Images of black holes are more than just fascinating visuals: they could serve as a “testing ground” for alternative theories of gravity in the future. An international team led by Prof. Luciano Rezzolla has developed a new method to examine whether black holes operate according to Einstein’s theory of relativity or other, more exotic theories. To that end, the researchers conducted highly complex simulations and derived measurable criteria that can be tested with future, even sharper telescopes. Over the next few years, this method could reveal whether Einstein’s theories hold true even in the most extreme regions of the universe.

A shimmering new view of interstellar gas and dust captured by the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope. The nebula is part of a so-called dark cloud, named LDN 1641. It sits at about 1300 light-years from Earth, within a sprawling complex of dusty gas clouds where stars are being formed, in the constellation of Orion.

An international team led by ICREA researcher Mark Gieles, from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), has developed a groundbreaking model that reveals how extremely massive stars (EMS) — with more than 1,000 times the mass of the Sun — have governed the birth and early evolution of the oldest star clusters in the universe.

Astronauts could soon be able to move more freely thanks to a soft robotic exosuit developed by researchers at the University of Bristol.

An international team of scientists, led by the University of Oxford, has achieved a world-first by creating plasma "fireballs" using the Super Proton Synchrotron accelerator at CERN, Geneva, to study the stability of plasma jets emanating from blazars. The results, published today (3 November) in PNAS, could shed new light on a long-standing mystery about the Universe’s hidden magnetic fields and missing gamma rays.