prisonplanet--2019-03-14--Scientists have built worlds first time machine in experiment which defies the laws of physics

Scientists have built world’s first ‘time machine’ in experiment which defies the laws of physics

SCIENTISTS have built the world’s first time machine — sort of.  Working with electrons in the bizarre realm of quantum mechanics, they first created the equivalent of a break for a game of pool.  The “balls” scattered and, according to the laws of physics, should have appeared to split in a haphazard way.  But researchers managed to make them reform in their original order — looking as if they were turning back time.  Lead researcher Dr Gordey Lesovik, of Moscow’s Laboratory of the Physics of Quantum Information at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, said: “We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time.”  His team used a rudimentary quantum computer, which carries information on subatomic particles. He hopes their findings, in journal Scientific Reports, will help improve processing power.  This article was posted: Thursday, March 14, 2019 at 7:04 am


sottnet--2019-02-01--Physics experiment leads to 1st quantum entanglement of living organisms

A lot of scientists think that major quantum effects like entanglement , in which particles separated by vast distances mysteriously link up their states, shouldn't work for living things. But a new paper argues that it already has - that scientists in 2016 have already created a sort of Schrödinger's cat - only with quantum-entangled bacteria.Usually, we describe quantum physics as a set of rules that governs the behavior of extremely tiny things: light particles, atoms and other infinitesimally small objects. The larger world, at the bacterial scale (which is also our scale - the chaotic realm of life) isn't supposed to be anywhere near that weird.That was what the physicist Erwin Schrödinger meant to say when he proposed his famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, as Jonathan O'Callaghan pointed out in Scientific American. In that thought experiment, a cat in a box would be exposed to a radioactive particle that had even odds of decaying or not. Until the box was opened, the poor cat would be both alive and dead at the same time, which seemed clearly absurd to Schrödinger. There's just something about the quantum world that doesn't seem to make sense in ours.Chiara Marletto, a physicist at the University of Oxford and a co-author on the recent paper, which was published Oct. 10 in The Journal of Physics Communications, said that there's no reason to expect that there's a limit on the size of quantum effects."I'm interested in studying the border where quantum rules stop applying," she told Live Science. "Some people say that quantum theory is not a universal theory, so it does not apply to any object in the universe, but actually will at some point break down. My interest is to show that actually, that's not the case."To that end, Marletto and her colleagues went back and looked at a paper published in 2017 in the journal Small that appeared to show some limited quantum effects in bacteria. They built a theoretical model of what might have really been going on in that University of Sheffield experiment, andHere's why that's such a radical idea:Look at yourself, then look at the person next to you. You're physically separate beings, right?Separate the particles by thousands of miles , and you could still instantaneously learn the physical state of one of them by measuring only the other one.. What works for a proton should work for an elephant. But in practice, bigger systems are far more difficult to entangle. And scientists have debated whether living things are simply too complex to entangle. You'd struggle to entangle two elephants for the same reason you'd struggle to teach those elephants to do pairs figure skating at an Olympic level: There's no specific law of nature saying that it's impossible, but most people would agree it's not possible.And yet, in 2017, a team of researchers based at the University of Sheffield in England said they had created a state of what's known as quantum coupling in photosynthetic bacteria . They placed a few hundred bacteria in a tiny, mirrored room and bounced light around. (Based on the length of the mini room, only a certain wavelength of light persisted over time, known as the resonant frequency.)(For more on this effect, check out this link .)Marletto said that her model shows that this effect likely involved more than just quantum coupling. There was likely something going on even weirder than what those experimentalists described, she said.[Interactive image here] The bacteria, she and her colleagues showed, likely became entangled with the light. What this means is that the equations used to define each of the waveforms - of both the light and the bacteria - become one equation.(According to quantum mechanics, all objects can be described as both particle and wave, but practically speaking, in "large" objects like bacteria, the waveforms are impossible to see or measure.)Like Schrödinger's proverbial cat in a box, the whole system seemed to exist in an uncertain netherworld: The light particles seem to have simultaneously both hit and missed the bacteria.This doesn't prove the bacteria and the light were definitely entangled, however - there are other possible explanations that involve classical physics, and those haven't been ruled out yet, she said."What is missing in this experiment is the ability to confirm entanglement in a deeper way," she said.Quantum experiments often involve measuring physical features of one entangled particle to figure out whether those features influence the other particle. In this case, that would have meant measuring physical traits of the bacteria in concert with physical traits of the light. That wasn't possible in this experiment, but Marletto said experiments are already being designed that could demonstrate true entanglement.Even more interesting, she said, is the question of whether the bacteria use the entanglement in some way that's useful to them, though answering that question would take much more experimental work."It is possible that natural selection has led the bacteria to take advantage of quantum effects," she said.


