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Archive for the ‘cosmology’ category: Page 27

Jun 14, 2024

High-speed baby stars circle the supermassive black hole Sgr A* like a swarm of bees

Posted by in category: cosmology

Observational astronomy shows that newly discovered young stellar objects (YSOs) in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A located in the center of our galaxy behave differently than expected. They describe similar orbits to already known young evolved stars and are arranged in a particular pattern around the supermassive black hole.

Jun 14, 2024

What “naked” singularities are revealing about quantum space-time

Posted by in categories: cosmology, quantum physics

Are points of infinite curvature, where general relativity breaks down, always hidden inside black holes? An audacious attempt to find out is shedding light on the mystery of quantum gravity.

By Thomas Lewton

Jun 14, 2024

Dark matter turns out to be an echo of a parallel Universe

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics, quantum physics

The study is based on several intriguing coincidences. First, observations show that there is about the same amount of ordinary and dark matter, which exceeds baryonic by about five times. And secondly, neutrons and protons have almost the same mass, which allows them to form stable atoms — this is a random but stable property of the quantum world, because otherwise our universe would not be home to any of the atoms that make up stars, planets and ourselves.

In fact, the theory suggests that there may be a parallel universe like ours in which neutrons and protons do not have such convenient symmetry in mass. In this world, there is a “soup” of subatomic particles that interact little, which explains why dark matter does not seem to clump together.

It is important to note that this is just one more of many hypotheses that try to explain the mystery of dark matter – an annoying and lingering unknown in our understanding of the universe.

Jun 14, 2024

Conservative Black Hole Scattering at Fifth Post-Minkowskian and First Self-Force Order

Posted by in categories: cosmology, quantum physics

Quantum field theory techniques are employed to compute the conservative scattering dynamics of a pair of black holes to the fifth order in Newton’s constant.

Jun 14, 2024

Dark Matter Decoded: How Neutron Stars May Solve the Universe’s Biggest Mystery

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

Scientists may be one step closer to unraveling one of the universe’s greatest mysteries. Their recent calculations suggest that neutron stars could play a crucial role in shedding light on the mysterious dark matter.

In a paper published in The Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, physicists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, led by the University of Melbourne, calculated that energy transferred when dark matter particles collide and annihilate inside cold dead neutron stars can heat the stars up very quickly.

It was previously thought that this energy transfer could take a very long time, in some cases, longer than the age of the universe itself, rendering this heating irrelevant.

Jun 14, 2024

What was there before BIG BANG? 😱

Posted by in category: cosmology

This is the question of the origin of our Universe. Every star, every galaxy and every planet we see came from the Big Bang. But what was before it?

Jun 14, 2024

Primordial black holes, dark matter and Apollo era technology

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

Is dark matter primordial black holes? If so, could we find them using Apollo-era technology on the moon?
A new paper suggests the answer may be yes to both. I interviewed David Kaiser, one of the paper’s co-authors, former student of inflationary cosmology pioneer Alan Guth, and now Professor of Physics and Professor of the History of Science at MIT.
For the preprint of the full paper:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.16877
and other press about the paper.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n
https://news.mit.edu/2024/exotic-blac
And some other related papers:
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.02168
https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.17217
a timeline is below.
00:00 introduction.
00:57 primordial black holes.
3:05 particle dark matter and modified gravity.
6:33 LIGO and EHT
11:03 window of opportunity.
15:16 observaitonal signatures.
20:30 Apollo era tech.
25:19 Star Wars.
25:54 the future.

Jun 14, 2024

PBS Space Time

Posted by in categories: cosmology, information science, mathematics, physics, singularity

Viewers like you help make PBS (Thank you 😃). Support your local PBS Member Station here: https://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE

Be sure to check out the Infinite Series episode Singularities Explained • Singularities Explained | Infinite Se… or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Divide by Zero.

Continue reading “PBS Space Time” »

Jun 13, 2024

Einstein Telescope could launch a new era in astronomy

Posted by in categories: cosmology, physics

It’s still just a plan, but a new telescope could soon be measuring gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are something like the sound waves of the universe. They are created, for example, when black holes or neutron stars collide.

The future gravitational wave detector, the Einstein Telescope, will use the latest laser technology to better understand these waves and, thus, our universe. One possible location for the construction of this is the border triangle of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Jun 13, 2024

Pair plasmas found in deep space can now be generated in the lab

Posted by in category: cosmology

Black holes and neutron stars are among the densest known objects in the universe. Within and around these extreme astrophysical environments exist plasmas, the fourth fundamental state of matter alongside solids, liquids, and gases. Specifically, the plasmas at these extreme conditions are known as relativistic electron-positron pair plasmas because they comprise a collection of electrons and positrons—all flying around at nearly the speed of light.

While such plasmas are ubiquitous in deep space conditions, producing them in a laboratory setting has proved challenging.

Now, for the first time, an international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), has experimentally generated high-density relativistic electron-positron pair– beams by producing two to three orders of magnitude more pairs than previously reported. The team’s findings appear in Nature Communications.

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