The ‘Brightest of All Time’ Gamma-Ray Burst Sparks a Supernova Hunt
[ad_1] On the morning of October 9, astronomers’ inboxes pinged with a relatively modest alert: NASA’s Swift Observatory had just detected a fresh burst of energy, assumed to be coming…
What Drives Galaxies? The Milky Way’s Black Hole May Be the Key
[ad_1] On May 12, at nine simultaneous press conferences around the world, astrophysicists revealed the first image of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. At first,…
At Long Last, Mathematical Proof That Black Holes Are Stable
[ad_1] In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein’s equations that precisely described the spacetime outside what we now call a rotating black hole. (The term wouldn’t…