Ask Clara Sousa-Silva about her research and she’ll be absolutely clear: Yes, she is looking for aliens. But she is not hunting them. “The idea that I’m hunting anything, I find very distasteful,” she says. “I have spent my life … trying to let go of the notion that I have to go somewhere to […]
The black hole–powered jet in galaxy M87 is making stars explode
High-speed gas shooting from the galaxy M87 is causing stars to go nova, a study suggests, and no one knows how. A nova occurs after a dense star known as a white dwarf receives gas from an orbiting star (SN: 2/12/21). As the white dwarf’s intense gravity squeezes the gas, it heats up and explodes, […]