DESI Found 300 Candidate Intermediate Mass Black Holes

This is Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster that we know of in the Milky Way. An international team of astronomers used more than 500 images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope spanning two decades to detect seven fast-moving stars in the innermost region of Omega Centauri. These stars provide compelling new evidence for the presence of an intermediate-mass black hole. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Häberle (MPIA)

If Intermediate-Mass Black Holes (IMBHs) are real, astronomers expect to find them in dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. There’s tantalizing evidence that they exist but no conclusive proof. So far, there are only candidates. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has found 300 additional candidate IMBHs. Logic says that IMBHs should exist. We know of … Read more

Should Astronauts Be Worried About Mars Dust?

Every Martian year (which last 686.98 Earth days), the Red Planet experiences regional dust storms that coincide with summer in the southern hemisphere. Every three Martian years (five and a half Earth years), these storms grow so large that they encompass the entire planet and are visible from Earth. These storms are a serious hazard … Read more

Leaving Pluto in the dust: New Horizons probe gearing up for epic crossing of ‘termination shock’

up-close spacecraft photo of a brownish-red two-lobed deep-space object that looks a lot like a snowman

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft conducted the first and only flyby of the Pluto system, culminating at the closest approach of that distant world in July 2015. Sailing onward, the probe carried out a Jan. 1, 2019 flyby of Arrokoth, a Kuiper Belt Object, or KBO, located in a region of space beyond Neptune called the … Read more

Black holes snacking on small stars create particle accelerators that bombard Earth with cosmic rays

a bright orb next to a cloud of brown dust

Using 16 years of data from NASA’s gamma-ray detecting Fermi spacecraft, astronomers have discovered that “microquasars,” systems in which a black hole is slowly devouring a star, may be small, but they pack one heck of a punch. Despite their diminutive nature, this research suggests even microquasars snacking on small stars can have an impressive … Read more

NASA’s SPHEREx Launches Soon and Will Search For Water in Molecular Clouds

This image shows a semi-frontal view of the SPHEREx observatory during integration and testing at BAE Systems (Boulder, CO). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

As far as we can tell, life needs water. Cells can’t perform their functions without it. Some have suggested that other exotic liquids, like liquid methane, could do the job on worlds like Saturn’s moon Titan. That idea is highly speculative, though. So, it makes sense that NASA is launching a spacecraft dedicated to the … Read more

NASA Sends Experiment to Space to Study Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Sarah WAllace

In an effort to learn more about astronaut health and the effects of space on the human body, NASA is conducting a new experiment aboard the International Space Station to speed up the detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, thus improving the health safety not only of astronauts but patients back on Earth. Infections caused by antibiotic-resistant … Read more

Over 1,000 NASA employees saved from dismissal as Trump downsizes federal workforce

After the space community braced for a brutal shake-up at NASA this week, a last-minute decision on Tuesday (Feb. 18) spared over 1,000 agency employees on probationary status from being dismissed. The news comes amid an aggressive push by the Trump administration and so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE — spearheaded by SpaceX CEO … Read more

Musk and Trump repeat inaccurate claims about Starliner astronauts

YouTube video

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk reiterated claims in a televised interview that NASA astronauts were “abandoned” on the International Space Station for political reasons, an allegation that appears unsupported by evidence. In a joint interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity broadcast Feb. 18, Hannity noted plans by Musk’s … Read more

Largest-ever discovery of ‘missing link’ black holes revealed by dark energy camera (video)

a bright white cloud against a background of stars, beside 18 different images of bright white dots surrounded by fuzzy white disks

Astronomers have uncovered a treasure trove of feeding black holes at the heart of dwarf galaxies — small, faint galaxies containing thousands to several billions of stars but very little gas. The discovery, made with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), contains several “missing link” intermediate-mass black holes. This is both the largest sample of … Read more