From invisible forces shaping the stars to the birth of time itself, here are six discoveries that continue to redefine our understanding of existence.

From invisible forces shaping the stars to the birth of time itself, here are six discoveries that continue to redefine our understanding of existence.

6 mind-blowing facts about the universe that will leave you stunned

In what has been described as a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have for the first time “heard” the sound of gravitational waves produced by the slow-motion mergers of supermassive black holes.

The international research consortium, including astrophysicists from India, on Wednesday, recorded the gravitational waves rippling through the fabric of space-time. It is said that they are by far the most powerful ever measured.

The discovery was made by scientists from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), who have been closely observing stars called pulsars that act as celestial metronomes.

<h2>Einsetin's theory proven</h2>

Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves a century ago, but it was proved only in 2016 when the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo) detected the merger of blackholes, effectively proving that space itself can be stretched and squeezed.

Until their detection in 2016, scientists had found only indirect evidence of their existence, beginning in the 1970s.

Also, the one discovered in 2023 is markedly different from the 2016 gravitational waves as the scientists at that time were able to capture only short “chirps” of gravitational waves linked to mergers of black holes or neutron stars only slightly larger than the sun.

"We’ve opened a new window of observation on the universe,” said Chiara Mingarelli, an astrophysicist and assistant professor at Yale University in the US, and a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) team.

<h2>Sound of 'choir'</h2>

Mingarelli likened the new class of gravitational waves to a “choir, with the pairs of supermassive black holes chiming in at different frequencies”. She also said the gravitational wave background was “about twice as loud as I’d expected”.

Objects called pulsars — extremely dense cores of exploded stars that spin at the speed of kitchen blenders — were crucial in the new research. Nearly 70 pulsars were used in gathering the evidence.

“As gravitational waves pass through the galaxy, they stretch and they squeeze it. And then the times of arrival of these pulses are changed. So one pulsar, as it's approaching the earth, its pulses will arrive a little earlier than we expect, as other pulsars will be away from the earth because it's being affected by the gravitational wave and those pulses arrive a little later,” said Oregon State University astrophysicist Xavier Siemens, a co-director of the NANOGrav.

The results released this week in ‘The Astrophysical Journal Letters’ included 15 years of data from NANOGrav, which has been using telescopes across North America to search for the waves.

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In what has been described as a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have for the first time “heard” the sound of gravitational waves produced by the slow-motion mergers of supermassive black holes.

In what has been described as a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have for the first time “heard” the sound of gravitational waves produced by the slow-motion mergers of supermassive black holes. The international research consortium, including astrophysicists from India, on Wednesday, recorded the gravitational waves rippling through the fabric of space-time. It is said that they are by far the most powerful ever measured. The discovery was made by scientists from the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), who have been closely observing stars called pulsars that act as celestial metronomes. Einsetin's theory proven Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves a century ago, but it was proved only in 2016 when the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo) detected the merger of blackholes, effectively proving that space itself can be stretched and squeezed. Until their detection in 2016, scientists had found only indirect evidence of their existence, beginning in the 1970s. Also, the one discovered in 2023 is markedly different from the 2016 gravitational waves as the scientists at that time were able to capture only short “chirps” of gravitational waves linked to mergers of black holes or neutron stars only slightly larger than the sun. "We’ve opened a new window of observation on the universe,” said Chiara Mingarelli, an astrophysicist and assistant professor at Yale University in the US, and a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) team. Sound of 'choir' Mingarelli likened the new class of gravitational waves to a “choir, with the pairs of supermassive black holes chiming in at different frequencies”. She also said the gravitational wave background was “about twice as loud as I’d expected”. Objects called pulsars — extremely dense cores of exploded stars that spin at the speed of kitchen blenders — were crucial in the new research. Nearly 70 pulsars were used in gathering the evidence. “As gravitational waves pass through the galaxy, they stretch and they squeeze it. And then the times of arrival of these pulses are changed. So one pulsar, as it's approaching the earth, its pulses will arrive a little earlier than we expect, as other pulsars will be away from the earth because it's being affected by the gravitational wave and those pulses arrive a little later,” said Oregon State University astrophysicist Xavier Siemens, a co-director of the NANOGrav. The results released this week in ‘The Astrophysical Journal Letters’ included 15 years of data from NANOGrav, which has been using telescopes across North America to search for the waves. WATCH WION LIVE HERE

For first time, scientists ‘hear’ and ‘record’ celestial hum of gravitational waves

Astrophysicists unveil biggest-ever 3D map expansion of Universe after two decades

Gravitas: From '0' in physics exam to a hero in astrophysics

An international scientific team on Wednesday announced a milestone in astrophysics - the first-ever photo of a black hole - using a global network of telescopes to gain insight into celestial objects with gravitational fields so strong no matter or light can escape.

