When astronomers conduct a giant survey, they collect overwhelming amounts of data. But how can we check whether the data is correct? Well, today’s paper applies a mathematical curiosity generally used for detecting tax fraud: Benford’s law.
Black holes come in many different sizes. But is there a mass limit? The authors of today’s paper investigate the possibility of black holes a trillion times as massive as the sun. Surprisingly, they could also help explain the mysterious dark matter!
The Hubble tension is one of the biggest issues in modern cosmology. Why can we not agree on the expansion rate of the Universe? Today’s authors propose a solution: The actual disagreement might be in the assumed mean temperature of the cosmic microwave background.
Modern cosmology relies on large numerical simulations. However, creating them requires a lot of memory and computational time. Today’s paper describes a technique that can dramatically decrease the computational cost of simulations – by focusing on the most important parts of the simulation and reducing waste!
Interstellar travel is difficult with traditional fuel-powered rockets. Today’s paper explores how we could instead use sailing space ships, propelled by photons and particles from astrophysical sources. Spoiler alert: Sailing ships could almost reach the speed of light!