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Category: cosmology – Page 88

A New Physics Breakthrough Could Change Everything

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“New physics” is a catch-all term for fundamentally new discoveries in physics (such as dark matter, quantum gravity, or a theory of everything) which push the boundaries of how we understand our reality. How could new discoveries in these areas of research affect our lives? Let’s take a look at what knowledge and practical use we could potentially gain.

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Disproving the Fine-tuned Universe Theory

Sean Michael Carroll (born 5 October 1966) is a cosmologist and Physics professor specializing in dark energy and general relativity. He is a research professor in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. He has been a contributor to the physics blog Cosmic Variance, and has published in scientific journals and magazines such as Nature, Seed, Sky \& Telescope, and New Scientist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_M…

Other videos related to challenging or debunking the fine tuning argument

• Video.

A Rebuttal to the Fine-Tuning Argument.
• A Rebuttal to the Fine-Tuning Argument.

Scientists say the universe is constantly vibrating. What’s causing it?

Scientists in Australia have gathered evidence that our universe is constantly vibrating. They used the largest gravitational wave detector to confirm the earlier reports that there is an ongoing rumble which is likely caused by black holes at the centre of galaxies colliding with each other.

The detector looked at several rapidly spinning neutron stars across the galaxy and discovered that the gravitational wave background might be louder than previously thought, The Conversation reported.

The study carried out by Matthew Miles, Swinburne University of Technology and Rowina Nathan, Monash University, was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

This Theory of Everything Actually Makes a Prediction: New Physics in Black Holes

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Mathematician Stephen Wolfram has attempted to develop a theory of everything using hypergraphs, which are essentially sets of graphs that can describe space-time. Recently, another mathematician named Jonathan Gorard has used hypergraphs to describe what happens if a black hole accretes matter. He claims that evidence for hypergraphs should be observable in the energy that is emitted during the accretion. Big if true, as they say. Let’s take a look.

Paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.

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Over 10,000 exploding stars catalogued by groundbreaking Zwicky Transient Facility

The Zwicky Transient Facility has reached an incredible milestone: It has classified over 10,000 cosmic explosions that mark the deaths of massive stars and the feeding frenzies of vampire stellar remnants. These events, called supernovas, are undoubtedly some of the most fearsome and powerful events in the universe.

Since 2012, humanity has discovered almost 16,000 supernovas. The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), which began operations in 2017 using the 48-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory, is responsible for almost two-thirds of these detections. That makes it the largest and arguably most successful supernova surveyor to date.

“There are trillions of stars in the universe, and about every second, one of them explodes,” California Institute of Technology astronomer Christoffer Fremling said in a statement. “Reaching 10,000 classifications is amazing, but what we truly should celebrate is the incredible progress we have made in our ability to browse the universe for transients, or objects that change in the sky, and the science our rich data will enable.”

Physicists propose a quantum–optomechanical solution to dark-matter detection

An interdisciplinary collaboration between condensed-matter, quantum-optics and particle physicists has the potential to crack the search for low-mass dark matter. The proposed quantum detector builds on EQUS studies of elementary excitations in superfluid helium and advances in opto-mechanics.

Led by EQUS Research Fellow Dr. Chris Baker (UQ), study proposes direct detection of low-mass dark matter via its interactions with confined in an optomechanical cavity.

“Optomechanical dark matter instrument for direct detection” was published in Physical Review D in August 2024.

NASA’s Swift Studies Gas-Churning Monster Black Holes

Scientists using observations from NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory have discovered, for the first time, the signal from a pair of monster black holes disrupting a cloud of gas in the center of a galaxy.

“It’s a very weird event, called AT 2021hdr, that keeps recurring every few months,” said Lorena Hernández-García, an astrophysicist at the Millennium Institute of Astrophysics, the Millennium Nucleus on Transversal Research and Technology to Explore Supermassive Black Holes, and University of Valparaíso in Chile. “We think that a gas cloud engulfed the black holes. As they orbit each other, the black holes interact with the cloud, perturbing and consuming its gas. This produces an oscillating pattern in the light from the system.”

A paper about AT 2021hdr, led by Hernández-García, was published Nov. 13 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Hubble takes closest-ever look at a quasar

Astronomers have used the unique capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to peer closer than ever into the throat of an energetic monster black hole powering a quasar. A quasar is a galactic center that glows brightly as the black hole consumes material in its immediate surroundings.

The new Hubble views of the environment around the quasar show a lot of “weird things,” according to Bin Ren of the Côte d’Azur Observatory and Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. “We’ve got a few blobs of different sizes, and a mysterious L-shaped filamentary structure. This is all within 16,000 light-years of the black hole.”

Some of the objects could be small satellite galaxies around the black hole, and so they could offer the materials that will accrete onto the central super massive black hole, powering the bright lighthouse.

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