• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Astronomical News

Space-time is swirling around a dead star, proving Einstein right again

Source: space.com
Date: 31 January, 2020

Space-time is indeed churned by massive rotating bodies, as scientists had thought.

The way the fabric of space and time swirls in a cosmic whirlpool around a dead star has confirmed yet another prediction from Einstein's theory of general relativity, a new study finds.

That prediction is a phenomenon known as frame dragging, or the Lense-Thirring effect. It states that space-time will churn around a massive, rotating body. For example, imagine Earth were submerged in honey. As the planet rotated, the honey around it would swirl — and the same holds true with space-time.

Satellite experiments have detected frame dragging in the gravitational field of rotating Earth, but the effect is extraordinarily small and, therefore, has been challenging to measure. Objects with greater masses and more powerful gravitational fields, such as white dwarfs and neutron stars, offer better chances to see this phenomenon.

Scientists focused on PSR J1141-6545, a young pulsar about 1.27 times the mass of the sun. The pulsar is located 10,000 to 25,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Musca (the fly), which is near the famous Southern Cross constellation.

https://www-space-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.space.com/amp/einstein-general-relativity-frame-dragging.html?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCKAE=#referrer=https://www.google.com&amp_tf=From %1$s&ampshare=https://www.space.com/amp/einstein-general-relativity-frame-dragging.html#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s
 
Last edited:
Oddball sexaquark particles could be immortal, if they exist at all

Source: livescience.com
Date: 4, February 2020

These supremely stable particles could explain dark matter.

After decades of poking around in the math behind the glue holding the innards of all matter together, physicists have found a strange hypothetical particle, one that has never appeared in any experiment. Called a sexaquark, the oddball is made up of a funky arrangement of six quarks of various flavors.

Besides being a cool-sounding character, the sexaquark could eventually explain the ever-maddening mystery of dark matter. And physicists have found that if the sexaquark has a particular mass, the particle could live forever.

Quarks of nature

Almost everything you know and love is made of tiny particles known as quarks. There are six of them, given the names, for various nerdy reasons, of up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm. The up and down varieties are the lightest of the bunch, which makes them by far the most common. (In particle physics, the heavier you are, the more likely you are to decay into smaller, stabler things.)

The protons and neutrons inside your body are all composed of trios of quarks; two ups and a down make a proton, and two downs and an up make a neutron. Indeed, due to the complicated nature of the strong force, quarks really enjoy hanging out in groups of three, and that is also by far the stablest and most common configuration.

Occasionally in our particle colliders, we create particles each consisting of a pair of quarks; these conglomerations are unstable and quickly decay into something else. Sometimes, when we try really hard, we can glue five quarks together and make them play nicely with each other — briefly — before they, too, decay into something else.

And to date, those are all the combinations of quarks that we've been able to manufacture.

However, there may be something stranger.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/sexquarks-could-explain-dark-matter.html
 
JUST WOW

INCREDIBLE NASA VISUALIZATIONS REVEAL UNIVERSE AS YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE

Source: inverse.com
Date: 31 January, 2020

NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory is altering our perspective on the cosmos — and it is beautiful.

Prepare to get a new perspective on the cosmos.

For as long as humans have peered into space, we have been forced to observe the beauty of the universe via flat, two-dimensional imaging techniques. As a result, certain details — the sheer size, the dynamism, and the true nature — of interstellar objects and phenomena have been somewhat obscured.

But NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is changing that. In a new collection of 3D visualizations, scientists from the observatory have brought some of the wonders of the cosmos to life, allowing us here on Earth to marvel at such incredible events as powerful supernovae explosions and jets of stellar material erupting in space.

