Research Highlights

Image of a spiral galaxy surrounded by a blue cloud representing the dark matter halo
New study suggests supermassive black holes could form from dark matter
A new theoretical study has proposed a novel mechanism for the creation of supermassive black holes from dark matter. The international team find that rather than the conventional formation scenarios involving ‘normal’ matter, supermassive black...
Two views of a 3D reconstruction of the Crab nebula
Spectacular ‘honeycomb heart’ revealed in iconic stellar explosion
A unique ‘heart-shape’, with wisps of gas filaments showing an intricate honeycomb-like arrangement, has been discovered at the centre of the iconic supernova remnant, the Crab Nebula. Astronomers have mapped the void in unprecedented detail...
Image of two radio galaxies overlaid on an optical image of the sky.
Cosmic beasts and where to find them
Two giant radio galaxies have been discovered with South Africa's powerful MeerKAT telescope. These galaxies are thought to be amongst the largest single objects in the Universe. The discovery has been published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal...
Illustration of the Milky Way's proposed merger history
Family tree of the Milky Way deciphered
Scientists have known for some time that galaxies can grow by the merging of smaller galaxies, but the ancestry of our own Milky Way galaxy has been a long-standing mystery. Now, an international team of astrophysicists has succeeded in...
A galaxy surrounded by a coloured haze, with lenses due to gravitational distortion
Seeing dark matter in a new light
A small team of astronomers have found a new way to ‘see’ the elusive dark matter haloes that surround galaxies, with a new technique 10 times more precise than the previous-best method. The work is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal...
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Single burst of star formation created Milky Way’s central bulge
New research has found that the majority of stars in our galaxy’s central bulge formed in a single burst of star formation more than 10 billion years ago. To reach this conclusion, astronomers surveyed millions of stars across 200 square degrees of...
Artist's impression of an exoplanet with its sun in the background
New method of detecting water on exoplanet cloud tops
Astronomers have shown that water vapour can potentially be detected above impenetrable clouds in the atmospheres of exoplanets, with a cutting-edge technique described in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The new method...
Snapshots from a Milky Way galaxy simulation
Galactic bar paradox resolved in cosmic dance
New light has been shed on a mysterious and long-standing conundrum at the very heart of our galaxy. The new work offers a potential solution to the so-called ‘Galactic bar paradox’, whereby different observations produce contradictory estimates of...
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New insights into star formation in the smallest galaxies
The question of how small, dwarf galaxies have sustained the formation of new stars over the course of the Universe has long confounded the world’s astronomers. Now, an international research team has found that dormant small galaxies can slowly...
Artist's impression of a supernova ejecting its star
Supernova blast sends survivor star hurtling across the Galaxy
An exploding white dwarf star blasted itself out of its orbit with another star in a ‘partial supernova’ and is now hurtling across our galaxy, according to a new study from the University of Warwick and reported in the journal Monthly Notices of the...
Aerial photograph of three water-filled maars in the Eifel, Germany
New hints of volcanism under the heart of northern Europe
Scientists have discovered new evidence for active volcanism next door to some of the most densely populated areas of Europe. The study ‘crowd-sourced’ GPS monitoring data from antennae across western Europe to track subtle movements in the Earth’s...
Artist's impression of an ultra-luminous X-ray pulsar
Ultra-bright X-ray source awakens near a galaxy not so far away
A new ultra-bright source of X-rays has awakened in between our galactic neighbours the Magellanic Clouds, after a 26-year slumber. This is the second-closest such object known to date, with a brightness greater than a million Suns. The discovery is...