Astrophysics

"Within our galaxy, there are thousands of stars that orbit the center of the Milky Way at high velocities. On occasion, some of them pick up so much speed that they break free of our galaxy and become intergalactic objects. Because of the extreme...

“The most spectacular element of the Penrose calculations is that he showed that if you are close enough to a black hole, time ends. It is the mirror image of the Big Bang.”

—Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor (Wall Street...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what might the first horizon-scale image of a black hole tell us? A new paper by researchers from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, which famously imaged M87’s central black hole, has provided a...

In a new study of axion motion, researchers, including Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study Member Keisuke Harigaya, propose a scenario known as “kinetic misalignment” that greatly strengthens the case for axion/dark matter equivalence. 

James M. Stone, a world-renowned computational astrophysicist, whose research is focused on fluid dynamics—in particular numerical solutions to the equations of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in an astrophysical context—has been appointed to the Faculty...

Thirty years ago, Martin Rees, a former Member in the School of Natural Sciences and current IAS Trustee, predicted that bright flares produced when a star is torn apart by a black hole—what astrophysicists now call tidal disruption events (TDEs)...

Ewine van Dishoeck, Trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study, has been recognized by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Kavli Foundation, and the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research with the 2018 Kavli Prize in...

Juna Kollmeier, former Junior Visiting Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, wants to understand the substance of the universe: What forms space structures like galaxies, supermassive black holes, and the intergalactic medium that fills the...

Juan Maldacena, Carl P. Feinberg Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, and Member Douglas Stanford will give the public lecture “The Cool Alter-Ego of a Black Hole,” on Friday, May 4, which will take place at 5:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on...