The collection was created by a team at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy using data collected by Chandra and other X-ray observatories. The team used a computer simulation to model the geometry, velocity, and other physical properties of each of the phenomena.

https://www-inverse-com.cdn.ampproj...reveal-universe-as-you-have-never-seen-before
[END]



Universe in Hands

Source: sketchfab.com

The collection shows the results of (magneto-)hydrodynamical models of different astrophysical phenomena. The models are developed by astrophysicists of the INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo (Italy). More information can be found at the link...

https://sketchfab.com/sorlando/collections/universe-in-hands
 
Unusual monster galaxy discovered from early universe

The galaxy known as XMM-2599 has baffled scientists because it appears to have died during its prime star-birthing years.

Source: Sky News
Date: 5 February, 2020

Astronomers have hailed the discovery of an "unusual" monster galaxy dating back to the early universe, about 12 billion years ago.

Scientists estimate the universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and the newly discovered galaxy existed approximately 1.8 billion years on from its beginning.

According to the observations by the team at the University of California, Riverside, the galaxy, known as XMM-2599, at first formed stars at a high rate, but then mysteriously died.

"Even before the universe was two billion years old, XMM-2599 had already formed a mass of more than 300 billion suns, making it an ultramassive galaxy," said Dr Benjamin Forrest.

"More remarkably, we show that XMM-2599 formed most of its stars in a huge frenzy when the universe was less than one billion years old, and then became inactive by the time the universe was only 1.8 billion years old."

https://news-sky-com.cdn.ampproject...3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jim
Shall we create an Astronautics thread?

NASA astronaut Christina Koch returns to Earth after logging 328 days aboard the International Space Station
US astronaut Christina Koch, who led the first all-female spacewalk in 2019, has returned to Earth after a record stay aboard the International Space Station. Ms Koch, 41, landed in Kazakhstan on Thursday (local time), ending a 328-day mission expected to yield new insights into deep-space travel.

"I'm just so overwhelmed and happy right now," Ms Koch said, sitting in a chair wrapped in blankets as she waited to be carried into a medical tent to restore her balance in gravity.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02...h-returning-to-earth-record-breaking/11940446

Wow. That is huge. I've been observing her transit at every opportunity. Stalking? I wonder if she has a boyfriend.
:cheer:
 
This astronomer posts regular updates about Betelgeuse. The star is slightly brighter than it was, and may be returning to normal. But this chap says it has remained constantly bright when viewed in the infra-red. That probably means this recent 'fainting' is due to dust.
http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=13518
The visual fading is not connected to a major change in total energy output from the star. Thus, while Betelgeuse may explode tomorrow or any time in the next few 1e5 yr, the unprecedented current visual faintness is unlikely to be a harbinger of its impending core collapse.
 
New Wrinkle Added to Cosmology’s Hubble Crisis

Source: quantamagazine.org
Date: 26 February, 2020

A problem confronts cosmology: Two independent measurements of the universe’s expansion give incompatible answers. Now a third method, advanced by an astronomy pioneer, appears to bridge the divide.

The big news in cosmology for several years has been the mounting evidence that the universe is expanding faster than expected. When cosmologists extrapolate data from the early universe to predict what the cosmos should be like now, they predict a relatively slow cosmic expansion rate. When they directly measure the speed at which astronomical objects are hurtling away from us, they find that space is expanding about 9% faster than the prediction. The discrepancy may mean that something big is missing from our understanding of the cosmos.

The issue reached a crescendo over the past year. Last March, the main group measuring cosmic expansion released their updated analysis, once again arriving at an expansion rate that far outstrips expectations. Then in July, a new measurement of cosmic expansion using objects called quasars, when combined with the other measurement, pushed past “five sigma,” a statistical level that physicists usually treat as their standard of proof of an unaccounted-for physical effect. In this case, cosmologists say there might be some extra cosmic ingredient, beyond dark matter, dark energy and everything else they already include in their equations, that speeds the universe up.

But that’s if the measurements are correct. A new line of evidence, first announced last summer, suggests that the cosmic expansion rate may fall much closer to the rate predicted by early-universe measurements and the standard theory of cosmology.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-wrinkle-added-to-cosmologys-hubble-crisis-20200226/
 
This Gigantic Neptune-Sized Exoplanet is Incredibly Close

Source: futurism.com
Date: 26 February, 2020

A team of astronomers at Penn State just confirmed the existence of G 9-40b, a gigantic super-Earth only about 90 light years from Earth — making it one of the closest known exoplanets.

