Search Publications
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…
A hot-Jupiter progenitor on a super-eccentric retrograde orbit
Schneider, Donald P.; Cochran, William D.; Mahadevan, Suvrath +57 more
Giant exoplanets orbiting close to their host stars are unlikely to have formed in their present configurations1. These `hot Jupiter' planets are instead thought to have migrated inward from beyond the ice line and several viable migration channels have been proposed, including eccentricity excitation through angular-momentum exchange w…