Natural Sciences - Astronomy & Space

Researchers from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC), in collaboration with the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC), have led the most extensive observational study to date of runaway massive stars, which includes an analysis of the rotation and binarity of these stars in our galaxy. This study, published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics , sheds new light on how these stellar "runaways" are ejected into space and what their properties reveal about their fascinating origins.

Of the many open questions that baffle physicists today, there is one - the most relevant for cosmologists - that crystallises into a single number: the Hubble constant H₀, w

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.

A new observation by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), with the participation of the University of Valencia, reveals in detail the turbulent structure of the magnetic field within the jet of material accelerated from a supermassive black hole. This finding provides an unprecedented insight into the physics of supermassive black holes, considered the most powerful -enginesin the universe.

Two members of the UB's Institute of Cosmos Sciences, Licia Verde and Fred Courbin, are co-leading the RedH0T project, which aims to resolve the Hubble tension, one of the challenges in modern cosmology and a source of disagreement when determining the expansion rate of the universe.