Lifeboat Foundation

A new theoretical study has proposed a novel mechanism for the creation of supermassive black holes from dark matter. The international team find that rather than the conventional formation scenarios involving ‘normal’ matter, supermassive black holes could instead form directly from dark matter in high density regions in the centers of galaxies. The result has key implications for cosmology in the early Universe, and is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The cosmic microwave background, or CMB, is the electromagnetic echo of the Big Bang, radiation that has been traveling through space and time since the very first atoms were born 380000 years after our universe began. Mapping minuscule variations in the CMB tells scientists about how our universe came to be and what it’s made of.

To capture the ancient, cold light from the CMB, researchers use specialized telescopes equipped with ultrasensitive cameras for detecting millimeter-wavelength signals. The next-generation cameras will contain up to 100000 superconducting detectors. Fermilab scientist and University of Chicago Associate Professor Jeff McMahon and his team have developed a new type of metamaterials-based antireflection coating for the silicon lenses used in these cameras.

“There are at least half a dozen projects that would not be possible without these,” McMahon said.

The path to dark matter and other fundamental enigmas may be through a warped extra dimension, according to a new study that proposes a new theory of the universe.

A supercomputer presses the rewind button on the universe’s creation.

Cosmologists simulated 4000 versions of the universe in order to understand what its structure today tells us about its origins.

A new study of x-ray bursts from a local magnetar confirms the origin of a fast radio burst.

Every now and then there is a burst of radio light in the sky. It lasts for just milliseconds before fading. It’s known as a Fast Radio Burst (FRB), and they are difficult to observe and study. We know they are powerful bursts of energy, but we aren’t entirely sure what causes them.

The more we’ve learned about FRBs, the stranger they appear. Most occur outside our galaxy, but there are a few that seem to originate within the Milky Way. Most seem to appear at random in the sky, but a few of them are repeating FRBs. Some of them even repeat with surprising regularity. Because of this, astronomers generally think they can’t be caused by a cataclysmic event, such as the last radio burst of a neutron star as it collapses into a black hole.

Why so late, little neutrino?

Astronomers spot two highly delayed signals from two different black holes tearing apart stars in their vicinity.

Astronomers think they’ve finally detected the long-hidden, sought-after neutron star remnant at the center of the nearby Supernova 1987A.

Astronomers think they’ve detected long-hidden neutron star remnant at the central core of the nearby Supernova 1987A.

A ghostly particle that smashed into Antarctica in 2019 has been traced back to a black hole tearing apart a star while acting like a giant cosmic particle accelerator, a new study finds.

A team of scientists has detected the presence of a high-energy neutrino — a particularly elusive particle — in the wake of a star’s destruction as it is consumed by a black hole. This discovery, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, sheds new light on the origins of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays — the highest energy particles in the Universe.

The work, which included researchers from more than two dozen institutions, including New York University and Germany’s DESY research center, focused on neutrinos — subatomic particles that are produced on Earth only in powerful accelerators.

Neutrinos — as well as the process of their creation — are hard to detect, making their discovery, along with that of Ultrahigh Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs), noteworthy.