Hacker News with Generative AI: Astrophysics

X-ray flashes from nearby supermassive black hole accelerate mysteriously (news.mit.edu)
One supermassive black hole has kept astronomers glued to their scopes for the last several years. First came a surprise disappearance, and now, a precarious spinning act.

Black Holes, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Science, Space

81 points by rbanffy 4 days ago | 4 comments

Gamma-ray bursts: what do we know today that we did not know 10 years ago? (arxiv.org)
I discuss here the progress made in the last decade on few of the key open problems in GRB physics.

Gamma-ray bursts, Astrophysics, Science, Astronomy

16 points by belter 19 days ago | 0 comments

Advanced Civilizations Could Be Indistinguishable from Nature (universetoday.com)
Sometimes in science you have to step back and take another look at underlying assumptions. Sometimes its necessary when progress stalls. One of the foundational questions of our day concerns the Fermi Paradox, the contradiction between what seems to be a high probability of extraterrestrial life and the total lack of evidence that it exists.

Extraterrestrial Life, Science, Fermi Paradox, Space, Astrophysics

145 points by joe_the_user 30 days ago | 140 comments

The impact of the cosmological constant on past and future star formation (academic.oup.com)
We present an extended analytical model for cosmic star formation, with the aim of investigating the impact of cosmological parameters on the star formation history within the \$\Lambda\$CDM paradigm.

Cosmology, Astrophysics, Star Formation, Scientific Research, Lambda-CDM Model

24 points by bookofjoe 55 days ago | 5 comments

Black hole feeds at 40 times the theoretical limit (arstechnica.com)
How did supermassive black holes end up at the center of every galaxy? A while back, it wasn't that hard to explain: That's where the highest concentration of matter is, and the black holes had billions of years to feed on it. But as we've looked ever deeper into the Universe's history, we keep finding supermassive black holes, which shortens the timeline for their formation.

Black holes, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Science

5 points by rbanffy 74 days ago | 0 comments

How do merging supermassive black holes pass the final parsec? (quantamagazine.org)
Galaxies have been merging into ever-bigger structures over the course of cosmic history. When galaxies merge, the supermassive black holes that sit in their centers must eventually merge, too, forming an even more gargantuan black hole.

Astrophysics, Black Holes, Galaxy Mergers

78 points by jnord 86 days ago | 107 comments

A solar gravitational lens will be humanity's most powerful telescope (2022) (phys.org)
One of the central predictions of general relativity is that a massive object such as a star, galaxy, or black hole can deflect light passing nearby.

Space Exploration, Astrophysics, General Relativity, Telescopes

198 points by amichail 95 days ago | 161 comments

The Magnetic Field of the Milky Way (2000) (cfa.harvard.edu)
There is strong evidence that the Milky Way contains an ordered, large-scale magnetic field.

Astrophysics, Milky Way, Magnetic Fields, Astronomy

94 points by vinnyglennon 127 days ago | 28 comments

Radiance Cascades: A Novel High-Res Sol. For Multidim Non-LTE Radiative Transfer (arxiv.org)

Astrophysics, Radiative Transfer, Scientific Research, Software

24 points by jasonjmcghee 140 days ago | 7 comments

Astrophysicists May Have Found the Source of Mysterious Wow Signal (gizmodo.com)

Astrophysics, Space, Science, Astronomy

19 points by amichail 151 days ago | 3 comments

Self-Interacting Dark Matter as a Solution to the 'Final Parsec Problem' (astrobites.org)

Dark Matter, Cosmology, Astrophysics, Physics

4 points by thunderbong 161 days ago | 1 comments

Quark Stars (wordpress.com)