An international research team has discovered a supermassive black hole growing rapidly while radiating bright X-rays and radio waves. This combination of features contradicts the current models of black hole growth, requiring astronomers to look for a new explanation.

Researchers have reported new experimental results addressing the origin of rare proton-rich isotopes heavier than iron, called p-nuclei. Led by Artemis Tsantiri, then-graduate student at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) and current postdoctoral fellow at the University of Regina in Canada, the study presents the first rare isotope beam measurement of proton capture on arsenic-73 to produce selenium-74, providing new constraints on how the lightest p-nucleus is formed and destroyed in the cosmos. The team published its results in Physical Review Letters (“Constraining the Synthesis of the Lightest 𝑝 Nucleus ⁷⁴Se”).

Sweeping winds of vaporized metals have been found in a massive cloud that dimmed the light of a star for nearly nine months. This discovery, made with the Gemini South telescope in Chile, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, offers a rare glimpse into the chaotic and dynamic processes still shaping planetary systems long after their formation.

University of Warwick-led study shows how tabletop devices could uncover the fundamental texture of the universe.

At Frontiers Science House, SPARK Microgravity GmbH revealed plans to build Europe’s first dedicated commercial orbital cancer lab. The lab will accelerate the path from discovery to therapy. In microgravity, researchers can run experiments that are impossible on Earth – including 3D tumor growth and revealing new drug targets.

It’s one of astronomy’s great mysteries: how did black holes get so big, so massive, so quickly. An answer to this cosmic conundrum has now been provided by researchers at Ireland's Maynooth University and reported today in Nature Astronomy.