New simulations show that interactions with a magnetic field can work to decrease the distance between still forming binary protostars. These results can help explain the characteristics of the binary star systems observed in the Milky Way. These results can also be extrapolated to binary black holes, giving insights into how super massive black holes evolve.

The most distant, nearly invisible dormant black hole has been detected and ‘weighed’ by an international team of astronomers that includes researchers from UCL.

Carnegie’s Andrew Newman led a team of astronomers that used JWST to make  the first direct mass measurement of a dormant black hole at the center of a galaxy from the early universe. Previously, this technique had only been used to study black holes in the local universe. But JWST and a phenomenon called gravitational lensing enabled the researchers to use it on a galaxy that's light is reaching us from when the universe was just 3 billion years old. 

According to theory, all active black holes should produce winds or jets. Astronomers have long searched for wind around the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole. New images reveal a vacant, cone-shaped region pointing to the black hole. Amount of energy needed to sweep the region’s gas away could only be generated from black hole wind.

A team led by York University researchers has discovered the fastest wind near a supermassive black hole ever found at ultraviolet wavelengths, driven by the disc of matter, or quasar, surrounding the black hole. “This quasar has a black hole of 1.7 billion times the mass of the Sun. That’s typical. What’s not typical is that it has gas moving towards us at 30 per cent of the speed of light,” says York Professor Patrick Hall of the Faculty of Science.

You have gone without food for days, and the temperature drops to near freezing. What do you do? For some animals, the answer is influenced by the brain’s circadian clock. Hummingbirds, bats, and mice are among the animals that can enter torpor, which reduces body temperature and metabolism. Scientists suspected that the brain’s circadian clock controls the timing of torpor, but until now the exact mechanism was not known. Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have identified the specific neural circuit responsible for this survival strategy. They have shown that the brain’s circadian clock, a small cluster of neurons located in the hypothalamus at the base of the brain, sends silencing signals through this circuit to a nearby temperature-regulating region, suppressing torpor during the day. The findings were published in Nature Communications. 

Hard carbons are emerging as the most viable anodes for the commercialization of Na-ion batteries. However, their performance limits are far from being disclosed because of ambiguous Na-storage mechanism. Here, we report that nano-space confinement regulates heterogeneous nucleation of quasi-metallic Na clusters in closed pores, uncovering a coupled “intercalation-pore filling” and stage-wise storage mechanism for high capacities. Theoretical studies reveal that the energy barrier for Na-cluster growth decreases as the nanocavity size decreases; however, it remains energetically unfavorable at potentials (V vs. Na/Na⁺) > 0. Interestingly, in the coupled storage, Na-ion intercalation in nanoconfined orifices triggers stepwise pre-nucleation, reducing energy barriers for spontaneous Na-cluster growth in progressively larger cavities at positive potentials, thus enabling Na-cluster deposition into previously unused closed pores. This understanding guides the rational design of stage-wise closed pores, resulting in superior performance of 500 mAh g⁻¹ at 50 mA g⁻¹ and 344 mAh g⁻¹ at 2000 mA g⁻¹. Mechanistic studies further identify a new stage, where confined nano-spaces at 0.4–0.6 nm facilitate pre-desolvation and enhance Na-ion transport kinetics for high-rate capabilities. This work identifies the origin governing Na-storage behavior in the closed pores of hard carbons, boosting their overall performance beyond prior expectations.