Researchers from the University of Oxford have contributed to a major international study which has captured a rare and fascinating space phenomenon: binary star systems. The study, “A shared accretion instability for black holes and neutron stars,” has been published in Nature.

Scientists have long been intrigued by X-ray binary star systems, where two stars orbit around each other with one of the two stars being either a black hole or a neutron star. Both black holes and neutron stars are created in supernova explosions and are very dense—giving them a massive gravitational pull. This makes them capable of capturing the outer layers of the normal star that orbits around it in the binary system, seen as a rotating disk of matter (mimicking a whirlpool) around the black hole/neutron star.

According to theoretical calculations, these rotating disks should show a dynamic instability: about once an hour, the inner parts of the disk rapidly fall onto the black hole/neutron star, after which these inner regions re-fill and the process repeats. Up to now, this violent and extreme process had only been directly observed once, in a black hole binary system. For the first time, it has now been seen in a neutron star binary system, called Swift J1858.6–0814. This discovery demonstrates that this instability is a general property of these disks (and not caused by the presence of a black hole).

For the last 50 years, astronomers have speculated that some supermassive black holes might “run away” from their home galaxies given the right conditions. Now, astronomers believe they have discovered a strong candidate for a supermassive black hole that has done just that, according to new research published on the preprint server arXiv.org, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

One of the great questions for humanity is whether we are alone in the universe. Indeed, astrobiologists appear tantalizingly close to being able to spot the signs of life on other Earths — should it exist elsewhere — using modern observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

Now a group of astronomers have taken this question further by asking whether life could exist in other universes. In other words, they want to know whether we are alone in the multiverse. And they have developed a way to explore this question by considering the range of conditions that might exist in other universes.

The question comes about because the fundamental constants that govern physical laws have values that seem perfectly arranged to allow life to emerge.

New galaxy candidates from a James Webb Space Telescope survey have astronomers shocked and thrilled.

New results show fully formed galaxies in the early Universe that could rewrite what we know about galaxies and black holes.

It could give us a front row seat to elusive black hole behavior.

ESA’s Euclid project manager said it is a “cosmic embarrassment” that we do not know more about these mysterious forces.

The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch its Euclid space observatory in the coming months to investigate the mysterious cosmic phenomena known as dark matter and dark energy.

ESA plans to shed new light on dark energy and dark matter.

ESA / C. Carreau.

Black holes are so powerful that we’ve had to come up with new words to describe their awesome annihilation abilities. Objects that come in contact with the extreme gravitational pull of one of these voids are at risk of being simultaneously stretched and ripped apart, leaving elongated strands of matter that look something like spaghetti or a similar pasta.

Hence we say that black holes often “spaghettify” their meals before consuming them.

Astronomers from UCLA and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii have been watching an odd cloud getting pulled apart for the past few decades as it accelerates towards Sagittarius A (Sgr A), the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.