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A team of European astronomers, along with Indian and Japanese colleagues, has reported evidence that strongly suggests the detection of ultra-low-frequency gravitational waves. Such waves, which have not previously been observed, probably originate from pairs of supermassive black holes at the centre of merging galaxies.

For the first time, an international team of astronomers has observed a long gamma-ray burst near the centre of an ancient galaxy. This is special because these kinds of gamma-ray bursts typically occur when massive stars collapse or when neutron stars circle each other for a long time, and there are no such stars at the centre of ancient galaxies.

New theoretical research by Michael Wondrak, Walter van Suijlekom and Heino Falcke of Radboud University has shown that Stephen Hawking was right about black holes, although not completely. Due to Hawking radiation, black holes will eventually evaporate, but the event horizon is not as crucial as has been believed.

Nearly 2.5 billion years ago, seas on our planet alternately contained more or less oxygen, due to the slow "wobble" of the rotating Earth. So writes an international team of scientists, some affiliated with Utrecht University and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ). "The fact that the Earth eventually became an oxygen-rich planet with a pleasant climate may be partly due to the right astronomical influence at the right time," says Utrecht PhD candidate Margriet Lantink, first author of the article.

Telescopes in space and on Earth have observed the brightest gamma-ray burst ever. The data from this rare event could contribute to a better understanding of the colossal explosions that cause gamma-ray bursts. Hundreds of astronomers took part in the study, including Andrew Levan and his Radboud University group.

The Earth's mantle makes up about 85% of the Earth's volume and is made of solid rock. But what rock types is the mantle exactly made of, and how are they distributed throughout the mantle? An international team of researchers - including UT researcher Dr Juan Carlos Afonso (Faculty of ITC) - have been able to reveal the existence of pockets of rocks with abnormal properties that suggest that they were once created at the surface, transported to vast depths along subduction zones, and accumulated at specific depths inside the Earth's mantle.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope just scored another first: a molecular and chemical profile of a distant world's skies. This is shown in five new articles by an international team of scientists, including Jean-Michel Désert, Hinna Shivkumar and Saugata Barat from the University of Amsterdam are soon to be published in leading science magazines.

Researchers of Delft University of Technology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and VSL have developed an alternative positioning system that is more robust and accurate than GPS, especially in urban settings. The working prototype that demonstrated this new mobile network infrastructure achieved an accuracy of 10 centimeter.

At a slow pace, the Moon is moving away from the Earth and the Earth is rotating more slowly around its axis. To say something about these changes in the distant past, geologists use information stored in rocks and fossils. But the further back in time they look, the more difficult it becomes to retrieve this information.

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have spotted signs of a 'hot spot' orbiting Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. The finding helps us better understand the enigmatic and dynamic environment of our supermassive black hole. The research was led by Maciek Wielgus of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.

Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)- an international observatory co-operated by the US National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)- have for the first time recorded millimeter-wavelength light from a fiery explosion caused by the merger of a neutron star with another star.

Nine promising young UvA researchers have received Veni grants from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Theoretical physicists have taken a new step in understanding the so-called neutrinoless double-beta decay. This decay in atomic nuclei has never been seen before, but an observation would be an important signal that the standard particle theory is not satisfactory. Theoretician Jordy de Vries of the University of Amsterdam and Nikhef is publishing with colleagues a follow-up to a paper that caused a stir in 2018.

Dark matter might be disappearing and sending its signal - but not very fast - in dwarf satellite galaxies Dark matter is even more elusive than thought before. This is the main message of a new study by a group of scientists that includes Shin'ichiro Ando of the Institute of Physics at the University of Amsterdam.

In a paper that appeared in the journal Physical Review Letters this week, astrophysicists from the University of Amsterdam propose a new way of potentially detecting dark matter. Astrophysicists Thomas Edwards, Marco Chianese and Bradley Kavanagh, from the groups of Samaya Nissanke and Christoph Weniger at the GRAPPA center of excellence, have studied the gravitational waves produced by the merger of a neutron star and a black hole.