news 2022

IceCube neutrinos give us the first image of the depths of an active galaxy. They allow us to get a little closer to the answer to the eternal question of the origin of cosmic rays . For the first time, an international team of scientists - including the IIIHE, Faculty of Science - has found evidence of high-energy neutrino emission in the galaxy NGC 1068.

The ESA Gaia mission has released its new treasure trove of data about our home galaxy. Astronomers - including Professor Conny Aerts from KU Leuven - describe strange 'starquakes', stellar DNA, asymmetric motions and other fascinating insights in this most detailed Milky Way survey to date. Gaia is ESA's mission to create the most accurate and complete multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way.

A system composed of four gravitationally bound stars has been followed by spectroscopy for several years by a team of researchers. This quadruple system is unstable and simulations of its future evolution show that, eventually, the stars may collide, which is likely to produce a thermonuclear supernova.

In 2020 a team led by European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomers reported the closest black hole to Earth, located just 1000 light-years away in the HR 6819 system. But the results of their study were contested by other researchers, including by an international team based at KU Leuven. In a paper published today, these two teams have united to report that there is in fact no black hole in HR 6819, which is instead a "vampire" two-star system in a rare and short-lived stage of its evolution.

Planets are usually not much older than the stars around which they revolve. Take the Sun: it was born 4.6 billion years ago, and not long after that, Earth came into the world. But KU Leuven astronomers have discovered that a completely different scenario is also possible. Even if they are near death, some types of stars can possibly still form planets.

A Belgian-Dutch scientific team, including researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, has created the first ever "treasure map" revealing where meteorites can be found in Antarctica. Meteorites come from space and are found on the Earth's surface as stony material. They contain crucial information about the formation and evolution of our solar system.