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An international study has discovered a star traveling at more than six million km/h through the Milky Way after being flung from the center of our galaxy by a supermassive black hole.

Scientists from the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) have presented roughly 1.5 years of observational data, calculating new limits on the lifetime of heavy dark matter particles that have masses between 10⁵ and 10⁹ giga-electron volts.

The study, titled “Constraints on heavy decaying dark matter from 570 days of LHAASO observations,” was recently published in Physics Review Letters.

The gravitational model of the Milky Way shows that there is a very high density of dark matter in the galactic center, and the gamma rays produced by the decay of this dark matter will radiate from the galactic center to the surroundings for hundreds of light-years or even thousands of light-years. However, for a long time, the observation of ultra-high-energy gamma rays produced by heavy dark matter has been complicated by the presence of other background radiation.

What were the first moments of the Universe like? It’s a mystery that scientists have been trying to unravel for decades. The ALICE collaboration at CERN is a specialist in the subject: this detector (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) was designed to study quark-gluon plasma, a phase of matter that would have existed just after the Big Bang. And the team recently succeeded in recreating and characterizing this very first hypothetical material, using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Instead, this nimble satellite will punch hugely above its weight and try to track down one of the most elusive and mysterious substances in the universe: dark matter. This is the term given to the hypothetical invisible matter that is thought to be more abundant than normal matter and has a similar gravitational effect on its surroundings.

The mission is classified as fast (F), which means it is smaller, more focused, and has a quicker turnaround (less than 10 years to launch) than other types of ESA missions. The agency’s previous F-mission, selected in 2019, is called the Comet Interceptor. Already parked at a stable point in the Solar System, this probe is waiting for a comet to show up and fly by it, something that’s due to happen around the time that Arrakhis launches in the early 2030s.

Since dark matter still eludes detection, the mission will target sources of light that are sensitive to it. We expect normal matter — the stuff that actually emits light, such as stars in galaxies — to move primarily under the influence of dark matter, which is more abundant.

Observations from NASA reveal how complex and catastrophic an event it can be when a star gets too close to a black hole, CBS News reported on Wednesday.

Such an event does not occur in a single moment but, according to NASA, can take several months as the black hole’s gravity slowly sucks in the star’s being.

The latest such observation, which took place over a period of more than five months, was watched by multiple telescopes, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported.

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In this lesson, you will learn about a recent discovery of a black hole interacting with a nearby star and shooting a jet of high energy matter and x-rays in the direction of earth. The signal is called a tidal disruption event, and is named AT2022cmc. It was detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility and subsequent observations in the x-ray region was done by observatories around the world. MIT and the University of Birmingham published the findings in Nature Astronomy. The object is 8.5 billion light years away, and so is the most distant and brightest gamma ray burst ever detected. It is thought that we are looking at the jet of x-rays head on.

NGC 1,566 is a rare bird among galaxies: Gas and dust are still falling into the supermassive black hole at its center, fueling powerful outbursts of radiation that, in shorter wavelengths of light, make the galaxy’s center blaze brighter than all the rest of its stars combined.

Of the thousands of galaxies astronomers have found, cataloged, and studied so far — and the tens of billions in the universe — only about 10 percent have actively-feasting supermassive black holes at their centers. And NGC 1,566 is the second-brightest of these. At 40 million light years from Earth, it’s also one of the closest, making it a prime target for astronomers.

Hubble’s Wide Field Camera captured a near-infrared view of NGC 1,566 back in 2014, which revealed long, swirling arms ablaze with stars and laced with dark strands of interstellar dust. Even in visible and near-infrared light, the galaxy’s core is bright.