor, the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443). The two star wrecks, both located in the constellation Gemini, appear to partially overlap as seen in X-rays. Recent X-ray evidence suggests that hot plasma likely associated with G189.6+3.3 may extend across the entire region, a hint that the overlap may be nearly total.
A massive star explodes when its energy-producing core runs out of fuel and collapses under its own weight, triggering an explosion that blows the star apart. The explosion’s shock wave encloses a hot cloud of debris that rapidly expands into space. So far, astronomers have cataloged about 300 supernova remnants in our galaxy.
The Fermi mission is part of NASA’s fleet of observatories monitoring the changing cosmos to help humanity better understand how the universe works. More than a decade ago, observations from Fermi’s LAT (Large Area Telescope) showed that the shock waves of supernova remnants accelerated particles to within a fraction of the speed of light, a process first proposed by physicist Enrico Fermi — the mission’s namesake — in 1949.
These high-speed particles, called cosmic rays, interact with interstellar gas to produce gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. Protons make up 99% of cosmic ray particles. To prove that accelerated protons are responsible for the glow, astronomers search for a specific gamma-ray feature. When cosmic-ray protons smash into interstellar gas, they produce a short-lived particle called a neutral pion, which almost immediately decays into a pair of gamma rays. This emission occurs within a specific band of energies associated with the neutral pion’s mass and lies within the range detected by Fermi’s LAT instrument.
In 2013, Fermi observations proved that the Jellyfish Nebula, which is interacting with part of a glowing cloud of hydrogen gas known as Sharpless 249, produced gamma rays through this mechanism. Its neighbor, G189.6+3.3, was discovered in 1994 as part of an X-ray survey by the German-led ROSAT (Roentgen Satellite) mission.
A bright filament of gas lies between the overlapping remnants. New observations of this feature reveal that the shock wave from G189.6+3.3 slammed into dense interstellar gas there and dramatically slowed, key evidence that both remnants are interacting with the same cloud system.
Astronomers think the Jellyfish Nebula is also a candidate PeVatron, a cosmic particle accelerator capable of boosting protons to energies so high they could nearly escape our galaxy. Such particles can produce gamma rays with trillions of times more energy than visible light. Finding a second particle accelerator near the Jellyfish Nebula could offer scientists new clues for how supernova remnants develop into PeVatrons.
“The overlapping remnants, a connecting gas filament, and the availability of data from Fermi and other facilities motivated us to delve into this complex but little-studied region,” said co-author Marianne Lemoine-Goumard, an astrophysicist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) based at the University of Bordeaux. “With Fermi’s LAT instrument, we found gamma-ray emission associated with accelerated protons in the northern part of the fainter remnant. If both remnants are interacting with the same structure, then they must share a common distance from us.”
The team concludes the remnants lie about 6,000 light-years away, their explosion centers are separated by roughly 40 light-years projected onto the plane of the sky, and the original stars may have been 20 or more times the Sun’s mass.
Estimates of the remnants’ ages vary widely, but the team concludes that the age of the Jellyfish Nebula is 8,000 to 9,000 years, while G189.6+3.3 is between 20,000 to 110,000 years old. This means the delay between the explosions could have extended for up to 100,000 years.
In addition, the team conducted computer simulations of a million massive binary systems. They show that systems where the stars orbit close enough to exchange matter and interact during their lives can readily produce dual supernova explosions with similar separations and time delays as those found for the remnants. The team also estimated that the chance of randomly encountering this combination of observed spatial alignment and compatible distances to be less than 1%, strongly supporting a physical association.
“The evidence we’ve compiled — including observations across the spectrum, the chemical and physical properties of the remnants, simulations, and more — paints a compelling picture of a dual supernova event,” said Michailidis.
This study identifies a unique possible example of a binary system where both stars exploded as supernovae and left behind separate, detectable supernova remnants. Astronomers think that most massive stars form in binary or multiple-star systems. The Jellyfish Nebula/G189.6+3.3 complex offers astronomers a rare opportunity to study how massive binary stars evolve, exchange matter, explode, and experience velocity changes — called kicks — induced by the supernova blast. It also provides a powerful new laboratory for understanding how coupled supernova remnants behave, including how they accelerate particles, generate gamma rays, and shape their surrounding environments.
“Fermi’s gamma-ray observations of supernova remnants continue to reveal the dynamic lives of stars,” said Elizabeth Hays, the Fermi project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We can now connect the glowing remains of two massive stars to a powerful pair that evolved together over thousands of years.”
By Francis Reddy
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
301-286-1940
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
The post NASA’s Fermi Mission Uncovers Possible Sibling Supernova Remnants appeared first on NASA Science.
A fresh analysis of Type Ia supernovae overturns a controversial 2025 claim that cosmic expansion is slowing.
The post New Supernova Study Confirms Universe’s Expansion is Still Accelerating appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
4 min read
One well-done gas giant, coming right up! That’s the latest from researchers analyzing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of HD 80606 b, an exoplanet four times the mass of Jupiter with an extremely elliptical orbit that sweeps close by its Sun-like star. The research team is presenting their study and preliminary findings Tuesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California.
“Hot Jupiters are already considered some of the most extreme exoplanets we know of, but even among that population, HD 80606 b is one of the most extreme,” said Tiffany Kataria, the study’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We typically think of hot Jupiters as hot gas giants sitting right next to their stars, but this planet’s highly eccentric orbit creates a completely different beast.”
