The Fermi bubbles may have started life as jets of high-energy charged particles MINNEAPOLIS — Bubbles of radiation billowing from the galactic center may have started as a stream of electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons, new observations suggest. An excess of positrons zipping past Earth suggests that the bubblesContinue Reading

Astronomers used gravitational lensing and supercomputers to identify the colossal black hole, which is among the largest ever found. Astronomers have discovered one of the largest black holes ever found — an ultramassive monster roughly 30 billion times the mass of the sun — using a space-time trick predicted byContinue Reading

Exposure to sulfur-rich, volcanic soil appears to encourage the production of reddish pigments Life on a volcanic isle appears to give barn owls a blush of red-brown plumage. The high-sulfur environment on such islands influences the birds’ coloration, researchers report March 13 in the Journal of Biogeography. Darker feathers mightContinue Reading

Watch live online as the dwarf planet Ceres swoops in front of the ‘grand design’ spiral galaxy Messier 100 this weekend. This weekend, you can watch live as the first asteroid ever discovered passes across one of the night sky’s most beautiful spiral galaxies. The Rome-based Virtual Telescope Project(opens inContinue Reading