An X-ray outburst caught by NASA's Swift on Sept. 16, 2012, resulted from a flood of gas plunging toward a previously unknown black hole. Gas flowing from a sun-like star collects into a disk around the black hole. Normally, this gas would steadily spiral inward. But in this system, named Swift J1745-26, the gas collects for decades before suddenly surging inward.
NASA's Swift satellite recently detected a rising tide of high-energy ... whole story

New images from the Planck mission show previously undiscovered islands of star formation and a mysterious haze of microwave emissions in our Milky Way galaxy. The views give scientists new treasures to mine and take them closer to understanding the secrets of our galaxy.
Planck is a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation.
"The images reveal two exciting aspects of the galaxy in which we live," said Plan... whole story

The giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be vaporizing and devouring asteroids, which could explain the frequent flares observed, according to astronomers using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
For several years Chandra has detected X-ray flares about once a day from the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*, or "Sgr A*" for short. The flares last a few hours with brightness ranging from a few time... whole story

Time is flying by on this busy, crowded planet as life changes and evolves from second to second. And yet the arc of the human lifespan is getting longer: 65 years is the global average, way up from just 20 in the Stone Age. Modern science, however, provides a humbling perspective. Our lives indeed even the life span of the human species is just a blip compared to the universe, at 13.7 billion years and counting. It now seems that our e... whole story

Since ancient times, we've looked into the night skies and wondered: How far do the stars stretch out into space? And what's beyond them?
In modern times, we built giant telescopes that have allowed us to cast our gaze deep into the universe. Astronomers have been able to look back to near the time of its birth. They've reconstructed the course of cosmic history in astonishing detail. From intensive computer modeling, and myriad clos... whole story