Sir Roger Penrose, a mathematician and physicist from the University of Oxford who recently shared this year’s Nobel Prize in physics, says that our universe has undergone numerous Big Bangs, with another one on the way.
Throughout billions of years, galaxies expand and evolve through the appropriately titled “galactic immigration” events, which involve the formation of new stars and mergers with other galaxies. Scientists examine the movements of individual stars within a galaxy and its wide halo of stars and dark matter to learn more about the histories of these immigration episodes. But until now, such cosmic archaeology has only been possible in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
An international team of researchers has uncovered striking new evidence of a large galactic immigration event in the Andromeda Galaxy. Star motions exhibit complex patterns indicating migratory history similar to the Milky Way. The new findings were attained using Nicholas U.’s Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, which the DOE operates.
A team of astronomers studied the motions of nearly 7,500 stars in the inner halo of the Andromeda Galaxy, also known as Messier 31 (M31). They found patterns in their positions and motions that indicated how these stars originated as a part of an earlier galaxy that joined M31 about 2 billion years ago. Although such patterns have long been anticipated by theory, they have never been observed in a galaxy with such clarity.
Year 2020 :3.
Atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons. And they are small. So small that 100 million hydrogen atoms would span the width of your fingernail. String theory proposes that at the most fundamental level of space there are objects that are much smaller than these elementary particles: tiny little filaments of energy, called “strings.”
One of the most awaited events in modern astronomy may be upon us shortly, according to experts.
Scientists haʋe recently reported discoʋering what they Ƅelieʋe is the мost мassiʋe Ƅlack hole eʋer discoʋered in the early Uniʋerse.
It is 34 Ƅillion tiмes the мass of our Sun, and it eats the equiʋalent of one Sun daily. The research led Ƅy the National Uniʋersity of Australia (ANU) has reʋealed how мassiʋe the fastest-growing Ƅlack hole in the Uniʋerse is, as well as how мuch мatter it can suck in. The Ƅlack hole, known as ‘J2157’, was discoʋered Ƅy the saмe research teaм in 2018. The study detailing the huмongous Ƅlack hole’s characteristics has Ƅeen puƄlished in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronoмical Society. According to Dr. Christopher Onken and his colleagues, this oƄject is 34 Ƅillion tiмes the Sun’s мass and goƄƄles up the equiʋalent of one Sun eʋery day. That’s a Ƅillion with a Ƅ.
For other coмparisons, the мonstrous Ƅlack hole has a мass of approxiмately 8,000 tiмes that of Sagittarius A*, the Ƅlack hole located at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. “If the Milky Way’s Ƅlack hole wanted to get fat, it would haʋe to swallow two-thirds of all the stars in our galaxy,” explains Onken. Scientists studied the oƄject at a tiмe when the Uniʋerse was only 1.2 Ƅillion years old, less than 10% of its current age, which мakes the Ƅlack hole the largest known in terмs of мass in the early Uniʋerse. “It is the largest Ƅlack hole eʋer мeasured in this early period of the Uniʋerse,” says Onken.
Why would someone falling into a stellar-mass black hole be spaghettified, but someone crossing the event horizon of a supermassive black hole would not feel much discomfort?
As it turns out, there is a relatively simple equation that describes the tidal acceleration that a body of length d would feel, based on its distance from a given object with mass M: a = 2GMd/R3, where a is the tidal acceleration, G is the gravitational constant, and R is the body’s distance to the center of the object (with mass M).
Nothing sucks more than a supermassive black hole, but according to a group of researchers, the enormous objects found at the heart of many galaxies may be driving the expansion of the cosmos.
The radical claim comes from an international team who compared growth rates of black holes in different galaxies. They conclude that the spread of masses observed could be explained by black holes bearing cores of “dark energy”, the mysterious force behind the accelerating expansion of the universe.
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If travel to other realities and multiverses is possible, then so is conflict between them, but how would a multiversal war be fought?
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Interstellar dust captures a significant fraction of elements heavier than helium in the solid state and is an indispensable component both in theory and observations of galaxy evolution.
Dust emission is generally the primary coolant of the interstellar medium (ISM) and facilitates the gravitational collapse and fragmentation of gas clouds from which stars form, while altering the emission spectrum of galaxies from ultraviolet (UV) to far-infrared wavelengths through the reprocessing of starlight. However, the astrophysical origin of various types of dust grains remains an open question, especially in the early Universe.
Here we report direct evidence for the presence of carbonaceous grains from the detection of the broad UV absorption feature around 2175A˚ in deep near-infrared spectra of galaxies up to the first billion years of cosmic time, at a redshift (z) of ∼7. This dust attenuation feature has previously only been observed spectroscopically in older, more evolved galaxies at redshifts of z3. The carbonaceous grains giving rise to this feature are often thought to be produced on timescales of hundreds of millions of years by asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars. Our results suggest a more rapid production scenario, likely in supernova (SN) ejecta.
The trouble starts when they attempt to beam up from a planet during an ion storm. Something goes wrong. They appear aboard the Enterprise, but things are askew: Crew members greet the captain with Nazi-style salutes, and First Officer Spock sports a goatee. Observing these small but significant differences, Kirk muses that the crew has materialized in “a parallel universe coexisting with ours on another dimensional plane.”
These days, one parallel universe is hardly enough for science fiction. Instead, it seems the entire multiverse is having its Hollywood moment. Films like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Everything Everywhere All at Once entice the viewer with multiple versions of various characters and a dizzying array of alternate realities. Though they’re not particularly heavy on the physics, these films are definitely latching onto something. The idea of the multiverse — the provocative notion that our universe is just one of many— has fully cemented itself in mainstream pop culture. (Or, at least, in the current phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.) Its appeal as a storytelling device is obvious. Just as time travel allowed Marty McFly to experience different timelines in the Back to the Future series, multiverse tales allow characters to explore a multitude of worlds with varying degrees of similarity to our own, as well as altered versions of themselves.
While Hollywood can’t seem to get enough of the multiverse, it remains deeply controversial among scientists. Ask a prominent physicist whether they believe in a multitude of universes beyond our own, and you’ll get either a resounding yes or a vehement no, depending on whom you encounter. Advocates on the two sides show no mercy toward each other in their books, on their blogs, and, of course, on Twitter. But physicists didn’t pull the idea out of thin air — rather, several distinct lines of reasoning seem to point to the multiverse’s existence, bolstering the idea’s merit. Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, has called the multiverse “the most controversial idea in physics.”