As the planet plunges close to its star, Webb shows its temperature skyrockets by 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Previous studies have shown that radical temperature swings can cause an exoplanet’s chemistry and clouds to change in real time. According to the research team, the dynamic conditions of HD 80606 b make the planet an ideal target to observe these changes with Webb’s powerful instruments.
“Observing a planet like HD 80606 b is actually very efficient because its unusual orbit, with the corresponding swings in temperature and chemical composition, allow us to gather data under varying conditions in just hours and apply those findings to other hot Jupiters or more conventional exoplanets,” said Laura C. Mayorga, co-investigator on the study and an exoplanet astronomer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Measurements of temperature and chemical composition were done with spectroscopy, a technique scientists use to break light into its component colors to reveal information about the composition, temperature, motion, and physical properties of objects in space. The team used Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) for an extended observation of HD 80606 b before, during, and after its periastron, or closest pass by its star. During periastron, the planet also passed behind the star from Webb’s perspective in what’s known as a secondary eclipse. The observation was years in the planning, as scheduling the time to catch the planet at this point was complex given its extremely elliptical 111-day orbit, and Webb’s own restrictions on where it can look during specific times of the year, based on Earth’s position in orbit around the Sun.
Researchers say they have only begun to peel back the layers of an incredibly rich dataset, but they can clearly see a dramatic shift in the exoplanet’s temperature. “Webb has shown that the planet’s increase in temperature was even more extreme than we anticipated based on Spitzer data,” said Kataria.
In fact, the planet had already been dubbed the “roasted exoplanet” and even got its own poster in NASA’s popular series. NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope laid the groundwork of infrared observations of HD 80606 b, showing that more detailed spectroscopic data from Webb would be especially compelling.
“Spitzer did amazing work on this exoplanet, and now Webb is building on that legacy by enabling us to drill down to distinguish specific chemical signatures like methane and carbon dioxide, which is just amazing progress,” said Ryan Challener, co-author and research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science. “There’s so much to learn from this one dataset here — we really are just getting started deciphering what Webb has to tell us.”
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).
For more information on Webb, visit:
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.
Este Artículo en Español – “Telescopio Webb de la NASA Detecta un Exoplaneto Asandose”
Read: Webb’s Impact on Exoplanet Research
Watch: How to Study Exoplanets: Webb and Challenges
Explore: Eyes on Exoplanets
Print: The Roasted Exoplanet Poster
More Webb: News | Images | Science | Home Page
Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
Leah Ramsay
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
Hannah Braun
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
4 min read
One well-done gas giant, coming right up! That’s the latest from researchers analyzing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of HD 80606 b, an exoplanet four times the mass of Jupiter with an extremely elliptical orbit that sweeps close by its Sun-like star. The research team is presenting their study and preliminary findings Tuesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California.
“Hot Jupiters are already considered some of the most extreme exoplanets we know of, but even among that population, HD 80606 b is one of the most extreme,” said Tiffany Kataria, the study’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We typically think of hot Jupiters as hot gas giants sitting right next to their stars, but this planet’s highly eccentric orbit creates a completely different beast.”
As the planet plunges close to its star, Webb shows its temperature skyrockets by 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. Previous studies have shown that radical temperature swings can cause an exoplanet’s chemistry and clouds to change in real time. According to the research team, the dynamic conditions of HD 80606 b make the planet an ideal target to observe these changes with Webb’s powerful instruments.
“Observing a planet like HD 80606 b is actually very efficient because its unusual orbit, with the corresponding swings in temperature and chemical composition, allow us to gather data under varying conditions in just hours and apply those findings to other hot Jupiters or more conventional exoplanets,” said Laura C. Mayorga, co-investigator on the study and an exoplanet astronomer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Measurements of temperature and chemical composition were done with spectroscopy, a technique scientists use to break light into its component colors to reveal information about the composition, temperature, motion, and physical properties of objects in space. The team used Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) for an extended observation of HD 80606 b before, during, and after its periastron, or closest pass by its star. During periastron, the planet also passed behind the star from Webb’s perspective in what’s known as a secondary eclipse. The observation was years in the planning, as scheduling the time to catch the planet at this point was complex given its extremely elliptical 111-day orbit, and Webb’s own restrictions on where it can look during specific times of the year, based on Earth’s position in orbit around the Sun.
Researchers say they have only begun to peel back the layers of an incredibly rich dataset, but they can clearly see a dramatic shift in the exoplanet’s temperature. “Webb has shown that the planet’s increase in temperature was even more extreme than we anticipated based on Spitzer data,” said Kataria.
In fact, the planet had already been dubbed the “roasted exoplanet” and even got its own poster in NASA’s popular series. NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope laid the groundwork of infrared observations of HD 80606 b, showing that more detailed spectroscopic data from Webb would be especially compelling.
“Spitzer did amazing work on this exoplanet, and now Webb is building on that legacy by enabling us to drill down to distinguish specific chemical signatures like methane and carbon dioxide, which is just amazing progress,” said Ryan Challener, co-author and research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science. “There’s so much to learn from this one dataset here — we really are just getting started deciphering what Webb has to tell us.”
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).
For more information on Webb, visit:
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.
Este Artículo en Español – “Telescopio Webb de la NASA Detecta un Exoplaneto Asandose”
Read: Webb’s Impact on Exoplanet Research
Watch: How to Study Exoplanets: Webb and Challenges
Explore: Eyes on Exoplanets
Print: The Roasted Exoplanet Poster
More Webb: News | Images | Science | Home Page
Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
Leah Ramsay
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
Hannah Braun
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
The post NASA’s Webb Catches Exoplanet Getting Roasted appeared first on NASA Science.
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