Researchers from Bar-Ilan University have successfully recreated key features of black hole physics in a laboratory setting using an innovative optical system that mimics how black holes behave after violent cosmic events such as collisions or mergers.

Black holes that formed before the Big Bang could still exist today as ‘cosmic fossils’, potentially helping to explain the mysterious dark matter that shapes galaxies across the Universe, according to new research from the University of Portsmouth. 

From lazy ripples to towering breakers, the mechanics of ocean waves should vary widely from one planet to another, according to a model developed by scientists at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

In a new study, University of Washington researchers show that an Earth-sized planet likely needs at least 20 to 50% of the water in Earth’s oceans to maintain a critical natural cycle that keeps water on the surface. These new parameters could exclude many exoplanets in the so-called habitable zone.

Astronomers are puzzled by the existence of extremely massive black holes—up to a billion times the mass of the Sun—forming less than a billion years after the Big Bang, far earlier than current theories predict. Standard models of black hole growth cannot explain how they became so large so quickly. New research suggests that energy from decaying dark matter may have altered early galaxies’ chemistry, allowing some to collapse directly into massive black holes instead of forming stars.