The exoplanet is at least twice as massive as Earth and may even be as large as Neptune. It was first spotted by NASA’s planet-hunting space telescope Kepler during its K2 mission in 2019.

The team used The Habitable Zone Planet Finder (HPF), a low-mass planet-hunting instrument attached to the 10-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas.

But this particular planet isn’t very habitable. Its surface experiences scorching temperatures of over 3,100 degrees Celsius (5,600 Fahrenheit) — hot, but still substantially cooler than the Sun.

The fact that it’s only about 90 light years away means that it is “among the 20 closest transiting planetary systems known, and is currently the second closest transiting planets discovered by the K2 mission to date,” according to a statement by Gudmundur Stefansson, lead author of a paper about the planet published in The Astronomical Journal earlier this month.

The astronomers believe the exoplanet is an excellent candidate for a much closer look by NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope that is scheduled to launch in March 2021.

https://futurism-com.cdn.ampproject...3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s
 
New Wrinkle Added to Cosmology’s Hubble Crisis

Source: quantamagazine.org
Date: 26 February, 2020

A problem confronts cosmology: Two independent measurements of the universe’s expansion give incompatible answers. Now a third method, advanced by an astronomy pioneer, appears to bridge the divide.

. Then in July, a new measurement of cosmic expansion using objects called quasars, when combined with the other measurement, pushed past “five sigma,” a statistical level that physicists usually treat as their standard of proof of an unaccounted-for physical effect. In this case, cosmologists say there might be some extra cosmic ingredient, beyond dark matter, dark energy and everything else they already include in their equations, that speeds the universe up.

But that’s if the measurements are correct. A new line of evidence, first announced last summer, suggests that the cosmic expansion rate may fall much closer to the rate predicted by early-universe measurements and the standard theory of cosmology.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-wrinkle-added-to-cosmologys-hubble-crisis-20200226/

And they just keep on moving the goalposts.
 
Our galaxy’s huge black hole may have created organic molecules

Source: newscientist.com
Date: 26 February, 2020

The Milky Way’s black hole may have given life a helping hand

The supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way may have been crucial to the evolution of life in the galaxy.

These days, the black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, is relatively calm. But there are hints that millions of years ago it may have been much more active, swallowing down matter and spewing out high-energy radiation including large amounts of X-rays.

https://www-newscientist-com.cdn.am...3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s
 
Starter' Earth grew in a flash. Here's how the planet did it.

Source: livescience.com
Date: 24 February, 2020

If the solar system formed in 24 hours, then proto-Earth formed in just 1.5 minutes.

Dust from meteorites that crash-landed on Earth have revealed that Earth's precursor, known as proto-Earth, formed much faster than previously thought, a new study finds.

An analysis of this meteorite dust showed that proto-Earth formed within about 5 million years, which is extremely fast, astronomically speaking.

Put another way, if the entire 4.6 billion years of the solar system's existence were compressed into a 24-hour period, proto-Earth formed in just 1 minute and 30 seconds, the researchers said.

The new finding breaks with the previously held idea that proto-Earth formed when larger and larger planetary bodies randomly slammed into one another, a process that would have taken several tens of millions of years, or about 5 to 15 minutes in the fictional 24-hour timescale.

https://www-livescience-com.cdn.amp...m/meteorite-iron-shows-earth-formed-fast.html
 
THE UNIVERSE MIGHT JUST BE CURVED

Source: John Hopkins University
Date: 26 February, 2020

A recent analysis of the cosmic microwave background by Johns Hopkins cosmologist Joseph Silk and others suggests that maybe, just maybe, the universe could be sphere-shaped, a theory that contradicts the conventional idea that the universe stretches infinitely in all directions

More than 2,000 years ago, the ancient Greeks figured out that Earth was round rather than flat. Now, cosmologist Joseph Silk thinks the same might be true of the entire universe.

