A Black Hole Ate a Star. Then, 641 Days Later, the Radio Sky Lit Up.
One flare faded in under a week and looked like a closed case. Then the radio data kept climbing for two more years, and nobody had noticed.
Astronomy
Betelgeuse Has Been Hiding a Companion for a Hundred Years
Astronomers pointed instruments at this star for a century without noticing what was sitting right next to it, and it's heavier than anyone guessed.
The First Moon Found Outside Our Solar System Is Technically Not a Moon
More than 6,000 planets beyond our solar system have been catalogued, and exactly zero confirmed satellites. The best candidate yet does not circle a planet at all.
The Supernovae Were Wrong. Whether the Universe Noticed Is Still Unclear.
The Nobel-winning proof that dark energy exists was built on exploding stars assumed to be identical. What if they weren't?
The Jellyfish Nebula Has Been Hiding a Body
One of astronomy's most studied objects was sitting on a secret for 30 years. The galaxy's ledger of supernova remnants may need a full audit.
The Galaxy You Are Standing In Was Upside Down 10 Billion Years Ago
Something hit the Milky Way so hard it flipped. What that means for every star in it, including ours, is still being worked out.
The Asteroid That Vanished From Radar Came Back a Comet
For almost three decades, astronomers tracked what looked like an ordinary rock with total confidence. Then a routine observation came up empty, and what reappeared in its place wasn't ordinary at all.
Titan and Pluto Found the Same Recipe Using Mystery Ingredients
Two utterly different worlds are absorbing light at the exact same wavelength. The molecule responsible doesn't match anything ever catalogued.
The Big Bang Wrote the Rules. The Big Ring Ignored Them.
A structure larger than physics allows sits 9.2 billion light-years away, and researchers used the light of ancient quasars to find it hiding in plain sight.
Something Keeps Stealing Dark Matter From the Same Neighborhood
Three neighboring dwarf galaxies, all missing the invisible mass that's supposed to hold them together. That's not a one-off. That's a pattern with no suspect yet.
Astronomers May Have Caught a Little Red Dot Being Born
More than 300 mysterious objects have shown up in the universe's first billion years, then disappeared without explanation. One newly spotted example might still be assembling itself.
The Same Molecule in Your Raspberry Jam Turned Up Near the Center of the Galaxy
The same sugar molecule in raspberries just turned up near the galactic center, in quantities nobody expected. What that means for life on Earth is still wide open.
Two Planets We've Been Calling Ice Giants May Be Full of Magma
The two planets have been called ice giants for decades. Modeling suggests their interiors may be roiling oceans of magma instead.
Black Holes Are Messy Eaters. Now We Have the Radio Receipts.
Scientists assumed black holes went silent after swallowing a star. Turns out they were just warming up.
A Dying Star May Spark an Entire Baby Universe Inside Itself
What if a dying star doesn't collapse into a black hole, but births an entirely new universe instead? The math behind gravastars just got a lot harder to ignore.
A Planet Swings By and Sets Its Star Glowing
Magnetic reconnection, 18 years of hidden data, and a planet that announces its position by setting its star aglow.
A Star the Size of 1,500 Suns Went from Red to Yellow
WOH G64 shifted colors over a decade. The leading explanation is that the star may be approaching a supernova.
A Galaxy Did a Supersonic Cannonball. A Student in the Himalayas Caught the Glow.
A galaxy plowing through near-empty space fast enough to leave a glowing 1.8-million-light-year scar and a student in the Himalayas found it first.