Astronomy

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A farmer in rural Saskatchewan found a charred chunk of debris during planting season in late April. The piece might have come from a SpaceX Crew Dragon, according to a re-entry track.

Earth is shifting into a La Niña period, changing climate patterns all around the globe

Right now, one of the largest sunspot groups in recent history is crossing the Sun.

Artemis 2's moon flight and Boeing Starliner's ISS visit have both seen delays in their crewed missions. But the moon astronauts emphasize that timeline changes are part of the job.

A new AI-based analytical technique reveals that specific language phrasing in Reddit misinformation posts foretold people rejecting COVID vaccinations

The Autel EVO Max 4T offers three cameras alongside a Laser Rangefinder and professional-level functionality making it one of the best drones available for enterprise applications.

How do astronomers find the darkest objects in the universe?

A single launch of NASA’s Space Launch System megarocket could loft all the hardware needed to return Mars samples to Earth, according to a new Boeing proposal.

Video: 00:04:43

A new satellite called EarthCARE launching later this month will provide unprecedented data on clouds and aerosols, contributing to our understanding of climate change. As we approach its launch, join us as we delve into the minds of some of the individuals who have contributed to EarthCARE over the years.

The mission will shed new light on the role that clouds and aerosols play in regulating Earth’s temperature.

This video features interviews with: Dave Donovan, Senior Scientist at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, Robin Hogan, Senior Scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Ulla Wandinger, Senior Scientist at Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research, Alain Lefebvre, Retired Project Manager of EarthCARE at ESA, Hajime Okamoto, Director, Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, Bjoern Frommknecht, EarthCARE Mission Manager at ESA, Edward Baudrez, Scientific Assistant at the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, Thorsten Fehr, EarthCARE Mission Scientist at ESA, Pavlos Kollias from Stony Brook University – McGill University and Dirk Bernaerts, EarthCARE Project Manager at ESA.

Follow the EarthCARE launch campaign blog for more updates.

Cape Cod’s water is turning “pea-soup green”—and after decades of scientific detective work, we know why.

This week the Moon occults Beta Virginis, then Antares. The last star of the Summer Triangle finally rises before bedtime. On the other side of the sky, the Arch of Spring sinks low.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, May 17 – 26 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

This summer marks the ten-year anniversary of the electromagnetic levitation facility on the International Space Station.

Image: Captured on 7 May 2024, this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image shows part of New Zealand’s North Island.

This oddly shaped cloud of dusty gas is shaped by the winds and radiation from nearby stars.

The post Cosmic "Hand" Reaches for the Stars appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Analysis of pollen in sediment cores from a large lake in Greece shows that nomadic livestock herders took over the region after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire

Analysis of pollen in sediment cores from a large lake in Greece shows that nomadic livestock herders took over the region after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire

A long time ago, in two galaxies far, far away, two massive black holes merged. This happened when the Universe was only 740 million years old. A team of astronomers used JWST to study this event, the most distant (and earliest) detection of a black hole merger ever.

Such collisions are fairly commonplace in more modern epochs of cosmic history and astronomers know that they lead to ever-more massive black holes in the centers of galaxies. The resulting supermassive black holes can contain millions of billions of solar masses. They affect the evolution of their galaxies in many ways.

Using JWST and HST, astronomers have found behemoth black holes earlier and earlier in cosmic time, within the first billion years of the Universe’s history. That raises the question: how did they get so massive so fast? Black holes accrete matter as they grow, and for the most supermassive ones, their colliding galaxies are part of that matter-harvesting history.

What JWST Shows Us about Early Black Holes Merging

The most recent JWST observations focused on a system called ZS7. It’s a galaxy merger where two very early systems come together, complete with colliding black holes. This is not something astronomers can detect with ground-based telescopes. The merger itself lies quite far away. Plus, the expansion of the Universe stretches its light into the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. That makes it inaccessible from Earth’s surface. However, infrared is detectable with JWST’s Near-infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec). It can find signatures of mergers in the early Universe, according to astronomer Hannah Übler of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

Zeroing in on the ZS7 galaxy system and the colliding black holes. Courtesy: The field in which the ZS7 galaxy merger was observed by JWST. Courtesy ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, J. Dunlop, D. Magee, P. G. Pérez-González, H. Übler, R. Maiolino, et. al

“We found evidence for very dense gas with fast motions in the vicinity of the black hole, as well as hot and highly ionized gas illuminated by the energetic radiation typically produced by black holes in their accretion episodes,” said Übler, who is lead author on a paper about the discovery. “Thanks to the unprecedented sharpness of its imaging capabilities, Webb also allowed our team to spatially separate the two black holes.”

Those black holes are pretty massive: one contains about 50 million solar masses. The other probably has about the same mass, but it’s hard to tell because it’s embedded in a dense gas region. The stellar masses of the galaxies puts them in about the same stellar-mass population as the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, according to astronomer Pablo G. Pérez-González of the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC/INTA, in Spain. “We can try to imagine how the evolution of merging galaxies could be affected if each galaxy had one supermassive black hole as large or larger than the one we have in the Milky Way”.

Other Implications of Black Hole Mergers at Cosmic Dawn

The analysis of the JWST observations reinforces the idea that mergers are an important way for black holes to grow. That’s particularly true in the early Universe, according to Ühler. “Together with other Webb findings of active, massive black holes in the distant Universe, our results also show that massive black holes have been shaping the evolution of galaxies from the very beginning.”

Many active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the very early Universe are associated with somewhat massive black holes. These are likely part of a general merger process in early epochs. Astronomers want to know when these mergers began. That would help them pinpoint the growth of the central supermassive black holes. Mergers of that kind are a likely route for the growth of black holes so early in cosmic time.

An artist’s impression of two merging black holes. Image: NASA/CXC/A. Hobart

That’s why astronomers are so anxious to spot them with JWST and future telescopes. They hold the key to understanding the evolution of galaxies and black holes in the infancy of the Universe. Uhler and her team members point this out in their paper, saying: “Our results seem to support a scenario of an imminent massive black hole merger in the early universe, highlighting this as an additional important channel for the early growth of black holes. Together with other recent findings in the literature, this suggests that massive black hole merging in the distant universe is common.”

Of course, these mergers don’t just generate light we can detect with JWST. They also generate very faint gravitational waves. But, there’s hope of detecting those waves with the upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). It will be in place in the 2030s and should be able to focus on the types of galaxy and black-hole mergers JWST is detecting today in infrared light.

For More Information

Webb Detects Most Distant Black Hole Merger to Date
GA-NIFS: JWST Discovers an Offset AGN 740 Million Years After the Big Bang

The post Webb Sees Black Holes Merging Near the Beginning of Time appeared first on Universe Today.