The search for “missing matter” in the universe has failed so many times that some exotic suggestions are being taken more seriously than ever. As Sherlock Holmes famously said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” In this case, many improbable ideas are being tested to see if … Read more
During the collision of binary neutron stars, hot neutrinos can become briefly stuck at the interface, leaving them out of equilibrium with the cold cores of the merging stars for 2 to 3 milliseconds. This interaction helps drive the particles toward equilibrium and provides new insights into the physics of such mergers. Credit: SciTechDaily.com New … Read more
A recent study from the ARC Center of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics suggests that neutron stars could play a crucial role in understanding dark matter. The study found that when dark matter particles collide into neutron stars, they can quickly heat these stars, potentially making them observable with future astronomical technologies. This rapid … Read more
The early universe contained much less miniature black holes than previously thought, making the origin of the missing matter in our cosmos an even bigger mystery, a new study suggests. Miniature or primordial black holes (PBHs) are black holes that are believed to have formed in the first fractions of a second after the Big … Read more
MIT astronomers discovered three of the oldest stars in the universe, and they live in our own galactic neighborhood. The stars are located in the Milky Way’s “halo” – the cloud of stars surrounding the main galactic disk – and they appear to have formed between 12 and 13 billion years ago, when the very … Read more