Remarkable image of black hole released in astrophysics breakthrough

Scientists are expected to unveil on Wednesday the first-ever photograph of a black hole, a breakthrough in astrophysics providing insight into celestial monsters with gravitational fields so intense no matter or light can escape.

The US National Science Foundation has scheduled a news conference in Washington to announce a "groundbreaking result from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project," an international partnership formed in 2012 to try to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole.

Simultaneous news conferences are scheduled in Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo.

A black hole's event horizon, one of the most violent places in the universe, is the point of no return beyond which anything - stars, planets, gas, dust, all forms of electromagnetic radiation including light - gets sucked in irretrievably.

While scientists involved in the research declined to disclose the findings ahead of the formal announcement, they are clear about their goals.

"It's a visionary project to take the first photograph of a black hole. We are a collaboration of over 200 people internationally," astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard &amp; Smithsonian, said at a March event in Texas.

The news conference is scheduled for 9 am on Wednesday.

The research will put to the test a scientific pillar - physicist Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, according to University of Arizona astrophysicist Dimitrios Psaltis, project scientist for the Event Horizon Telescope. That theory, put forward in 1915, was intended to explain the laws of gravity and their relation to other natural forces.

Supermassive black holes

The researchers targeted two supermassive black holes.

The first - called Sagittarius A* - is situated at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy, possessing 4 million times the mass of our sun and located 26,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles.

The second - called M87 - resides at the centre of the neighbouring Virgo A galaxy, boasting a mass 3.5 billion times that of the sun and located 54 million light-years away from Earth. Streaming away from M87 at nearly the speed of light is a humongous jet of subatomic particles.

Black holes, coming in a variety of sizes, are extraordinarily dense entities formed when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. Supermassive black holes are the largest kind, devouring matter and radiation and perhaps merging with other black holes.

Psaltis described a black hole as "an extreme warp in spacetime," a term referring to the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time joined into a single four-dimensional continuum.

Doeleman said the project's researchers obtained the first data in April 2017 from a global network of telescopes. The telescopes that collected that initial data are located in the US states of Arizona and Hawaii as well as Mexico, Chile, Spain and Antarctica. Since then, telescopes in France and Greenland have been added to the network.

The scientists also will be trying to detect for the first time the dynamics near the black hole as matter orbits at near light speeds before being swallowed into oblivion.

The fact that black holes do not allow light to escape makes viewing them difficult. The scientists will be looking for a ring of light - radiation and matter circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon - around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole. This is known as the black hole's shadow or silhouette.

Einstein's theory, if correct, should allow for an extremely accurate prediction of the size and shape of a black hole.

"The shape of the shadow will be almost a perfect circle in Einstein's theory," Psaltis said. "If we find it to be different than what the theory predicts, then we go back to square one and we say, 'Clearly, something is not exactly right.'"

Scientists are expected to unveil on Wednesday the first-ever photograph of a black hole, a breakthrough in astrophysics providing insight into celestial monsters with gravitational fields so intense no matter or light can escape.

Scientists are expected to unveil on Wednesday the first-ever photograph of a black hole, a breakthrough in astrophysics providing insight into celestial monsters with gravitational fields so intense no matter or light can escape. The US National Science Foundation has scheduled a news conference in Washington to announce a "groundbreaking result from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project," an international partnership formed in 2012 to try to directly observe the immediate environment of a black hole. Simultaneous news conferences are scheduled in Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo. A black hole's event horizon, one of the most violent places in the universe, is the point of no return beyond which anything - stars, planets, gas, dust, all forms of electromagnetic radiation including light - gets sucked in irretrievably. While scientists involved in the research declined to disclose the findings ahead of the formal announcement, they are clear about their goals. "It's a visionary project to take the first photograph of a black hole. We are a collaboration of over 200 people internationally," astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman, director of the Event Horizon Telescope at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian, said at a March event in Texas. The news conference is scheduled for 9 am on Wednesday. The research will put to the test a scientific pillar - physicist Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, according to University of Arizona astrophysicist Dimitrios Psaltis, project scientist for the Event Horizon Telescope. That theory, put forward in 1915, was intended to explain the laws of gravity and their relation to other natural forces. Supermassive black holes The researchers targeted two supermassive black holes. The first - called Sagittarius A* - is situated at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy, possessing 4 million times the mass of our sun and located 26,000 light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles. The second - called M87 - resides at the centre of the neighbouring Virgo A galaxy, boasting a mass 3.5 billion times that of the sun and located 54 million light-years away from Earth. Streaming away from M87 at nearly the speed of light is a humongous jet of subatomic particles. Black holes, coming in a variety of sizes, are extraordinarily dense entities formed when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. Supermassive black holes are the largest kind, devouring matter and radiation and perhaps merging with other black holes. Psaltis described a black hole as "an extreme warp in spacetime," a term referring to the three dimensions of space and the one dimension of time joined into a single four-dimensional continuum. Doeleman said the project's researchers obtained the first data in April 2017 from a global network of telescopes. The telescopes that collected that initial data are located in the US states of Arizona and Hawaii as well as Mexico, Chile, Spain and Antarctica. Since then, telescopes in France and Greenland have been added to the network. The scientists also will be trying to detect for the first time the dynamics near the black hole as matter orbits at near light speeds before being swallowed into oblivion. The fact that black holes do not allow light to escape makes viewing them difficult. The scientists will be looking for a ring of light - radiation and matter circling at tremendous speed at the edge of the event horizon - around a region of darkness representing the actual black hole. This is known as the black hole's shadow or silhouette. Einstein's theory, if correct, should allow for an extremely accurate prediction of the size and shape of a black hole. "The shape of the shadow will be almost a perfect circle in Einstein's theory," Psaltis said. "If we find it to be different than what the theory predicts, then we go back to square one and we say, 'Clearly, something is not exactly right.'"

