Mysterious burst confounds astrophysicists
Hypotheses are that the Cow was either a compact object being destroyed when coming too close to a black hole, or a special type of supernova in which a black hole or magnetar is produced.
Colliders join the hunt for dark energy
The ATLAS collaboration carried out a first collider search for light scalar particles that could contribute to the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Solving the next mystery in astrophysics
Until recently the number of theories on the origin of fast radio bursts outnumbered the number of observations.
Gaia finds evidence of old Milky Way merger
Many of the stars appearing in the night sky did not originate from within our galaxy.
Particle physics meets astrophysics and gravity
The 7th International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics (ICNFP 2018) took place on 4–12 July in Kolymbari, Crete.
Gravitational hunt for extra dimensions
If extra dimensions are large, part of the gravitational field would “leak” into the extra dimensions and gravitational waves would be weaker than expected.
Particle interactions up to the highest energies
The 20th International Symposium on Very High Energy Cosmic Ray Interactions (ISVHECRI 2018) was held in Nagoya, Japan.
Solving the mystery of a historic stellar blast
Some 180 years ago, a relatively normal star called Eta Carinae suddenly brightened to become the second brightest star in the sky, before almost disappearing at the end of the 19th century.
Elephants in the gamma-ray sky
The discovery of large-scale features in the gamma-ray sky in approximately the same direction continues to puzzle researchers.
Relativity passes test on a galactic scale
Gravity behaves the same way on a galactic scale as it does in our solar system, and alternative gravity models which remove the need for dark energy are disfavoured.
