JWST Finds Plenty Of Low Mass Black Holes In The Early Universe

JWST's Ultra-Deep Field, showing galaxies and gravitational lenses in a small slice of sky. Credit - NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Black holes played a critical role in the formation of the early universe. However, astronomers have been debating for a long time just how critical, as the information we had about early black holes, which exist at high red-shifts, was relatively limited. A new paper from a group of researchers led by Sophia Geris at the University of Cambridge combined several spectra from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to add some context to the formation of black holes early in the universe, and found that there are plenty of smaller ones lurking around, and lending credence to the idea that black holes of all sizes contributed to the formation of our modern universe.

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Researchers Match Up 12 Meteorites with the Near-Earth Asteroids They Came From

Every day meteoroids blast through our planet’s atmosphere to hit the ground as meteorites. A team of researchers in Italy traced twelve of them to progenitor asteroids that orbit in near-Earth space. Scientists treasure meteorites because they reveal information about their parent bodies. In an arXiv paper, two Italian researchers—Albino Carbognani and Marco Fenucci—analyze the characteristics of the parent bodies of 20 selected meteorites. They were able to track all but eight back to their parent asteroids. Based on their work, the pair says at least a quarter of meteorites come from collisions that happened in near-Earth space and not in the Main Belt. Meteorites from Near-Earth Asteroids: How They Got Here Many meteorites are chondritic, similar to asteroids in the Main Belt (or came from it). In their paper, the authors point out that progenitor meteoroids (including many that fall to Earth and become meteorites) formed millions of years ago following collisions between main-...

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Could We Launch a Mission to Chase Down Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS?

It’s a tantalizing prospect. Since 2017, three interstellar objects have been spotted passing through our solar system: 1I/ʻOumuamua, 2I/Borisov… and just this month, 3I/ATLAS. Discovered on July 1st by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert Survey, 3I/ATLAS is zipping through the inner solar system in the last half of 2025. Certainly, all assets on the ground and in space will be turned towards 3I/ATLAS over the next few frenzied months, to glean what we can… but what would 3I/ATLAS look like up close? Can we even consider chasing down such a speedy visitor? from Universe Today https://ift.tt/HAho7wC via IFTTT

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