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Breakthrough discovery provides new clues about how these celestial bodies - that push the known laws of physics to their limits - find each other. Scientists have uncovered the first robust evidence of a black hole and neutron star crashing together but orbiting in an oval path rather than a perfect circle just before they merged.

Scientists reveal that even small differences in solar magnetic activity produce detectable changes inside the Sun. Scientists have analysed more than 40 years of astronomical data to uncover evidence that the Sun's internal structure subtly changes from one solar cycle minimum to the next. Publishing their findings in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , researchers from the University of Birmingham and Yale University reveal that even small differences in solar magnetic activity produce detectable changes inside the Sun.

Astronomers at The University of Manchester have played a leading role in the discovery of a new cosmic object that is much larger than anything astronomers have seen before in the distant universe. This new discovery captures the cosmic moment when a galaxy cluster - among the largest structures in the universe - started to assemble only about a billion years after the big bang, one or two billion years earlier than previously thought possible.

Scientists using data from the James Webb Space Telescope have made one of the most detailed high-resolution maps of dark matter ever produced. It shows how the invisible, ghostly material overlaps and intertwines with 'regular' matter, the stuff that makes up stars, galaxies, and everything we can see.

Scientists at the Dark Energy Survey have published their most detailed explanation yet of how the universe has expanded over the last six billion years, thanks to an unprecedented combination of cosmic measurements. The international group of researchers, including researchers from the University of Cambridge, is led by the US Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

A mysterious bar-shaped cloud of iron has been discovered inside the iconic Ring Nebula by a European team of astronomers. The cloud of iron atoms, described for the first time in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , just fits inside the inner layer of the elliptically shaped nebula - a colourful shell of gas thrown off by a star as it ends the nuclear fuel-burning phase of its life.

Astronomers have captured the most detailed images ever taken of a jet launched by a young star, confirming a theoretical model that has remained untested for three decades. Published today in Nature Astronomy , the images reveal a series of delicate, ring-like structures that record decades of violent outbursts during the star's early life.

Strongest evidence yet for an atmosphere on a rocky planet outside our solar system - a thick blanket of gases above an ocean of magma. Researchers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have detected the strongest evidence yet for an atmosphere on a rocky planet outside our solar system. Observations of the ultra-hot super-Earth TOI-561 b suggest the exoplanet is surrounded by a thick blanket of gases above a global magma ocean.

Astronomers have identified one of the largest rotating structures ever reported: a "razor-thin" string of galaxies embedded in a giant spinning cosmic filament, 140 million light-years away. Their findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , could offer valuable new insights into how galaxies formed in the early Universe.

An international team involving UCL astronomers has observed the first clear signal of a giant stellar eruption from a star beyond our solar system. The stellar eruption is analogous to a coronal mass ejection (CME) seen on our Sun, and implies a devastating impact for any planet unlucky enough to orbit the star.

A recently unearthed ancient monument in southeastern Mexico was built as a giant representation of the Mesoamerican universe, and was likely an important ceremonial site, finds new research by an international team involving a UCL archaeologist. The paper, published in Science Advances , describes the ancient complex of raised causeways, corridors carved into the earth and series of canals discovered at Aguada Fénix in 2020.

Ageing stars may be destroying the giant planets orbiting closest to them, according to a new study by astronomers at UCL and the University of Warwick. Once stars like the Sun run out of hydrogen fuel, they cool down and expand to become red giants. In the Sun's case this will happen in about five billion years.

UCL researchers are investigating how a UK-led team could design and build one of the core instruments on a flagship NASA mission, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which will search for signs of life on distant planets. The mission is expected to launch in the early 2040s and is currently in an early preparatory phase.

Teams from the international T2K and NOvA collaborations, including members from the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Glasgow, have performed precision measurements of the differences between neutrinos and antineutrinos, by combining the data of the T2K and NOvA long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiments in Japan and the USA.

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have captured the most detailed look yet at how galaxies formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang - and found they were far more chaotic and messy than those we see today. The team, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge, analysed more than 250 young galaxies that existed when the universe was between 800 million and 1.5 billion years old.

The interior of the mysterious far side of the moon may be colder than the side constantly facing Earth, suggests a new analysis of rock samples co-led by a UCL and Peking University researcher. The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience , looked at fragments of rock and soil scooped up by China's Chang'e 6 spacecraft last year from a vast crater on the far side of the moon.

A new study suggests a habitable past and signs of ancient microbial processes on Mars - and Imperial scientists provided crucial context. Led by NASA and featuring key analysis from Imperial College London, the work has uncovered a range of minerals and organic matter in Martian rocks that point to an ancient history of habitable conditions and potential biological processes on the Red Planet.

Ten years after detecting the first gravitational wave, scientists found a ripple in spacetime offering fresh insights into black holes and the laws of physics. Scientists have confirmed two long-standing theories relating to black holes - thanks to the detection of the most clearly recorded gravitational wave signal to date.

New research by Imperial and NASA reveals the Red Planet's mantle preserves a record of its violent beginnings. The inside of Mars isn't smooth and uniform like familiar textbook illustrations. Instead, new research reveals it's chunky - more like a Rocky Road brownie than a neat slice of Millionaire's Shortbread.

When the remnants of some of the Universe's largest stars collide they create ripples which travel through the geometry of space and time which are detected by the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA gravitational-wave observatories. First detected in 2015, measuring these ripples - gravitational-waves - require the most sensitive instruments ever created.