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The team of scientists set about investigating this by analyzing 59 early B-type blue supergiants located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, and creating novel stellar simulations.

“We simulated the mergers of evolved giant stars with their smaller stellar companions over a wide range of parameters, taking into account the interaction and mixing of the two stars during the merger,” study leader and IAC researcher Athira Menon said in a statement. “The newly born stars live as blue supergiants throughout the second-longest phase of a star’s life, when it burns helium in its core.”

The team’s findings suggest that blue supergiants slip into an evolutionary gap in conventional stellar physics — a phase of stellar evolution where astronomers would not expect to see stars. The question is, Can this explain the remarkable properties of blue supergiant stars? It seems the answer is yes.

Ever wonder where all the active supermassive black holes are in the universe? Now, with the largest quasar catalog yet, you can see the locations of 1.3 million quasars in 3D.

The catalog, Quaia, can be accessed here.

“This quasar catalog is a great example of how productive astronomical projects are,” says David Hogg, study co-author and computational astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute, in a press release. “Gaia was designed to measure stars in our galaxy, but it also found millions of quasars at the same time, which give us a map of the entire universe.” By mapping and seeing where quasars are across the universe, astrophysicists can learn more about how the universe evolved, insights into how supermassive black holes grow, and even how dark matter clumps together around galaxies. Researchers published the study this week in The Astrophysical Journal.

By analyzing the data from ESA’s XMM-Newton and Gaia satellites, astronomers from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) in Germany and elsewhere have detected a new magnetic cataclysmic variable system, most likely of the polar type. The finding was reported in a research paper published March 21 on the pre-print server arXiv.

Could it be that human existence depends on gravitational waves? Some key elements in our biological makeup may come from astrophysical events that occur because gravitational waves exist, a research team headed by John R. Ellis of Kings College London suggests.

The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 4:56 p.m. ET on March 28, 2024. NASA

Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.” Its core values are “safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion.” NASA conducts research, develops technology and launches missions to explore and study Earth, the solar system, and the universe beyond. It also works to advance the state of knowledge in a wide range of scientific fields, including Earth and space science, planetary science, astrophysics, and heliophysics, and it collaborates with private companies and international partners to achieve its goals.

A study from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) which combines laboratory chemistry with astrophysics, has shown for the first time that grains of dust formed by carbon and hydrogen in a highly disordered state, known as HAC, can take part in the formation of fullerenes, carbon molecules which are of key importance for the development of life in the universe, and with potential applications in nanotechnology. The results are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A new telescope called the “Condor Array Telescope” may open up a new world of the very-low-brightness universe for astrophysicists. Four new papers, published back to back in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) this month, present the first scientific findings based on observations acquired by Condor. The project is a collaborative led by scientists in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).

According to lead researchers Kenneth M. Lanzetta, Ph.D., a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Stefan Gromoll of Stony Brook, and Michael M. Shara, Ph.D., Curator in the Department of Astrophysics at the AMNH, Condor is now in full operation. The new “array telescope” uses computers to combine light from several smaller telescopes into the equivalent of one larger telescope and is able to detect and study astronomical features that are too faint to be seen with conventional telescopes.

In the first paper, Lanzetta and colleagues used Condor to study extremely faint “stellar streams” surrounding the nearby galaxy NGC 5,907, a well-known spiral galaxy located some 50 million light years from Earth.

Mode-locked lasers are advanced lasers that produce very short pulses of light, with durations ranging from femtoseconds to picoseconds. These lasers are widely used to study ultrafast and nonlinear optical phenomena, but they have also proved useful for various technological applications.

Researchers at California Institute of Technology have recently been exploring the potential of mode-locked lasers as platforms to study topological phenomena. Their paper, published in Nature Physics, outlines the potential of these lasers for studying and realizing new non-Hermitian topological physics, with various potential applications.

“The idea of utilizing topological robustness and topological protection for photonic devices has attracted substantial attention in the past decade, yet whether such behaviors can provide substantial practical benefits remains unclear,” Alireza Marandi, lead author of the paper, told Phys.org.

In March 2024, the CMS collaboration announced the observation of two photons creating two tau leptons in proton–proton collisions. It is the first time that this process has been seen in proton–proton collisions, which was made possible by using the precise tracking capabilities of the CMS detector. It is also the most precise measurement of the tau’s anomalous magnetic moment and offers a new way to constrain the existence of new physics.