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Astronomers have discovered black holes ranging from a few times the sun’s mass to tens of billions. Now a group of scientists has predicted that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find a class of “featherweight” black holes that has so far eluded detection.

Today, black holes form either when a massive star collapses or when heavy objects merge. However, scientists suspect that smaller “primordial” black holes, including some with masses similar to Earth’s, could have formed in the first chaotic moments of the early universe.

“Detecting a population of Earth-mass primordial black holes would be an incredible step for both astronomy and particle physics because these objects can’t be formed by any known physical process,” said William DeRocco, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz who led a study about how Roman could reveal them.

Making use of some of the most powerful telescopes on the planet, astronomers have found an ancient remnant of the Big Bang. This small piece of pure material from the early universe may provide light on the processes and motivations behind the formation of various star and galaxy types.

Using telescopes at the W. M. Keck Obervatory in Hawaii, a team of astronomers led by Fred Robert and Michael Murphy of the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia discovered a cloud of gas leftover from the Big Bang that was hiding far out in the universe. Behind the cloud, the telescope also discovered a quasar, which is an extremely bright active galactic nucleus that emits a lot of energy.

Big black holes in little galaxies, rogue black holes and other behemoths could offer clues to cosmic evolution.

UNSW quantum engineers have developed a new amplifier that could help other scientists search for elusive dark matter particles.

The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate but Einstein’s theory of General Relativity and our knowledge of particle physics predict that this shouldn’t be happening. Most cosmologists pin their hopes on Dark Energy to solve the problem. But, as Claudia de Rham argues, Einstein’s theory of gravity is incorrect over cosmic scales, her new theory of Massive Gravity limits gravity’s force in this regime, explains why acceleration is happening, and eliminates the need for Dark Energy.

You can see Claudia de Rham live, debating in ‘Dark Energy and The Universe’ alongside Priya Natarajan and Chris Lintott and ‘Faster Than Light’ with Tim Maudlin and João Magueijo at the upcoming HowTheLightGetsIn Festival on May 24th-27th in Hay-on-Wye.

This article is presented in association with Closer To Truth, an esteemed partner for the 2024 HowTheLightGetsIn Festival.

This change ‘is analogous to changing the direction of a new battleship in a few minutes,’ researcher Gerrit Schellenberger said.

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I’ve spent too much time thinking about how portals could work in the real world and, yes, I guess that is somewhat weird, but well. From energy conservation to momentum conservation to moving portals, I have it all sorted out for you. And the cake is not a lie.

Continue reading “The Physics of Portals (Made With Love)” »

I found this on NewsBreak: Astronomers Just Calculated The Spin Speed of a Supermassive Black Hole #Astronomy