Monash Astrophysics - Monash University

A huge congratulations to Dr Madeline Howell and Dr Thomas Maunder on their PhD graduations! 💫 Maddy has gone onto a postdoc job in the US and Tom is doing data science in industry. We couldn’t be prouder!! Monash Science

First, gravitational waves proved Einstein correct. Now, they’ve confirmed Stephen Hawking was right about black holes.

👉 Read the full story: https://theconversation.com/10-years-ago-gravitational-waves-changed-astronomy-a-new-discovery-shows-theres-more-to-come-264131

Today, work led by Monash PhD researcher Christian Adamcewicz made The Australian! The article, titled “Cosmic clues to black hole behaviour”, highlights exciting new results from the LVK’s 4th observing run. The team’s analysis of the latest binary black hole detections provides fresh insights into the mysterious 40-solar-mass gap in the black hole population—a range where black holes appear surprisingly rare. These findings help us understand how black holes form and evolve, and may point to new physics in the life cycles of the most massive stars. 💫
A huge congratulations to Christian and the team for bringing this important science to the spotlight!

Monash Astrophysics was strongly represented at GR24 and Amaldi16 in Glasgow, Scotland.
The 24th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR24) and the 16th Edoardo Amaldi Conference on Gravitational Waves (Amaldi16) gathered leading researchers from around the world. Our PhD students and postdoctoral researchers presented their cutting-edge work, contributing to global discussions on gravitational waves and fundamental physics. Monash Science Monash University OzGrav - ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery

Great to see so many Monash researchers sharing their work at the ASA in Adelaide this week. Great science and great conversations all around.

🚀 New 3D supernova simulations from Monash University have pushed the boundaries of neutron star research, successfully forming one of the lightest neutron stars ever—just 1.192 solar masses.

Led by A/Prof Bernhard Müller and Prof Alexander Heger, the study brings us closer to explaining real-world observations like the ultra-light neutron star in J0453+1559. It also highlights the power of high-resolution modelling in capturing the complex physics behind stellar explosions.

Published in *Physical Review Letters*, this breakthrough shows how computational astrophysics is reshaping our understanding of stellar evolution and the extreme physics of the cosmos.

Today our first year astros did some solar observing 🌞 Lucky for them the Sun is near the peak of its 11 year cycle so we were able to spot some beautiful Sunspots. 🔭😮 See them for yourself! ➡ Monash Science

The probability that asteroid 2024 YR4 might impact Earth in 2032 has risen to 2.8%.

This means that it has surpassed the chance of impact briefly held by the much larger asteroid Apophis back in 2004.

Learn more about why the impact probability is increasing and why it could quickly drop to 0 as we improve our understanding of the asteroid’s orbit ➡️ https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/02/19/2024-yr4-surpasses-apophis-as-riskiest-asteroid-ever-detected/