Meghan Bartels of Newsweek discusses a discovery from the Kavli Institute of the first tidal disruption flare or “jet” that’s been produced due to a supermassive black hole consuming a star in space. “This is telling us the black hole feeding rate is controlling the strength of the jet it produces,” NASA Einstein Postdoc Fellow and lead researcher Dheeraj Pasham said.
Brooks Hays for UPI highlights research led by postdoc Dheeraj Pasham from MIT's Kavli Institute, that has captured the rare occurrence of “radio signals produced by a black hole devouring a star.” “This is the first time we've seen a jet that's controlled by a feeding supermassive black hole,” explained Pasham.
Mary Beth Griggs writes for Popular Science about a new Nature study where researchers have identified cold hydrogen dating back to 180 million years post-big bang. “Some of the radiation from the very first stars is starting to allow hydrogen to be seen,” says Alan Rogers of the Haystack Observatory.
Hydrogen detected via radio waves by MIT researchers indicates the presence of stars 180 million years after the Big Bang, reports Will Dunham of Reuters. The radio waves also indicate that the universe was likely twice as cold as was previously believe, which Research Affiliate Alan Rogers suggests “might be explained by interaction between the gas and dark matter.”
Los Angeles Times writer Amina Khan examines the planets that surround dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 – highlighting that most planets near earth’s size are likely to be rocky. “It will be really fascinating when we get to dive into the atmosphere of each of these planets and see how different or similar they are," said postdoc Julien de Wit.
Boston Globe reporter Marin Finucane writes that with the help of around 10,000 citizen scientists, a team of astronomers has discovered five planets outside our solar system. “It’s exciting because we’re getting the public excited about science, and it’s really leveraging the power of the human cloud,” says Prof. Ian Crossfield of the discovery.
Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss has been named to The Boston Globe’s list of the 2017 Bostonians of the Year for his work starting a new revolution in astronomy. Globe reporter Eric Moskowitz notes that Weiss, “shared the Nobel Prize for Physics for conceiving and shepherding a set of observatories that allowed scientists to prove Einstein’s assertion about gravitational waves.”
The discovery of the oldest and most distant black hole ever detected has provided a team of astronomers new insights into our universe, writes Alyssa Meyers for The Boston Globe. “In some sense, what we’ve done is determine with a high degree of accuracy when the first stars in the universe turned on,” explains Prof. Robert Simcoe.
The discovery of the oldest and most distant black hole ever observed could provide scientists with insights into the early stages of our universe, reports Will Dunham for Reuters. “This object provides us with a measurement of the time at which the universe first became illuminated with starlight,” explains Prof. Robert Simcoe.
NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce reports that scientists have discovered the most distant supermassive black hole every discovered, and that the findings are shedding light on when starlight first appeared in our universe. "We have an estimate now, with about 1 to 2 percent accuracy, for the moment at which starlight first illuminated the universe,” explains Prof. Robert Simcoe.
USA Today reporter Doyle Rice writes that a team of astronomers, including several from MIT, has discovered the oldest and most distant supermassive black hole ever detected. “The black hole resides in a quasar and its light reaches us from when the universe was only 5% of its current age — over 13 billion years ago,” explains Rice.
Prof. Nergis Mavalvala speaks with Massive reporter Prabarna Ganguly about her work engineering high-precision laser beams to detect signals from deep space, the long hunt for gravitational waves and her hopes for future generations of scientists. Ganguly writes that Mavalvala is, “one of the stalwarts in a long, arduous, and deeply human discovery of faraway perturbations rippling through the universe.”
UPI reporter Brooks Hays writes that an international team of astronomers, including MIT Prof. Saul Rappaport, has detected comets outside the Milky Way. “The distant ice balls, roughly the size of Halley's Comet, were spotted orbiting a small star 800 light-years from Earth. They were documented using transit photometry,” Hays explains.
Wired reporter Abigail Beall explores the science behind the successful detection of two colliding neutron stars. "It immediately appeared to us the source was likely to be neutron stars, the other coveted source we were hoping to see—and promising the world we would see," says MIT’s David Shoemaker, spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
Boston Globe reporter Eric Moskowitz explores the significance of the first detection of two colliding neutron stars using gravitational wave detectors and telescopes. Moskowitz notes that the discovery offers, “so many immediate and long-term rewards that researchers struggled to pick their favorite part.” Senior Research Scientist Erik Katsavounidis explained that, “It’s like getting a kid in the candy store and telling them to choose.”