In astrophysics milestone, first photo of black hole expected

A team of astronomers, including some from Chile, has found a relationship between the collision of galaxies and voracious black holes that could be a key element in solving heretofore unanswered questions in astrophysics, investigators said.

"Thanks to this work, today we're closer to resolving two big enigmas in astrophysics: how galaxies form and how supermassive black holes living in the center of them grow, and - even more important - why both processes are connected," Ezequiel Treister, with Chile's Astrophysics Institute at the Universidad Catolica, said in a communique sent to EFE.

"What we discovered is that almost 20 percent of the fast-growing black holes ... are associated with the last phases of the process of galaxy collision. That is, a little before they merge and form a single colossal black hole," said Treister, who is also a researcher at the Center for Excellence in Astrophysics and Related Technologies (CATA).

The research was recently published in Nature magazine and combined 20 years of observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, data obtained by the Neil Gehrels Swift X-ray Observatory, both operated by NASA, and the Keck optical telescope in Hawaii.

The study itself lasted for eight years and included about a dozen scientists, headed by Michael J&nbsp;Koss, with Eureka Scientific Inc. in California, who emphasised that the work shows what will happen when the Milky Way merges with the Andromeda Galaxy and their respective central black holes spiral into one another.

The research could lead to predictions about the type of galaxies in which these cosmic events occur, he added.

The work analysed almost 100 galaxies containing growing black holes, along with some 200 inactive galaxies used for comparative purposes, Treister said.

Those galaxies are located at a maximum distance of a few billion light years.

The study concluded that black holes that are surrounded by dust and gas produced by galactic mergers have a greater probability of participating in this type of process, he said.

The team now intends to study how the black holes are fed and grow during the galaxy-merger process and how they interact with the galaxies that house them, but to get the viewing resolution required for that task, which is 10 times greater than that provided by the Hubble, they will need to use other instruments, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observatory in northern Chile consisting of 66 huge antennas set up more than 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) above sea level.

A team of astronomers, including some from Chile, has found a relationship between the collision of galaxies and voracious black holes that could be a key element in solving heretofore unanswered questions in astrophysics, investigators said.

A team of astronomers, including some from Chile, has found a relationship between the collision of galaxies and voracious black holes that could be a key element in solving heretofore unanswered questions in astrophysics, investigators said. "Thanks to this work, today we're closer to resolving two big enigmas in astrophysics: how galaxies form and how supermassive black holes living in the center of them grow, and - even more important - why both processes are connected," Ezequiel Treister, with Chile's Astrophysics Institute at the Universidad Catolica, said in a communique sent to EFE. "What we discovered is that almost 20 percent of the fast-growing black holes ... are associated with the last phases of the process of galaxy collision. That is, a little before they merge and form a single colossal black hole," said Treister, who is also a researcher at the Center for Excellence in Astrophysics and Related Technologies (CATA). The research was recently published in Nature magazine and combined 20 years of observations with the Hubble Space Telescope, data obtained by the Neil Gehrels Swift X-ray Observatory, both operated by NASA, and the Keck optical telescope in Hawaii. The study itself lasted for eight years and included about a dozen scientists, headed by Michael J Koss, with Eureka Scientific Inc. in California, who emphasised that the work shows what will happen when the Milky Way merges with the Andromeda Galaxy and their respective central black holes spiral into one another. The research could lead to predictions about the type of galaxies in which these cosmic events occur, he added. The work analysed almost 100 galaxies containing growing black holes, along with some 200 inactive galaxies used for comparative purposes, Treister said. Those galaxies are located at a maximum distance of a few billion light years. The study concluded that black holes that are surrounded by dust and gas produced by galactic mergers have a greater probability of participating in this type of process, he said. The team now intends to study how the black holes are fed and grow during the galaxy-merger process and how they interact with the galaxies that house them, but to get the viewing resolution required for that task, which is 10 times greater than that provided by the Hubble, they will need to use other instruments, including the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observatory in northern Chile consisting of 66 huge antennas set up more than 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) above sea level.

Astronomers find relationship between colliding galaxies, black holes

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