Together with colleagues in Italy and the United Kingdom, Silk recently analyzed data from the Planck Collaboration, a European Space Agency project that from 2009 to 2013 mapped the cosmic microwave background, a wash of low-level radiation that fills the sky. Cosmologists have been probing Planck's data on the CMB—a remnant of the first light to flood the universe after the big bang more than 13 billion years ago—to better understand conditions in the early universe and reconstruct how the cosmos evolved over time.

While the CMB is fairly uniform and quite dim, it nonetheless displays minute peaks and valleys in intensity, like hot and cold spots on a temperature map. These tiny fluctuations represent variations in the energy density of the early universe. And those variations eventually translated into differences in the density of matter, with the hot spots giving rise to the clusters of galaxies that are now strewn across the sky like seeds bearing fruit in a celestial garden—even as traces of the seeds themselves remain fixed in the CMB.

"It's a bit like archaeology," Silk explains. "We're looking at the fossil record of everything that formed subsequently."

Silk and his colleagues noticed something odd about the Planck data, however: The peaks in the CMB were smoother than predicted. They attributed this to a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, whereby the light of the CMB is bent and diffused by gravity—in this case, the gravity exerted by dark matter, the unseen exotic material that makes up roughly a quarter of the universe. Yet astronomers already know how much dark matter exists, and there isn't enough to account for the gravitational lensing indicated by the Planck data.

[...]

Assuming that the universe is curved may have solved the lensing problem, but it comes at a price.

https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/02/26/closed-universe-curve-999-em1-art1-nr-science/
 
Astronomers detect biggest explosion in the history of the Universe

Source: phys.org
Date: 1 hour ago

International Centre for Radio Astronomy
Scientists studying a distant galaxy cluster have discovered the biggest explosion seen in the Universe since the Big Bang.

The blast came from a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy hundreds of millions of light-years away.

It released five times more energy than the previous record holder.

Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, said the event was extraordinarily energetic.

"We've seen outbursts in the centres of galaxies before but this one is really, really massive," she said.

"And we don't know why it's so big.

"But it happened very slowly—like an explosion in slow motion that took place over hundreds of millions of years."

The explosion occurred in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, about 390 million light-years from Earth.

It was so powerful it punched a cavity in the cluster plasma—the super-hot gas surrounding the black hole.

Lead author of the study Dr. Simona Giacintucci, from the Naval Research Laboratory in the United States, said the blast was similar to the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, which ripped the top off the mountain.

"The difference is that you could fit 15 Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster's hot gas," she said.

Professor Johnston-Hollitt said the cavity in the cluster plasma had been seen previously with X-ray telescopes.

But scientists initially dismissed the idea that it could have been caused by an energetic outburst, because it would have been too big.

https://phys-org.cdn.ampproject.org...omers-biggest-explosion-history-universe.html
 
...The explosion occurred in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, about 390 million light-years from Earth. ..

How do they come to this kind of conclusion ?
 
What specifically bothers you?

I only have a vague grasp of this!

What I find annoying..No, too strong, frustrating is that these cosmologists just keep on adding more 'well, maybe it's...' to the theory. Either the Standard Model of Cosmology is correct, or it isn't. There needs to be more emphasis on proving beyond all reasonable doubt the parts that the theory is comprised of.
Maybe the problem is further back in the way the model was constructed and they are working on a false premise. Some, maybe quite small, error that is screwing the whole thing up.

By all means keep on with the search, but let's see something positive.

INT21.
 
The Milky Way Is Warped, And It May Be The Legacy of an Ongoing Galactic Collision

Source: sciencealert.com
Date: 3 March, 2020

The Milky Way isn't like other barred spiral galaxies. Instead of a nice, tidy flat disc, it has a kink in its spine, a twist in its swagger. As we have long known, and two separate studies recently confirmed, the Milky Way is seriously warped around the edges, a strange idiosyncrasy that's been puzzling astronomers for years.

