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Category: cosmology – Page 330

String theory provides a microscopic description of the entropy of certain theoretical black holes—an important step toward understanding black hole thermodynamics.

In the 1970’s, theorists determined that black holes have entropy [1], a remarkable finding that points at analogies between these spacetime singularities and systems of particles, such as classical gases. The crucial proof was provided by Stephen Hawking, who demonstrated, using a quantum-mechanical framework, that black holes radiate as if they were black bodies with a specific temperature [2]. The analogy was completed by extending all four laws of thermodynamics to black holes [3]. In thermodynamics, entropy is an important bridge between the macroscopic and the microscopic world: In a gas, for instance, entropy relates macroscopic heat transfer to the number of available microscopic states of the gas molecules. Providing a similar microscopic explanation of black hole entropy is an important test for theories that aim to unify gravity and quantum mechanics.

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(WHDH) — Scientists at NASA have reportedly uncovered evidence of a bizarre parallel universe where the rules of physics and time appear to be operating in reverse.

Researchers conducting an experiment in Antarctica discovered particles from a universe that was born during the same Big Bang the created the one we live in, according to NewScientist.

A NASA team was using a giant balloon to carry electronic antennas into the sky above the frozen wastes of Antarctica when they encountered a “wind” of particles from outer space that were “a million times more powerful” than anything they had seen before, the news outlet reported.

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In our 13.8 billion-year-old universe, most galaxies like our Milky Way form gradually, reaching their large mass relatively late. But a new discovery made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of a massive rotating disk galaxy, seen when the universe was only ten percent of its current age, challenges the traditional models of galaxy formation. This research appears on 20 May 2020 in the journal Nature.

Galaxy DLA0817g, nicknamed the Wolfe Disk after the late astronomer Arthur M. Wolfe, is the most distant rotating disk galaxy ever observed. The unparalleled power of ALMA made it possible to see this galaxy spinning at 170 miles (272 kilometers) per second, similar to our Milky Way.

“While previous studies hinted at the existence of these early rotating gas-rich disk , thanks to ALMA we now have unambiguous evidence that they occur as early as 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang,” said lead author Marcel Neeleman of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

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Results from physicists in Bochum have challenged the Standard Model of Cosmology. Infrared data, which have recently been included in the analysis, could be decisive.

Bochum cosmologists headed by Professor Hendrik Hildebrandt have gained new insights into the density and structure of matter in the Universe. Several years ago, Hildebrandt had already been involved in a research consortium that had pointed out discrepancies in the data between different groups. The values determined for matter density and structure differed depending on the measurement method. A new analysis, which included additional infrared data, made the differences stand out even more. They could indicate that this is the flaw in the Standard Model of Cosmology.

Rubin, the science magazine of Ruhr-Universität Bochum, has published a report on Hendrik Hildebrandt’s research. The latest analysis of the research consortium, called Kilo-Degree Survey, was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics in January 2020.

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Education Saturday with Space Time.

To quote eminent scientist Tyler Durden: “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” Actually… not necessarily true. If the quantum multiverse is real there may be a version of you that lives forever.

F we can’t ever peer into these other realities that are used to explain quantum mechanics, how do we know they exist? In order to understand what happens to those different branches, and to understand why we find ourselves in one of them, we need to embrace one of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. For example, the Copenhagen interpretation, which says that thefunction branches that we don’t observe somehow vanish at the moment of measurement. Or the Many Worlds Interpretation, which states that those other branches are just as valid as ours – implying that reality may split and multiply in all possible ways. In that case, we only see one branch because we live in that branch, and the others are rendered inaccessible by decoherence. But today I’m going to offer a test. Admittedly NOT a very useful one – but one that’s fun to think about. We’ll call this test quantum immortality. It’s based on the famous Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment.

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With the help of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Juliette Stecenko is exploring cosmology—a branch of astronomy that investigates the origin and evolution of the universe, from the Big Bang to today and into the future. As an intern through DOE’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program, administered at Brookhaven by the Office of Educational Programs (OEP), Stecenko is using modern supercomputers and quantum computing platforms to perform astronomy simulations that may help us better understand where we came from.

Stecenko works under the guidance of Michael McGuigan, a computational scientist in the quantum computing group at Brookhaven’s Computational Science Initiative. The two have been collaborating on simulating Casimir energy—a small force that two electrically neutral surfaces held a tiny distance apart will experience from quantum, atomic, or subatomic fluctuations in the vacuum of space. The vacuum energy of the universe and the Casimir pressure of this energy could be a possible explanation of the origin and evolution of the universe, as well a possible cause of its accelerated expansion.

“Casimir energy is something scientists can measure in the laboratory and is especially important for nanoscience, or in cosmology, in the very early universe when the universe was very small,” McGuigan said.

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James Woodward Space Studies Institute, Inc.

We propose to study the implementation of an innovative thrust producing technology for use in NASA missions involving in space main propulsion. Mach Effect Gravity Assist (MEGA) drive propulsion is based on peer-reviewed, technically credible physics. Mach effects are transient variations in the rest masses of objects that simultaneously experience accelerations and internal energy changes. They are predicted by standard physics where Mach’s principle applies as discussed in peer- reviewed papers spanning 20 years and a recent book, Making Starships and Stargates: the Science of Interstellar Transport and Absurdly Benign Wormholes published in 2013 by Springer-Verlag.

In Phase I we achieved the following:

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Circa 2017

Einstein-Rosen or “ER” bridges, are equivalent to entangled quantum particles, also known as Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen or “EPR” pairs. The quantum connection between wormholes prevents their collapse without involving exotic matter.

The quantum-teleportation format precludes using these traversable wormholes as time machines. Anything that goes through the wormhole has to wait for Alice’s message to travel to Bob in the outside universe before it can exit Bob’s black hole, so the wormhole doesn’t offer any superluminal boost that could be exploited for time travel.

Researchers are working towards lab tests of quantum teleportation to verify their theories.

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A new study, based on data from ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASAs Chandra X-ray observatories, sheds new light on a three million light-year long bridge of hot gas linking two galaxy clusters, whose shape is being bent by the mighty activity of a nearby supermassive black hole.

Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the Universe held together by gravity. They contain hundreds or thousands of galaxies, vast amounts of multi-million-degree gas that shines brightly in X-rays, and enormous reservoirs of unseen dark matter.

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