Stellar collisions produce strange, zombie-like survivors
New research traces the fates of stars living near the Milky Way’s central black hole Despite their ancient ages, some stars orbiting the Milky...
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Space-based gravitational-wave detector is adopted by European Space Agency
Northwestern astrophysicist is member of international team working on new detector Gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space-time first predicted by...
Searching for dark matter in gaps between stars
Astronomers anticipate upcoming images of the Andromeda galaxy may hold vital clues Although dark matter makes up 27% of the universe, astronomers have been...
‘Blob-like’ home of farthest-known fast radio burst is collection of seven galaxies
Hubble Space Telescope reveals curious birthplace of record-breaking blast In summer 2022, astronomers detected the most powerful fast radio burst (FRB) ever observed. And...
Intermediate-Mass Black Holes 2023 conference held in San Pedro, Belize
From December 2-5, 2023 CIERA welcomed 62 attendees to the 2023 iteration of the Intermediate-Mass Black Holes conference series. Held at the Grand Caribe...
‘Teenage galaxies’ are unusually hot, glowing with unexpected elements
JWST unexpectedly reveals nickel and oxygen, which are typically difficult to observe Similar to human teenagers, teenage galaxies are awkward, experience growth spurts and...
Graduate student Lindsey Byrne featured in 2023 DOE CSGF magazine
Lindsey Byrne, a Northwestern graduate student studying galaxy formation and evolution, has been featured in and on the front cover of DEIXIS, the annually...
First supernova detected, confirmed, classified and shared by AI
New artificial intelligence tool removes humans from entire search, discovery process A fully automated process, including a brand-new artificial intelligence (AI) tool, has...
MODEST star clusters conference series revived at CIERA
From August 28 to September 1, 2023, 115 researchers from around the world gathered in Evanston for the MODEST-23 star clusters conference. The conference,...
Bursts of star formation explain mysterious brightness at cosmic dawn
Intense flashes of light, not mass, resolve the puzzle of impossible brightness When scientists viewed the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) first images of...
Black holes eat faster than previously expected
New finding might explain why quasars flare and fade so quickly A new Northwestern University-led study is changing the way astrophysicists understand the eating...
Unprecedented gamma-ray burst explained by long-lived jet
First large-scale numerical simulation of black hole-neutron star merger matches puzzling observations Last year, Northwestern University researchers uncovered new observational evidence that long gamma-ray...