Now a new analysis of data from the Gaia mission has ponied up an explanation: it's the result of a collision with a smaller galaxy sometime in the Milky Way's murky past.

It's unclear when, or which galaxy. But the way the warp whirls around the galactic centre seems like it could only have been caused by a relatively recent, or even ongoing, kerfuffle with one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies.

The Gaia mission has already done great work revealing our galaxy's somewhat violent past.

A collision with another galaxy 8 to 11 billion years ago puffed up the Milky Way's thick disk, filling it with stars. An encounter with a ghost galaxy millions of years ago left ripples in the Milky Way's hydrogen. And let's not forget a smash-up with a galaxy called the Gaia Sausage, which left stars reeling about in peculiar orbits.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-mi...-because-of-an-ancient-galactic-collision/amp
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tin
Strange 'Super-Puff' Planets Floating in Space Might Not Be What We Thought

Source: sciencealert.com
Date: 3 March, 2020

As we find more and more exoplanets in the Milky Way - numbering in the thousands now - astronomers are discovering some strange objects that don't exist in the Solar System. One such phenomenon are the strangely fluffy "super-puff" planets - the size of gas giants, but way, way less massive.

Exactly how these planets can exist has been a puzzle to astronomers. In extreme cases, a super-puff planet can be less than one percent of the mass of a gas giant of similar size. Now researchers have crunched the numbers and come up with a new explanation: What if they are actually smaller planets with giant rings?

This could solve some of the stranger aspects of super-puff planets, as well as help us to find a feature that has so far proven elusive on exoplanets: planetary rings.

"In principle, rings should be detectable from detailed photometric or spectroscopic changes to transits. The difficulty is that such signals are subtle and difficult to discern in current data," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"There is clearly still a lot we do not know about the rings of exoplanets."

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-puffiness-of-super-puff-planets-could-be-huge-rings/amp
 
No Galaxy Will Ever Truly Disappear, Even In A Universe With Dark Energy

Source: Forbes
Date: 4 March, 2020

And yet, despite all of this, there are more galaxies that we can observe today, 13.8 billion years after the hot Big Bang, than at any prior point in our cosmic history. Even more puzzling: as time goes on, the number of potentially observable galaxies will increase, more than doubling as the cosmological clock continues ticking by. Even as they recede faster and faster, not a single galaxy will ever disappear from our view entirely. Here’s the puzzling science of how this happens.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/starts...pear-even-in-a-universe-with-dark-energy/amp/
 
THEORETICAL HOLES IN SPACETIME COULD SWALLOW THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE

Source: futurism.com
Date: 6 March, 2020

In a new paper, physicists argue that extradimensional holes known as “bubbles of nothing” could cause the universe to consume itself from the inside out, Motherboard reports.

Three researchers from the University of Oviedo in Spain and the University of Uppsala in Sweden submitted a paper, appropriately titled “Nothing Really Matters,” to the Journal of High-Energy Physics this month — about a hypothetical, mind-bending hole that could destroy the entire universe.

The paper revives a theory that dates back to 1982, by theoretical physicist Edward Witten.

“A hole spontaneously forms in space and rapidly expands to infinity, pushing to infinity anything it may meet,” Witten wrote in his paper.

Physicists have long posited that most of our universe is made up of nothingness, or vacuum. Anything in a more “excited” or unstable state tends to decay to lower energy states by releasing energy. That means our universe is relatively stable.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/theoretical-holes-spacetime-swallow-entire-universe
 
Faster-Than-Light Speeds Could Be Why Gamma-Ray Bursts Seem to Go Backwards in Time

Source: sciencealert.com
Date: 7 March, 2020

Time, as far as we know, moves only in one direction. But in 2018, researchers found events in some gamma-ray burst pulses that seemed to repeat themselves as though they were going backwards in time.

