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Three cosmic enigmas, one audacious answer 09 March 2006 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Zeeya Merali DARK energy and dark matter, two of the greatest mysteries confronting physicists, may be two sides of the same coin. A new and as yet undiscovered kind of star could explain both phenomena and, in turn, remove black holes from the lexicon of cosmology. The audacious idea comes from George Chapline, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and Nobel laureate Robert Laughlin of Stanford University and their colleagues. Last week at the 22nd Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting in Santa Barbara,...

Washington, DC—A type of X-ray explosion found on neutron stars does not occur near black holes, scientists announced here today. The lack of explosions is strong evidence for the existence of a black hole event horizon, a theoretical boundary into which matter vanishes and cannot escape. The explosions are brief thermonuclear eruptions called type I X-ray bursts and last about one minute. The bursts occur every several hours on the surface of very small, dense stars called neutron stars. They are fueled by gas that a neutron star siphons off a companion star. The gas accumulates on the neutron star's...