Do X-Rays Help or Hurt Massive Black Hole Formation?
How were the first massive black holes impacted by environmental factors like X-rays? Today’s authors explore this and more!
Sniffing Out Clues in K2-18 b’s Atmosphere: Biosignature or False Alarm?
This astrobite will summarize the recent constraints of biosignatures on K2-18 b, answer important questions like “are there aliens?” and “how bad does this biosignature smell?”, and discuss some critiques it has drawn.
1,339 of These Are Not Like the Others: Uncovering Anomalies in Hubble Imaging
How do you search through 99.6 million images for weird and interesting galaxies? Instead of wasting years of your life doing it manually, you can use AnomalyMatch.
Superconductive Regions in Magnetars
Today’s authors consider superconductive magnetar models and their impact on gravitational wave observations.
Guest: Wolf-Rayet Stars and Compact Object Collisions: A Stellar Recipe for Gravitational Waves
How do compact objects end up in binaries? Today’s authors investigate how Wolf-Rayet stars could provide a key insight into the development of binary compact objects.
Origin of the plume in M86: Ram pressure stripping or galaxy-galaxy collision?
Using X-ray observations from XMM-Newton, this paper studied the chemical makeup of the hot gas around the galaxy M86, which is being stripped as it moves through a cluster. They found that the galaxy’s core still holds onto its enriched gas, and that part of the stripped material likely comes from a past galaxy collision—not just the core being peeled away.