3 May 2023
It takes just four particles of light to jump-start photosynthesis in a plant’s cells, but the details of what exactly happens after the fourth photon is absorbed have eluded researchers – until now
29 April 2023
The supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way may have blasted out a powerful burst of X-rays two centuries ago, possibly due to eating a star
24 January 2023
X-rays have been used to digitally unwrap the mummy of a teenage boy dating back about 2300 years, revealing 49 precious protective amulets, including a gold scarab signifying the heart
28 December 2022
The Linac Coherent Light Source II X-ray laser will be so fast and bright that it will allow people to create movies of atoms moving inside molecules
23 November 2022
Supermassive black holes that beam powerful jets of matter towards Earth, known as blazars, accelerate particles to extraordinarily high energies – and astronomers have finally figured out how
13 December 2021
A mysterious space explosion dubbed “the Cow” was far brighter and faster than a typical supernova, and new observations suggest it may have been a failed supernova that left behind a black hole
1 October 2021
Love letters that Marie Antoinette wrote to a Swedish count have been impossible to read because he added extra handwriting on top of hers – but now the original words have been deciphered with X-rays
9 July 2021
Jupiter blasts out strange X-ray flares that have gone unexplained for decades, and the mystery has now been solved by vibrations in the planet’s magnetic field
4 March 2021
When an egg is heated, its proteins unfold and form bonds with each other – an X-ray analysis has shown this happening on the micrometre scale over the first 160 seconds of cooking
9 December 2020
Astronomers have found a pair of enormous bubbles of X-rays, above and below the Milky Way, which were probably created by our galaxy’s supermassive black hole
