Do black holes grow along with the universe? A new study says yes

We know the universe is constantly expanding. We also know that gravitationally bound objects, such as solar systems and black holes, seem to be immune to that expansion. But a new paper by theoretical physicists Valerio Faraoni and Massimiliano Rinaldi challenges that assumption. They suggest that black holes can’t just ignore the expanding universe around […]

Interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS carries clues from the frozen outskirts of another star system

UK astronomers have uncovered new clues about the origin of 3I/ATLAS—only the third known object from beyond the solar system ever spotted. In a new paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers reveal that the comet formed in extremely cold conditions, far from any star.

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ALMA watches a massive binary assemble in real time

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have captured one of the most detailed three-dimensional views yet of a massive binary star system while it is still being born. By tracking the motions of two young, massive stars over nearly eight years, the team found that the pair follows a highly stretched-out orbit and […]

Do black holes grow along with the universe? A new study says yes

We know the universe is constantly expanding. We also know that gravitationally bound objects, such as solar systems and black holes, seem to be immune to that expansion. But a new paper by theoretical physicists Valerio Faraoni and Massimiliano Rinaldi challenges that assumption. They suggest that black holes can’t just ignore the expanding universe around […]

ALMA watches a massive binary assemble in real time

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have captured one of the most detailed three-dimensional views yet of a massive binary star system while it is still being born. By tracking the motions of two young, massive stars over nearly eight years, the team found that the pair follows a highly stretched-out orbit and […]

Eggshells-inspired aluminum material offers significant protection from space debris

There are nearly 1 million pieces of debris larger than 1 centimeter (0.4 inch) in near-Earth orbit. As we continue launching spacecraft and telescopes to explore the universe, this debris poses a significant threat of high-speed impact damage. In the Journal of Applied Physics researchers from Dalian University of Technology in China explored an eggshell-inspired […]

How studying astronauts could help tackle aging on Earth

Astronauts who undergo long-duration spaceflight aboard the International Space Station often return with health problems that resemble some age-related conditions in people on Earth.

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A new game demonstrates quantum advantage with provable classical limits

For decades, physicists have worked to prove the strange predictions of quantum mechanics with real experiments. As quantum computers have grown more powerful, researchers have devised increasingly sophisticated ways to test whether these machines are truly harnessing quantum effects—but every method so far has run into limits.

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Superfluid qubit could help scale up quantum computers

Superfluid helium could offer a new way to tackle one of the biggest challenges in scaling up quantum computers, say researchers from the University of Surrey. The research team has introduced a conceptual design for a new type of qubit that could be much less vulnerable to errors.

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Miss. deputy fatally shot while dispersing crowd, suspect at large

Claiborne County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Terrian Bailey was fatally wounded and a woman was shot in the incident

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Big supernova dataset challenges dark energy theory

The most comprehensive catalog of exploding white dwarf stars ever assembled has revealed new clues about dark energy, the mysterious force driving the universe’s accelerating expansion. Researchers at The University of Queensland’s School of Mathematics and Physics have led a global effort to compile a dataset containing information on 2,884 Type Ia supernovae used to […]

A photon that challenges Einstein: According to current physics, it should never have reached Earth

How did a photon survive a journey of more than 2 billion light-years when, according to known physics, it should have been absorbed long before reaching Earth? This is the question at the heart of a new study by Giorgio Galanti (INAF) and Marco Roncadelli (INFN), accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters.

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JWST finds extreme star-forming galaxies masquerading as faint quasars

A new study finds that two early-universe objects thought to be faint quasars are actually extraordinarily luminous galaxies powered by bursts of star formation. James Webb Space Telescope observations of the galaxies, seen when the universe was less than a billion years old, reveal signatures of extremely massive stars, including some potentially more than 200 […]

Early Earth’s auroral belts may have formed a natural ion-beam reactor for prebiotic chemistry

We usually think of auroras as beautiful lights in the night sky. I see them as visible traces of a connection between the sun, Earth’s magnetic field and the atmosphere. This led me to an origin-of-life question: Could the planetary structure that produces auroras also have organized chemical reactions on early Earth?

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Reversible electric control unlocks persistent chiral phonon states

Atoms in a material are rarely still. They jiggle back and forth in collective lattice vibrations known as phonons. Their motion can also carry a rotational element: In 2023, scientists at PSI experimentally proved the existence of chiral phonons, which exhibit handedness depending on which way they rotate.

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