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  • A New GPS for the Intergalactic Medium

    Using fast radio bursts to guide them, CfA astronomers have mapped the distribution of the Universe's ordinary matter in the space between galaxies, and detected the most distant fast radio bursts to date.

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  • Record-Breaking Cosmic Structure Discovered in Colossal Galaxy Cluster

    A CfA astronomer and her team have imaged the largest known cloud of energetic particles surrounding a galaxy cluster, and raised new questions about what powers and re-energizes particles in the Universe over time.

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  • Key Building Block for Life Discovered in Planet-Forming Disk

    CfA astronomers have helped discover rare types of methanol, a building block required for life as we know it to form.

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Neutron Stars and White Dwarfs

When stars die, their fate is determined by how massive they were in life. Stars like our Sun leave behind white dwarfs: Earth-size remnants of the original star’s core. More massive stars explode as supernovas, while their cores collapse into neutron stars: ultra-dense, fast-spinning spheres made of the same ingredients as the nucleus of an atom. At least some neutron stars are pulsars, which produce powerful beams of light, which as they sweep across our view from Earth look like extremely regular flashes.

Small as they are, the deaths of these compact objects change the chemistry of the universe. The supernova explosions of white dwarfs and the collisions of neutron stars create new elements on the periodic table. For all these reasons, white dwarfs and neutron stars are important laboratories for physics at the extremes of strong gravity, density, and temperature.

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