Astrophysics

How do magnetars get so magnetic? A study of stellar explosions shows that the long-accepted theory might be wrong.

The astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz won half of the prize for their 1995 discovery of a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a nearby star. The cosmologist James Peebles won the other half for work exploring the structure of the universe.

A giant star’s death throes may offer the first evidence of a pair-instability supernova, and a glimpse of the first stars in the universe.

Researchers have confirmed rumors of a black hole collision that challenges our ideas about how black holes form.

How do black holes merge and make gravitational waves? Maybe with a little help from their friends.

New measurements could upend the standard theory of the cosmos that has reigned since the discovery of dark energy 21 years ago.

For the first time, researchers have created a scale model of the twisting loops of the sun’s magnetic field.

Tiny, dim “dwarf” galaxies have been found to hide gas-spewing black holes.

After an interstellar asteroid shot past the sun, scientists realized that there’s probably a lot of itinerant rocks out there.