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Millimetre-wavelength interferometry and gravitational-wave detectors currently provide the most stringent tests for the existence of cosmic black holes. Complementary measurements of magnetic fields near their event horizon would be decisive.
Spectroscopic and imaging data for low metallicity galaxies observed during the peak epoch of star formation offer detailed insights into the most distant galaxies discovered to date.
From the first hints of unseen matter in the Universe to the present body of evidence for dark matter, James Peebles outlines the significant developments in observation and theory in the 1970s in this Insight Perspective.
The authors find that a nearby planetary system has two terrestrial planets that transit in front of their star (from our perspective). Transiting terrestrial planets are sought after, as they can be characterized in detail, including their atmospheres. Having two in the same system is very rare.
The acceptance of dark matter came slowly despite its abundance. Jaco de Swart and colleagues reconstruct the history of how dark matter brought astronomers to cosmology in their Review Article, which is part of the Insight on dark matter.
A selected group of intermediate-redshift galaxies appear similar to primeval galaxies. Analysing spectra of these nearer analogues for chemical abundances and ionization levels gives an improved understanding of galaxies that are too faint to study well.
The roughly spherical outer regions and aspherical inner regions of protoplanetary nebulae — here imaged by ALMA — are explained in terms of an embedded binary system with stars on eccentric orbits.
Environments where stars are abundantly formed are more conducive to stellar tidal disruption events, as evidenced by the detection of the remains of a star being accreted by a supermassive black hole within a starburst galaxy.
A binary system containing a ‘polluted’ white dwarf must host a stable, rocky, circumbinary debris disk, argue Farihi and colleagues. Therefore large planetesimal formation, and potentially terrestrial planet formation, must be robust and common in such systems.
An uncharacteristically long stellar disruption from a supermassive black hole has been unravelling over the last decade. Spectral information implies very efficient accretion but recent observations hint at a transition to a less extreme accretion mode.
Using a radio telescope with no moving parts, the dark energy speeding up the expansion of the Universe can be probed in unprecedented detail, says Keith Vanderlinde, on behalf of the CHIME collaboration.
Measurements now show that the distribution of meteorite compositions arriving to Earth was significantly different in the past and that the flux changes on short timescales.
