Search Publications
A direct localization of a fast radio burst and its host
Lazio, T. J. W.; Ransom, S. M.; Chatterjee, S. +22 more
Fast radio bursts are astronomical radio flashes of unknown physical nature with durations of milliseconds. Their dispersive arrival times suggest an extragalactic origin and imply radio luminosities that are orders of magnitude larger than those of all known short-duration radio transients. So far all fast radio bursts have been detected with lar…
A kilonova as the electromagnetic counterpart to a gravitational-wave source
Della Valle, M.; Greiner, J.; Sollerman, J. +119 more
Gravitational waves were discovered with the detection of binary black-hole mergers and they should also be detectable from lower-mass neutron-star mergers. These are predicted to eject material rich in heavy radioactive isotopes that can power an electromagnetic signal. This signal is luminous at optical and infrared wavelengths and is called a k…
The X-ray counterpart to the gravitational-wave event GW170817
Troja, E.; Piro, L.; van Eerten, H. +31 more
A long-standing paradigm in astrophysics is that collisions—or mergers—of two neutron stars form highly relativistic and collimated outflows (jets) that power γ-ray bursts of short (less than two seconds) duration. The observational support for this model, however, is only indirect. A hitherto outstanding prediction is that gravitational-wave even…
The close environments of accreting massive black holes are shaped by radiative feedback
Lamperti, Isabella; Ho, Luis C.; Fabian, Andrew C. +13 more
The majority of the accreting supermassive black holes in the Universe are obscured by large columns of gas and dust. The location and evolution of this obscuring material have been the subject of intense research in the past decades, and are still debated. A decrease in the covering factor of the circumnuclear material with increasing accretion r…
Strongly baryon-dominated disk galaxies at the peak of galaxy formation ten billion years ago
Lutz, D.; Wuyts, S.; Förster Schreiber, N. M. +28 more
In the cold dark matter cosmology, the baryonic components of galaxies—stars and gas—are thought to be mixed with and embedded in non-baryonic and non-relativistic dark matter, which dominates the total mass of the galaxy and its dark-matter halo. In the local (low-redshift) Universe, the mass of dark matter within a galactic disk increases with d…
An ultrahot gas-giant exoplanet with a stratosphere
Deming, Drake; Knutson, Heather; Nikolov, Nikolay +24 more
Infrared radiation emitted from a planet contains information about the chemical composition and vertical temperature profile of its atmosphere. If upper layers are cooler than lower layers, molecular gases will produce absorption features in the planetary thermal spectrum. Conversely, if there is a stratosphere—where temperature increases with al…
Star formation inside a galactic outflow
Maiolino, R.; Sturm, E.; Colina, L. +13 more
Recent observations have revealed massive galactic molecular outflows that may have the physical conditions (high gas densities) required to form stars. Indeed, several recent models predict that such massive outflows may ignite star formation within the outflow itself. This star-formation mode, in which stars form with high radial velocities, cou…
The response of relativistic outflowing gas to the inner accretion disk of a black hole
Fabian, Andrew C.; Reynolds, Christopher S.; Middleton, Matthew J. +21 more
The brightness of an active galactic nucleus is set by the gas falling onto it from the galaxy, and the gas infall rate is regulated by the brightness of the active galactic nucleus; this feedback loop is the process by which supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies may moderate the growth of their hosts. Gas outflows (in the form of di…
A massive, dead disk galaxy in the early Universe
Richard, Johan; Gallazzi, Anna; Zibetti, Stefano +10 more
At redshift z = 2, when the Universe was just three billion years old, half of the most massive galaxies were extremely compact and had already exhausted their fuel for star formation. It is believed that they were formed in intense nuclear starbursts and that they ultimately grew into the most massive local elliptical galaxies seen today, through…
Solar abundance ratios of the iron-peak elements in the Perseus cluster
Done, Chris; Safi-Harb, Samar; Hamaguchi, Kenji +191 more
The metal abundance of the hot plasma that permeates galaxy clusters represents the accumulation of heavy elements produced by billions of supernovae. Therefore, X-ray spectroscopy of the intracluster medium provides an opportunity to investigate the nature of supernova explosions integrated over cosmic time. In particular, the abundance of the ir…