On 'Today with Hoda & Jenna', actor and comedian Joel McHale took a jab at Hoda Kotb with his 'I got drunk' comment which surprised the audiences

Ukrainian officials have blamed Russia for air strikes near the country's border with Poland.

President Joe Biden's administration has proposed up to three oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico over the next five years but none in Alaska

Former congressional aide Celeste Maloy will win the Republican special primary election to succeed her onetime boss, GOP Rep. Chris Stewart, in Utah's 2nd Congressional District, CNN projects.

Churchill Downs will suspend racing operations on Wednesday and move the remainder of its spring meet to Ellis Park to conduct a “top-to-bottom” review of safety and surface protocols in the wake of 12 horse fatalities the past month at the home of the Kentucky Derby

Astronomers have discovered a new way that stars can die. In a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, experts have worked out that a minute-long gamma-ray burst of light, which occured in 2019 and evidence a star dying, happened because stars collided within the densely crowded environment near the supermassive black hole at the centre of an ancient galaxy. Normally gamma-ray bursts (GRB) last around two seconds and happen when stars collapse. “For every hundred events that fit into the traditional classification scheme of gamma-ray bursts, there is at least one oddball that throws us for a loop,” said study coauthor Wen-fai Fong, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, in a statement. “However, it is these oddballs that tell us the most about the spectacular diversity of explosions that the universe is capable of.” Over time, astronomers have observed three main ways that stars can die, depending on their size. Lower mass stars like our sun shed their outer layers as they age, eventually becoming dead white dwarf stars. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Massive stars burn through the fuel-like elements at their core and shatter in explosions called supernovas. Doing so can leave behind dense remnants like neutron stars or result in the creation of black holes. A third form of star death results when neutron stars or black holes begin to orbit one another in a binary system and spiral closer to one another until they collide and explode. But the new observation suggests a fourth type of death. “Our results show that stars can meet their demise in some of the densest regions of the universe, where they can be driven to collide,” said lead study author Andrew Levan, an astrophysics professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, in a statement. “This is exciting for understanding how stars die and for answering other questions, such as what unexpected sources might create gravitational waves that we could detect on Earth.” “The lack of a supernova accompanying the long GRB 191019A tells us that this burst is not a typical massive star collapse,” said study coauthor Jillian Rastinejad, a doctoral student of astronomy at Northwestern, in a statement. “The location of GRB 191019A, embedded in the nucleus of the host galaxy, teases a predicted but not yet evidenced theory for how gravitational-wave emitting sources might form.” “While this event is the first of its kind to be discovered, it’s possible there are more out there that are hidden by the large amounts of dust close to their galaxies,” said Fong, who is also a member of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics at Northwestern. “Indeed, if this long-duration event came from merging compact objects, it contributes to the growing population of GRBs that defies our traditional classifications.” You learn something new every day. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The Hudson River is 315 miles from its source in the Adirondack Mountains to New York City

Hollywood's major studios and streamers have made no contract overtures to striking actors since they walked off the job in July, the performers' chief negotiator said Thursday, urging the...

Provides an overview of Denmark, including key dates and facts about this European country.

The Streamy Awards is an annual event presented by Dick Clark Productions and Tubefilter

Taylor Swift decided to postpone her second Rio de Janeiro show after a fan, Ana Clara Benevides, collapsed and died due to heat-related issues

Honduran President Xiomara Castro has announced security measures including raids, checkpoints and curfews in the north of the country to quell a wave of drug trafficking-linked violence following the massacre of 11 people in a pool hall by gunmen