Previous detections of individual astrophysical sources of neutrinos are limited to the Sun and the supernova 1987A, whereas the origins of the diffuse flux of high-energy cosmic neutrinos remain unidentified. On 22 September 2017, we detected a high-energy neutrino, IceCube-170922A, with an energy of ~290 tera-electron volts. Its arrival direction was consistent with the location of a known γ-ray blazar, TXS 0506+056, observed to be in a flaring state. An extensive multiwavelength campaign followed, ranging from radio frequencies to γ-rays. These observations characterize the variability and energetics of the blazar and include the detection of TXS 0506+056 in very-high-energy γ-rays. This observation of a neutrino in spatial coincidence with a γ-ray-emitting blazar during an active phase suggests that blazars may be a source of high-energy neutrinos.

Clumpy galaxies in the Galaxy Evolution from Morphology and SEDs and Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey fields are examined for clues to their evolution into modern spirals. The magnitudes of the clumps and the surface brightnesses of the interclump regions are measured and fitted to models of stellar age and mass. There is an evolutionary trend from clump clusters with no evident interclump emission to clump clusters with faint red disks, to spiral galaxies of the flocculent or grand design types. Along this sequence, the interclump surface density increases and the mass surface density contrast between the clumps and the interclump regions decreases, suggesting a gradual dispersal of clumps to form disks. Also along this sequence, the bulge-to-clump mass ratios and age ratios increase, suggesting a gradual formation of bulges. All of these morphological types occur in the same redshift range, indicating that the clump cluster morphology is not the result of bandshifting. This redshift range also includes clear examples of interacting galaxies with tidal tails and other characteristic features, indicating that clump clusters, which do not have these features, are not generally interacting. Comparisons to local galaxies with the same rest wavelength and spatial resolution show that clump clusters are unlike local flocculent and spiral galaxies primarily because of the high clump/interclump contrasts in the clump clusters. They bear a striking resemblance to local dwarf irregulars, however. This resemblance is consistent with a model in which the clumpy morphology comes from gravitational instabilities in gas with a high turbulent speed compared to the rotation speed and a high mass fraction compared to the stars. The morphology does not depend on galaxy mass as much as it depends on evolutionary stage: clump clusters are 100 times more massive than local dwarfs. The apparent lack of star formation in damped Lyman alpha absorbers may result from fast turbulence.

Using a distance-limited portion of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7, we have identified 28 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in nearby (d ≤ 80 Mpc) low-mass, low-luminosity dwarf galaxies. The accreting objects at the galaxy centers are expected to be intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) with M BH ≤ 10 6 M . The AGNs were selected using several optical emission-line diagnostics after careful modeling of the continuum present in the spectra. We have limited our survey to objects with spectral characteristics similar to those of Seyfert nuclei, excluding emission-line galaxies with ambiguous spectra that could be powered by stellar processes. The host galaxies in our sample are thus the least massive objects in the very local universe certain to contain central black holes. Our sample is dominated by narrow-line (type 2) AGNs, and it appears to have a much lower fraction of broad-line objects than that observed for luminous, optically selected Seyfert galaxies. Given our focus on the nearest objects included in the SDSS, our survey is more sensitive to low-luminosity emission than previous optical searches for AGNs in low-mass galaxies. The [O III] λ5007 luminosities of the Seyfert nuclei in our sample have a median value of L 5007 = 2 × 10 5 L and extend down to ∼ 10 4 L . Using published data for broad-line IMBH candidates, we have derived an [O III] bolometric correction of log(L bol /L 5007 ) = 3.0 ± 0.3, which is significantly lower than values obtained for high-luminosity AGNs. Applying this correction to our sample, we obtain minimum black-hole mass estimates that fall mainly in the 10 3 M -10 4 M range, which is roughly where the predicted mass functions for different black-hole seed formation scenarios overlap the most. In the stellar mass range that includes the bulk of the AGN host galaxies in our sample, we derive a lower limit on the AGN fraction of a few percent, indicating that active nuclei in dwarf galaxies are not as rare as previously thought.

We present constraints on the annihilation cross section of WIMP dark matter based on the joint statistical analysis of four dwarf galaxies with VERITAS. These results are derived from an optimized photon weighting statistical technique that improves on standard imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescope (IACT) analyses by utilizing the spectral and spatial properties of individual photon events. We report on the results of ∼230 hours of observations of five dwarf galaxies and the joint statistical analysis of four of the dwarf galaxies. We find no evidence of gamma-ray emission from any individual dwarf nor in the joint analysis. The derived upper limit on the dark matter annihilation cross section from the joint analysis is 1. PACS numbers: 95.35.+d, 11.30.Rd, 95.55.Ka,