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

Scientists discover new, 3rd form of magnetism that may be the ‘missing link’ in the quest for superconductivity

Researchers have obtained the first conclusive evidence of an elusive third class of magnetism, called altermagnetism. Their findings, published Dec. 11 in the journal Nature, could revolutionize the design of new high-speed magnetic memory devices and provide the missing puzzle piece in the development of better superconducting materials. “We have previously had two well-established types … Read more

‘Missing link’ black hole in the Milky Way’s densest star cluster is still missing

New research may have delivered bad news for scientists who thought they had discovered a “missing link” black hole in a dense Milky Way star cluster. The new findings imply that, rather than a rare intermediate-mass black hole, there is a cluster of stellar-mass black holes in Omega Centauri, believed to be the remains of … Read more