Viewing the universe through ripples in space
Physicist Salvatore Vitale is looking for new sources of gravitational waves, to reach beyond what we can learn about the universe through light alone.
Study reveals the Phoenix galaxy cluster in the act of extreme cooling
Observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope help to explain the cluster’s mysterious starburst, usually only seen in younger galaxies.
Eleven MIT faculty receive Presidential Early Career Awards
Faculty members and additional MIT alumni are among 400 scientists and engineers recognized for outstanding leadership potential.
Rare and mysterious cosmic explosion: Gamma-ray burst or jetted tidal disruption event?
Researchers characterize the peculiar Einstein Probe transient EP240408a.
X-ray flashes from a nearby supermassive black hole accelerate mysteriously
Their source could be the core of a dead star that’s teetering at the black hole’s edge, MIT astronomers report.
Professor Emeritus Hale Van Dorn Bradt, an X-ray astronomy pioneer, dies at 93
Longtime MIT faculty member used X-ray astronomy to study neutron stars and black holes and led the All-Sky Monitor instrument on NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer.
TBIRD technology could help image black holes’ photon rings
The Lincoln Laboratory-developed laser communications payload operates at the data rates required to image these never-before-seen thin halos of light.
AXIS mission selected as NASA Astrophysics Probe competition finalist
MIT Kavli Institute scientists and collaborators will produce a concept study to launch a $1B experiment to investigate the X-ray universe.
Physicists discover first “black hole triple”
System observed 8,000 light-years away may be the first direct evidence of “gentle” black hole formation.
Astronomers detect ancient lonely quasars with murky origins
The quasars appear to have few cosmic neighbors, raising questions about how they first emerged more than 13 billion years ago.
A wobble from Mars could be sign of dark matter, MIT study finds
Watching for changes in the Red Planet’s orbit over time could be new way to detect passing dark matter.
When the lights turned on in the universe
By studying ancient, supermassive black holes called quasars, Dominika Ďurovčíková is illuminating an early moment when galaxies could first be observed.
Exotic black holes could be a byproduct of dark matter
In the first quintillionth of a second, the universe may have sprouted microscopic black holes with enormous amounts of nuclear charge, MIT physicists propose.
Using wobbling stellar material, astronomers measure the spin of a supermassive black hole for the first time
The results offer a new way to probe supermassive black holes and their evolution across the universe.
MIT astronomers observe elusive stellar light surrounding ancient quasars
The observations suggest some of earliest “monster” black holes grew from massive cosmic seeds.