Scientists may have found an elusive medium-sized black hole. A new study suggests that an object in the Andromeda Galaxy (pictured) thought to be a collection of stars is actually a black hole around 100,000 solar masses in size. “We have very good detections of the largest stellar-mass black holes up to 100 times the size of our sun, and supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies that are millions of times the size of our sun, but there is no ‘there is not any. any measurement of black holes between these,” said lead author Anil Seth, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Utah and co-author of the study. “It’s a big difference. This discovery fills that gap. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
JWST has reached its new home in space. On January 24, the telescope arrived in orbit around L2, where the gravity of the Sun and Earth balance in a way that allows the JWST to keep the Sun, Earth, and Moon behind it as it observes the cosmos. It made its 1.5 million kilometer (932,000 mile) journey more efficiently than expected, leaving enough fuel to stay at L2 for 20 years, twice as long as originally planned. We’ll still have to wait several months for the science images, but for now we’re happy to see the telescope arrive safe and sound.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has collected some interesting Martian samples. A new study found that several of the powdered rock samples contained some kind of carbon associated with life processes on Earth. Study scientists said it was difficult to know what this might mean in the search for life, given that Earth and Mars differ so much.
