Search Publications
A pulsar-like polarization angle swing from a nearby fast radio burst
Kilpatrick, Charles D.; Prochaska, J. Xavier; Kaspi, Victoria M. +41 more
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) last for milliseconds and arrive at Earth from cosmological distances. Although their origins and emission mechanisms are unknown, their signals bear similarities with the much less luminous radio emission generated by pulsars within our Miky Way Galaxy1, with properties suggesting neutron star origins2,3
No massive black holes in the Milky Way halo
Udalski, Andrzej; Mróz, Przemek; Szymański, Michał K. +13 more
The gravitational wave detectors have shown a population of massive black holes that do not resemble those observed in the Milky Way1–3 and whose origin is debated4–6. According to a possible explanation, these black holes may have formed from density fluctuations in the early Universe (primordial black holes)7–9, …
Fast-moving stars around an intermediate-mass black hole in ω Centauri
Anderson, Jay; Pechetti, Renuka; Kamann, Sebastian +15 more
Black holes have been found over a wide range of masses, from stellar remnants with masses of 5-150 solar masses (M☉), to those found at the centres of galaxies with M > 105M☉. However, only a few debated candidate black holes exist between 150M☉ and 105M☉. Determining the popula…
A shock flash breaking out of a dusty red supergiant
Wang, Lifan; Wang, Xiaofeng; Gao, Xing +41 more
Shock-breakout emission is light that arises when a shockwave, generated by the core-collapse explosion of a massive star, passes through its outer envelope. Hitherto, the earliest detection of such a signal was at several hours after the explosion1, although a few others had been reported2-7. The temporal evolution of early …
Preferential occurrence of fast radio bursts in massive star-forming galaxies
Leja, Joel; Somalwar, Jean; Hallinan, Gregg +24 more
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration events detected from beyond the Milky Way. FRB emission characteristics favour highly magnetized neutron stars, or magnetars, as the sources1, as evidenced by FRB-like bursts from a galactic magnetar2,3, and the star-forming nature of FRB host galaxies4,5. However, …
The Radcliffe Wave is oscillating
Alves, João; Zucker, Catherine; Goodman, Alyssa A. +6 more
Our Sun lies within 300 parsecs of the 2.7-kiloparsecs-long sinusoidal chain of dense gas clouds known as the Radcliffe Wave1. The structure's wave-like shape was discovered using three-dimensional dust mapping, but initial kinematic searches for oscillatory motion were inconclusive2-7. Here we present evidence that the Radcl…
A temperate super-Jupiter imaged with JWST in the mid-infrared
Henning, Th.; Morley, C. V.; Lagrange, A. -M. +16 more
Of the approximately 25 directly imaged planets to date, all are younger than 500 Myr, and all but six are younger than 100 Myr (ref. 1). Eps Ind A (HD209100, HIP108870) is a K5V star of roughly solar age (recently derived as 3.7–5.7 Gyr (ref. 2) and
At least one in a dozen stars shows evidence of planetary ingestion
Bitsch, Bertram; Ting, Yuan-Sen; Dotter, Aaron +6 more
Stellar chemical compositions can be altered by ingestion of planetary material1,2 and/or planet formation, which removes refractory material from the protostellar disk3,4. These `planet signatures' appear as correlations between elemental abundance differences and the dust condensation temperature3,5,6. Detecting …
Gravitational instability in a planet-forming disk
Dong, Ruobing; Tang, Ya-Wen; Teague, Richard +7 more
The canonical theory for planet formation in circumstellar disks proposes that planets are grown from initially much smaller seeds1–5. The long-considered alternative theory proposes that giant protoplanets can be formed directly from collapsing fragments of vast spiral arms6–11 induced by gravitational instability12–14<…
Most nearby young star clusters formed in three massive complexes
Reffert, Sabine; Meingast, Stefan; Alves, João +9 more
Efforts to unveil the structure of the local interstellar medium and its recent star-formation history have spanned the past 70 years (refs. 1-6). Recent studies using precise data from space astrometry missions have revealed nearby, newly formed star clusters with connected origins7-12. Nonetheless, mapping young clusters ac…