There are plenty of scenarios in which aliens could exist but we haven’t heard from them, the study authors wrote. Aliens may have even visited Earth, they say, just not recently enough for us to have noticed.
How are black holes born? Astrophysicists have theories, but we don’t actually know for certain. It could be massive stars quietly imploding with a floompf, or perhaps black holes are born in the explosions of colossal supernovas. New observations now indicate it might indeed be the latter.
Astronomers have created the most precise map to date of the Milky Way by tracking thousands of big pulsating stars spread throughout the galaxy, demonstrating that its disk of myriad stars is not flat but dramatically warped and twisted in shape.
The Milky Way, home to our sun and billions of other stars, merged with another smaller galaxy in a colossal cosmic collision roughly 10 billion years ago, scientists said on Monday based on data from the Gaia space observatory.
The first surveys of massive black holes in dwarf galaxies turn up surprises
Scientists in Australia and China create 3D map revealing the true shape of the galaxy
ESA’s Gaia mission has made a major breakthrough in unravelling the formation history of the Milky Way.
Our solar system is just a tiny speck in the Milky Way.
Data from the Gaia satellite reveal 20 new high-speed stars, 13 of which appear to have originated outside of the Milky Way.
Astronomers analyzing data from the second release of ESA’s star mapping mission Gaia have shown that our Milky Way Galaxy is still enduring the effects of a near collision that set millions of its stars moving like ripples on a pond. The close encounter likely took place sometime in the past 300-900 million years, and the culprit could be the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, an elliptical loop-shaped galaxy located 78,300 light-years away. It was discovered because of the pattern of movement it has given to stars in the Milky Way disk.
