news

For the first time, astronomers have been able to link a so-called X-ray flash from deep space to a supernova, which in turn is associated with a gamma-ray burst. Scientists traced the stellar explosion using, among other instruments, the Einstein Probe X-ray satellite. An international team led by Radboud University has now used observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope to show that this event was a gamma-ray-burst-associated supernova that occurred about ten billion years ago.

An international team of astronomers has found the earliest supernova to date with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), originating from a time when the universe was only 730 million years old. In doing so, Webb has broken its own previous record. The findings were published today in two papers in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Multi-year observations by the Event Horizon Telescope have detected changing polarisation patterns in a supermassive black hole. The telescope was also able to better study the direction of a narrow beam of particles shooting out of the edge of the hole at the speed of light. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration has unveiled new, detailed images of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87- known as M87*- revealing a dynamic environment with changing polarization patterns near the black hole.

Astronomers have detected an explosion of gamma rays that repeated several times over the course of a day, an event unlike anything ever witnessed before. The source of the powerful radiation was discovered to be outside our galaxy, its location pinpointed by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT).

A team of astronomers led by Michael Janssen (Radboud University, The Netherlands) has trained a neural network with millions of synthetic black hole data sets. Based on the network and data from the Event Horizon Telescope, they now predict, among other things, that the black hole at the center of our Milky Way is spinning at near top speed.

Analysing gravity data collected by spacecraft orbiting the moon reveals groundbreaking insights about the Moon-s deep internal structure without having to land on the surface. The study offers evidence that a warmer interior on the Moon-s near side compared to the far side created the conditions for volcanic activity, that may have lasted far longer than expected.

The universe is decaying much faster than thought. This is shown by calculations of three scientists at Radboud University on the so-called Hawking radiation. They calculate that the last stellar remnants take about 10^78 years (a 1 with 78 zeros) to perish. That is much shorter than the previously postulated 10^1100 years (a 1 with 1100 zeros).

A small international team of astronomers including Silvia Toonen (UvA) and Gijs Nelemans (Radboud University) has discovered two white dwarf stars orbiting each other that will merge and explode into a type Ia supernova. This missing link of astronomy has long been predicted and has finally been found.

Researchers at TU Delft and Brown University have developed scalable nanotechnology-based lightsails that could support future advances in space exploration and experimental physics. Their research, published in Nature Communications , introduces new materials and production methods to create the thinnest large-scale reflectors ever made.

A group of researchers from TU Delft and the Institute for Planetary Research of the German Aerospace Center have been able to the determinate the Mars-s interior structure and the age of the large ice sheet covering its north pole. They have published their findings in Nature. The team used the same geophysical trick on Mars that geologists use here on Earth to: measure how large areas of land are deformed by the ice sheet that presses down on the planet itself.

The gas sucked in by the iconic supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 appears to be moving against the black hole's direction of rotation. This is shown by new computer simulations from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, which includes researchers from Radboud University. Using observations from 2017 and 2018, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has deepened our understanding of the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87 (M87*).

Astronomers have used data from the European Gaia Space Telescope to discover 55 high-speed stars launched from the young star cluster R136 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. This increases tenfold the number of known "runaway stars" in this region. The team of astronomers from the University of Amsterdam, Leiden University and Radboud University (Netherlands), among others, is publishing the results this week in Nature.

A new study led by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), and with contributions from Radboud University's Marijke Haverkorn, has unveiled significant insights into the Milky Way: a magnetised galactic halo. This discovery challenges previous models of our galaxy's structure and evolution.

In new research, TU/e's Mireille Boutin has obtained major results that help improve GPS technologies using unconventional mathematical techniques. The summer holidays are ending, which for many concludes with a long drive home and reliance on GPS devices to get safely home. But every now and then, GPS devices can suggest strange directions or get briefly confused about your location.

The Dutch Black Hole Consortium has launched an 8-language version of the BlackHoleFinder app that citizens all'over the world can use to help identify newly formed black holes. Previously, the app was only available in Dutch and English. Now Spanish, German, Chinese, Bengali, Polish, and Italian have been added, greatly increasing the number of people who can access the citizen science app in their native language.

A team of international scientists, led by Maria Edvige Ravasio of Radboud University, has identified an unprecedented emission line in the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever recorded. The study, published 26 July in Science, marks a significant advancement in the understanding of GRBs, shedding light on the elusive properties of their jets.

For the first time, a team of scientists from HFML-FELIX at Radboud University has unveiled the cosmic fingerprints of sulfur rings. These results, published in Nature Communications, may shed new light on the way sulfur was transported from dark interstellar clouds (where stars are formed) to young planetary systems and planets like Earth and Venus, and offers ways to search for cosmic sulfur using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

New findings from a spaceborne monitoring team of University of Houston, TU Delft and DLR indicates the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine may have been already ongoing before the war with Russia, with deformations in the dam pre-dating the actual collapse. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment this month.

The period that liquid water was present on the surface of Mars may have been shorter than previously thought. Channel landforms called gullies, previously thought to be formed exclusively by liquid water, can also be formed by the action of evaporating CO2 ice. That is the conclusion of a new study by Lonneke Roelofs, a planetary researcher at Utrecht University.

Cumulus clouds over land start to disappear almost instantly during a partial solar eclipse. Until recently, satellite measurements during the eclipse resulted in dark spots in the cloud map, but researchers from TU Delft and KNMI were able to recover the satellite measurements by using a new method.