Now, recent research suggests a potential answer for what might be causing this time reversibility effect. If waves within the relativistic jets that produce gamma-ray bursts travel faster than light - at 'superluminal' speeds - one of the effects could be time reversibility.

Such speeding waves could actually be possible. We know that when light is travelling through a medium (such as gas or plasma), its phase velocity is slightly slower than c - the speed of light in a vacuum, and, as far as we know, the ultimate speed limit of the Universe.

Therefore, a wave could travel through a gamma-ray burst jet at superluminal speeds without breaking relativity. But to understand this, we need to back up a little to look at the source of those jets.

https://www.sciencealert.com/faster...a-ray-bursts-seem-to-go-backwards-in-time/amp
 
Scientists Claim to Have Found The First Known Extraterrestrial Protein in a Meteorite

Source: sciencealert.com
Date: 2 March, 2020

A new discovery could be a clue for us to see if life could emerge elsewhere in the Solar System. Using a new analysis technique, scientists think they have found an extraterrestrial protein, tucked inside a meteorite that fell to Earth 30 years ago.

If their results can be replicated, it will be the first protein ever identified that didn't originate here on Earth.

"This paper characterises the first protein to be discovered in a meteorite," the researchers wrote in a paper uploaded to preprint server arXiv. Their work is yet to be peer reviewed, but the implications of this finding are noteworthy.

https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...n-extraterrestrial-protein-in-a-meteorite/amp
 
Last edited:
In case you need a seemingly bigger issue to take your mind off the coronavirus pandemic, this might be the headline for you ...

Ancient Supermassive Black Hole Has Its Particle Beam Aimed Right at Earth

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...ar-aiming-its-particle-beam-directly-at-earth

So... the light from this 'blazar' (cool term I've not come across before) was emitted 13 billion years ago... (I am always in awe to think that we are seeing celestial objects as they were all that long ago)

... is there any way of knowing if the blazar is still there now? The article talks about it in the present tense, but... it might not be there now, am I right? Or it could have changed? But we wouldn't know it for some time (if we even lived long enough that is)?

(Like if something happens to the sun we only see it 8 minutes later or somesuch).... but obviously with this blazar its quite a bit longer than that....
 
The factor that motivated me to post about this in the Fortean Headlines thread was the ominous-sounding bit about the blazar's "particle beam" being aimed directly at earth.

If it weren't aimed in our direction it wouldn't be recognized as a blazar. We can reliably observe "blazing" of directional bursts from such objects only if they're aimed at us.

The originating object may well have gone extinct before earth even formed, and the light indicating such an extinction may not arrive here in our Sol system until earth itself is long gone.

The more pressing issue would be whether or not such blazars can or do emit beams as potentially dangerous as gamma ray bursts. If such a lethal emission is possible, it means our ability to see such objects as blazars implies we are by definition "in their line of fire", so to epeak.
 
The factor that motivated me to post about this in the Fortean Headlines thread was the ominous-sounding bit about the blazar's "particle beam" being aimed directly at earth.

If it weren't aimed in our direction it wouldn't be recognized as a blazar. We can reliably observe "blazing" of directional bursts from such objects only if they're aimed at us.

The originating object may well have gone extinct before earth even formed, and the light indicating such an extinction may not arrive here in our Sol system until earth itself is long gone.

The more pressing issue would be whether or not such blazars can or do emit beams as potentially dangerous as gamma ray bursts. If such a lethal emission is possible, it means our ability to see such objects as blazars implies we are by definition "in their line of fire", so to epeak.

The particle beam is interesting and I should have commented more about it, I do apologise. I also find it ominous that it is aimed directly at us... I can just imagine when they found out... "where's it pointing?" "erm... right at us" :)

Even if the blazar is long gone, the beam, being pointed at us, would still eventually 'reach' us, is that right?...

... Or should I say 'zap' us...


According to this article, gamma ray bursts can indeed be emitted from blazars... https://blogs.voanews.com/science-w...ys-from-halfway-across-the-universe-detected/

So in the line of fire, indeed, it would seem.
 
Back
Top