Lifeboat Foundation

To solve a long-standing puzzle about how long a neutron can “live” outside an atomic nucleus, physicists entertained a wild but testable theory positing the existence of a right-handed version of our left-handed universe. They designed a mind-bending experiment at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to try to detect a particle that has been speculated but not spotted. If found, the theorized “mirror neutron”—a dark-matter twin to the neutron—could explain a discrepancy between answers from two types of neutron lifetime experiments and provide the first observation of dark matter.

“Dark matter remains one of the most important and puzzling questions in science—clear evidence we don’t understand all matter in nature,” said ORNL’s Leah Broussard, who led the study published in Physical Review Letters.

Continue reading “Physicists confront the neutron lifetime puzzle” »

Special relativity famously dictates that no known object can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum – making it unlikely that humans will ever send spacecraft to explore beyond our local area of the Milky Way. However, new research by Erik Lentz at the University of Göttingen suggests there could be a way beyond this limit. The only catch is that his scheme requires vast amounts of energy and so may never actually be able to propel a spacecraft (Class. Quant. Grav. 38 075015).

Lentz proposes that conventional energy sources could arrange the structure of space–time in the form of a soliton – a robust singular wave. This soliton would act like a “warp bubble’”, contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind. Unlike objects within it, space–time itself can bend, expand or warp at any speed. A spacecraft contained in a hyperfast bubble could therefore arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space without breaking any physical laws.

It had been thought that the only way to produce a warp drive was by generating vast amounts of negative energy – perhaps by using some sort of undiscovered exotic matter or by manipulating dark energy. To get around this problem, Lentz constructed an unexplored geometric structure of space–time to derive a new family of solutions to Einstein’s general relativity equations called positive-energy solitons. Though Lentz’s solitons appear to conform to Einstein’s general theory of relativity and remove the need to create negative energy, space agencies will not be building warp drives any time soon, if ever. Part of the reason is that Lentz’s positive-energy warp drive requires a huge amount of energy. According to Lentz, a 100 m radius spacecraft would require the energy equivalent to “hundreds of times the mass of Jupiter”.

As they probe the secrets of the cosmos, scientists question whether our reality is but one in a multiverse.

Deep Follow-up of GW151226 — an ordinary binary or a low-mass ratio merger?

Now that we’ve been detecting gravitational waves.

Continue reading “Gravitational Wave Events With Split Personalities” »

After some serious number crunching, a UBC researcher has come up with a mathematical model for a viable time machine.

Ben Tippett, a mathematics and physics instructor at UBC’s Okanagan campus, recently published a study about the feasibility of time travel. Tippett, whose field of expertise is Einstein’s theory of general relativity, studies black holes and science fiction when he’s not teaching. Using math and physics, he has created a formula that describes a method for time travel.

“People think of time travel as something as fiction,” says Tippett. “And we tend to think it’s not possible because we don’t actually do it. But, mathematically, it is possible.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=V9Id-Ayy12g

Time travel into the past is a tricky thing. We know of no single law of physics that absolutely forbids it, and yet we can’t find a way to do it, and if we could do it, the possibility opens up all sorts of uncomfortable paradoxes (like what would happen if you killed your own grandfather).

But there could be a way to do it. We just need to find a wormhole first.

Continue reading “Can wormholes act like time machines?” »

According to Big Bang Theory, About 13.7 billion years ago, our entire universe existed as a singularity. It is really Difficult to imagine, how all the matter in the universe and space itself, existed in a form smaller than a subatomic particle.
But here, even more difficult question suddenly arises: What existed before the big bang?
Actually it doesn’t make any sense to ask, what happened before the big bang, as it is believed that time itself did not exist before the big bang!!! Space and time both were created after the big bang.
It is something like asking, what part of earth is north of the north pole. The north Pole is the most northern point on earth and so there is nowhere north of it.
But there is also possibility that something was there before the Big Bang happened
According to the “the big Bounce” theory, our universe is the recycled result of another universe, that dies and.
collapses in on itself. This collapsing universe would come back to a singularity before bouncing back out. It results in the big bang and a brand-new universe is again created.
But there is a problem with the big Bounce theory. Actually according to current observations, our universe is constantly expanding faster than ever before. But the big Bounce theory requires the universe to be contracted so that it can reach at the stage of singularity.
Another Possibility is of the parallel universe. According to this theory our universe is not the only Universe that exists. it is one of many universes in the Grand multiverse.
According to some scientists it may also be possible, our universe is at the other end of a black hole called a white hole.
A White hole has properties just opposite to that of the black hole.
In general relativity, a white hole is a hypothetical region of spacetime which cannot be entered from the outside, although matter and light can escape from it. In this sense it is the reverse of a black hole, which can only be entered from the outside from which matter and light cannot escape. Unlike black holes, white holes spew material into space rather than sucking material in.
All that we have discussed here, are the possibilities, what existed before the big bang. Actually we don’t really know, what really caused the big bang and what was present before it. Was there no space and time before Big Bang is also a mystery.

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Continue reading “What Was Before The Big Bang- The Big Bang Theory- Beginning of The Universe- Black hole- multiverse” »

The structure of the universe is often described as being a cosmic web of filaments, nodes, and voids, with the nodes being clusters of galaxies, the largest gravitationally bound objects known. These nodes are thought to have been seeded by small-amplitude density fluctuations like those observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) which grew until they collapsed into the structures seen today. While the CMB is well understood, and the details of present-day galaxy clusters are well-described, the intermediate phases of evolution lack sufficient observations to constrain the models. Traditional galaxy cluster searches assume these objects have had enough time to equilibrate so that the intergalactic gas has heated up enough to be detected in X-ray emission. To detect the more distant galaxies and protoclusters that are too faint to detect in the X-ray, astronomers use their bright infrared or submillimeter emission instead.

The supercluster SPT2349−56, discovered in the submillimeter band by the South Pole Telescope, is so distant that its light has been traveling for over twelve billion years. It hosts over thirty submillimeter-bright galaxies and dozens of other luminous and/or spectroscopically confirmed star-forming galaxies. It is one of the most active star forming complexes known, producing over ten thousand stars per year. One of its bright sources appears to be the merger of over twenty galaxies. The stellar mass of the system, however, was not known, making it impossible for example to know whether the huge burst of stars was the result of an extraordinary efficiency or simply arose because the system was so extremely large.

CfA astronomer Matthew Ashby was a member of a team that has now completed very deep observations at optical and infrared wavelengths to obtain the stellar masses through spectral energy distribution (SED) analyses. They used the Gemini and Hubble Space Telescopes to obtain optical/near infrared flux measurements and Spitzer’s IRAC camera for the infrared flux. In order to model the SEDs, the many point sources detected need to be matched to one another at all wavelengths. This is a complex undertaking, and the scientists describe the processes for doing so while also addressing the serious blending that can occur due to inadequate spatial resolution in the infrared.

The impressive feat went down without watching it feast.

The team said that the very intense gravity of the black hole will stretch out the duration of the lensing event for over 200 days.

Continue reading “Hubble telescope figures out the trick to weighing a lonely black hole” »