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Archive for the ‘cosmology’ category: Page 332

Dec 3, 2018

What Happens When Two Black Holes Collide?

Posted by in category: cosmology

On September 14, 2015, signals from one of the Universe’s most mind-boggling, powerful events produced the tiniest signal in a pair of detectors, one in Louisiana and one in Washington state. They’d detected two already-wild objects, black holes, slamming into one another.

You’re probably familiar with black holes as cosmic vacuum cleaners, but they’re a little bit more complex than that. One core takeaway of Einstien’s theory of gravity is that heavy enough things actually change the shape of the space around them, and gravity is how we experience this warping. Black holes are regions of space so small and massive that they carry a point-of-no-return, an “event horizon” beyond which space is so warped that every path that anything could travel leads to the black hole’s middle. Nothing, not even light, can escape.

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Dec 2, 2018

Black hole BREAKTHROUGH: Scientists ‘REWRITE astronomy textbooks’ with space discovery

Posted by in categories: cosmology, innovation

BLACK holes are the most mysterious objects in the universe, but scientists have come one small step closer to understanding the impossibly powerful phenomena.

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Dec 2, 2018

Newest Atomic Clocks Can Detect The Gravitational Distortions Of Time Itself

Posted by in category: cosmology

Scientists have now constructed atomic clocks so precise and sensitive that they can measure the gravitational distortion of spacetime and may even help solve the mystery of dark matter.

The latest experimental atomic clocks at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are doing their bit to improve timekeeping and navigation, but they’ve also gone much further. They can detect faint signals from gravity and the early Universe and perhaps even dark matter.

The two clocks have smashed records for systematic uncertainty, stability and reproducibility, making them top-performing timepieces.

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Dec 2, 2018

World-Renowned Physicist Explains How Our Universe Will End

Posted by in category: cosmology

It started with a Big Bang, but will it end as suddenly?

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Dec 1, 2018

New Research Could Rewrite Physics From the Ground Up

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

Four researchers came together to propose the addition of six novel particles to tackle five enduring issues within the current Standard Model Theory. This new proposed model, detailed in APS Physics, is named SMASH for “Standard Model Axion See-saw Higgs portal inflation.” The team proposed that particles rho and axion could explain inflation and dark matter respectively, along with three heavy right-handed neutrinos.

With these findings, the researchers hope to answer the following questions about the Standard Model:

Continue reading “New Research Could Rewrite Physics From the Ground Up” »

Nov 30, 2018

Astronomers measure total starlight emitted over 13.7bn years

Posted by in category: cosmology

The first stars flickered into being a few hundred million years after the big bang. Since then, galaxies have churned out stars at a stupendous rate, and scientists estimate there were now about a trillion trillion.

In total, the astronomers estimate, stars have radiated 4×1084 photons (a photon being the smallest unit of light). Or put another way: 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons.

The astronomers based their calculation on measurements of the extragalactic background light (EBL), a cosmic fog of radiation that has been accumulating since stars first illuminated the dark, vast expanse of space.

Continue reading “Astronomers measure total starlight emitted over 13.7bn years” »

Nov 30, 2018

In a galaxy far away, an old star exploded and became a supernova

Posted by in category: cosmology

About 170 million years later, the light emanating from the explosion was received by an arsenal of high-powered telescopes here at Earth. While the telescopes observed, a few of those stars ended their long lives in dramatic explosions. See what we learned: https://go.nasa.gov/2rcIaOr&h=AT2ywbQrtay_XNW6uqmtoFtsirkvbj…cfHXkJ10lQ

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Nov 30, 2018

This dark

Posted by in categories: cosmology, materials

This dark, tangled web spotted by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is a supernova remnant, created after a massive star ended its life in an explosion and threw its constituent material out into surrounding space. Discover more: https://go.nasa.gov/2G0nVgS&h=AT0m92-1V7h2Z6pdebGy-JSLFW…CsgI5QIBpg

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Nov 29, 2018

If Light Can’t Escape Black Holes, How Do We Get Photos of Them… and More Questions From Our Readers

Posted by in category: cosmology

You asked, we answered.

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Nov 25, 2018

Unexpectedly Vanishing Quasars Are Mystifying Scientists

Posted by in category: cosmology

Quasars powered by supermassive black holes have been unexpectedly vanishing. Scientists have started to figure out why.

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