Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: physics – Page 90

The Habitable Worlds Observatory could See Lunar and Solar ‘Exo-Eclipses’

A future space observatory could use exo-eclipses to tease out exomoon populations.

If you’re like us, you’re still coming down from the celestial euphoria that was last month’s total solar eclipse. The spectacle of the moon blocking out the sun has also provided astronomers with unique scientific opportunities in the past, from the discovery of helium to proof for general relativity. Now, eclipses in remote exoplanetary systems could aid in the hunt for elusive exomoons.

A recent study out of the University of Michigan in partnership with Johns Hopkins APL and the Department of Physics and the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology entitled “Exomoons & Exorings with the Habitable Worlds Observatory I: On the Detection of Earth-Moon Analog Shadows & Eclipses,” posted to the arXiv preprint server, looks to use a future mission to hunt for eclipses, transits and occultations in distant systems.

PBS Space Time

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.

Support us on Patreon at / pbsspacetime.
Get your own Space Time t­shirt at http://bit.ly/1QlzoBi.
Tweet at us! @pbsspacetime.
Facebook: facebook.com/pbsspacetime.
Email us! pbsspacetime [at] gmail [dot] com.
Comment on Reddit: / pbsspacetime.

Help translate our videos!

Isaac Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation tells us that there is a singularity to be found within a black hole, but scientists and mathematicians have found a number of issues with Newton’s equations. They don’t always accurately represent reality. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is a more complete theory of gravity. So does using the General Theory of Relativity eliminate the singularity? No. Not only does it concur with Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation but it also reveals a second singularity, not at the center of the black hole but at the event horizon.

Previous Episode:

Continue reading “PBS Space Time” | >

Researchers tune Casimir force using magnetic fields

Research teams led by Prof. Zeng Changgan and Zhang Hui from the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have achieved a reversible transition from the Casimir attraction to repulsion under magnetic field control by using a magnetic fluid as an intermediate medium. Their study is published in Nature Physics.

Einstein Telescope could launch a new era in astronomy

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.

Wild New Study Suggests Gravity Can Exist Without Mass

What is gravity without mass? Both Newton’s revolutionary laws describing its universal effect and Einstein’s proposal of a dimpled spacetime, we’ve thought of gravity as exclusively within the domain of matter.

Now a wild new study suggesting that gravity can exist without mass, conveniently eliminating the need for one of the most elusive substances in our Universe: dark matter.

Dark matter is a hypothetical, invisible mass thought to make up 85 percent of the Universe’s total bulk. Originally devised to account for galaxies holding together under high speed rotation, it has yet to be directly observed, leading physicists to propose all sorts of out-there ideas to avoid invoking this elusive material as a way to plug the holes in current theories.

Complete Stellar Collapse: Unusual Star System Proves that Stars can Die Quietly

University of Copenhagen astrophysicists help explain a mysterious phenomenon, whereby stars suddenly vanish from the night sky. Their study of an unusual binary star system has resulted in convincing evidence that massive stars can completely collapse and become black holes without a supernova explosion.

One day, the star at the center of our own solar system, the Sun, will begin to expand until it engulfs Earth. It will then become increasingly unstable until it eventually contracts into a small and dense object known as a white dwarf.

However, if the Sun were of a weight class roughly eight times greater or more, it would probably go out with a huge bang — as a supernova. Its collapse would culminate into an explosion, ejecting energy and mass into space with enormous force, prior to leaving behind a neutron star or a black hole in its wake.

/* */