Dark matter halos may leave twinkling wake in galaxies

Enlarge (credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Mutchler (STScI)) The Universe, according to cosmologists, is divided into three unequal portions. In the big bargain bin near the exit aisle you’ll find dark energy. Dark energy’s job is to push everything apart. There’s lots of it, and no one knows why. Then, next to to dark energy, […]

Galaxies stop making stars earlier if they host supermassive black holes

A supermassive black hole can mass more than a million times that of our Sun; these astronomical entities seem to lie at the center of all massive galaxies. They’ve been theorized as the gatekeepers to galaxy growth and star formation for a while now, as they pull in all the cold gases in a galaxy […]