sputnik--2019-12-29--Physicists Achieve Conduction of Electricity at Close to Speed of Light

A European team composed of researchers from the University of Konstanz, the University of Luxembourg, CNRS-Université Paris Sud, the Center for Materials Physics, and Donostia International Physics Center in San Sebastián, Spain, has found a way to transport electrons at times below the femtosecond range by manipulating them with light. The researchers believe their findings could have major implications for the future of data processing and computing.  In the study, Professor Leitenstorfer and colleagues aimed to develop an experimental set-up for manipulating ultrashort light pulses at femtosecond scales below a single oscillation cycle, and to create nanostructures suited for high-precision measurements and the manipulation of electronic charges.  Contemporary electronic components, which are traditionally based on silicon semiconductor technology, can be switched on or off within picoseconds. Standard mobile phones and computers work at maximum frequencies of several gigahertz while individual transistors can approach one terahertz.  The laser used by Leitenstorfer’s team was able to push out one hundred million single-cycle light pulses every single second in order to generate a measurable current. Using nanoscale gold antennae in a bowtie shape, the electric field of the pulse was concentrated down into a gap measuring just six nanometres wide (six thousand-millionths of a metre). Thus, the researchers could switch electric currents at well under a femtosecond – less than half an oscillation period of the electric field of the light pulses.  Using the insanely fast oscillations of light to help electrons pick up speed could provide new avenues for pushing the limits on electronics – and potentially offer insights into quantum computing. "This is very basic research we are talking about here and may take decades to implement," Leitenstorfer said.  Eventually, Leitenstorfer and his team think that the limitations of today's computing systems could be overcome using plasmonic nanoparticles and optoelectronic devices, using the characteristics of light pulses to manipulate electrons at super-small scales.  The researchers are hoping the study will open up new opportunities for understanding how light interacts with condensed matter, enabling observation of quantum phenomena on new temporal and spatial scales. Building on the new approach to electron dynamics, the researchers will move on to investigate electron transport at atomic time and length scales in even more sophisticated solid-state devices with picometer dimensions.


thesun--2019-03-13--Scientists have built a time machine in experiment which defies the laws of physics

Scientists have built a ‘time machine’ in experiment which defies the laws of physics

SCIENTISTS have built the world’s first time machine — sort of.  Working with electrons in the bizarre realm of quantum mechanics, they first created the equivalent of a break for a game of pool.  The “balls” scattered and, according to the laws of physics, should have appeared to split in a haphazard way. But researchers managed to make them reform in their original order — looking as if they were turning back time.  Lead researcher Dr Gordey Lesovik, of Moscow’s Laboratory of the Physics of Quantum Information, said: “We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time.”  His team used a rudimentary quantum computer, which carries information on subatomic particles. He hopes their findings, in journal Scientific Reports, will help improve processing power.  Not quite Dr Who, but even Time Lords had to start somewhere . . .


wakingtimes--2019-12-10--Physicists Are Creating Lasers Powerful Enough to Rip Holes in the Fabric of Reality

People generally balk at the idea of scientists experimenting with and manipulating certain pillars of physical reality, whether that be gene splicing, artificial intelligence, or nuclear fusion.  But in the last couple of decades, a new twist on this modern Island of Dr. Moreau-style narrative has surfaced in the form of scientists experimenting on high-velocity elementary particles (such as the CERN Hadron Collider) and other quantum enigmas.  Laser physicists recently chortled “hold my beer” in announcing that they are developing a laser so powerful it can shred all matter, including the very electrons and nuclei that constitute the fabric of reality itself.  Earlier this month, the physics journal Physical Review Letters published a paper discussing how new technology could allow a high-velocity laser to pierce “through [the] fabric of the Universe.” The trick, according to a researcher at the Université Paris-Saclay, is to anchor and focus the laser using a mirror made of plasma.  In an analysis written for Ars Technica, physicist and writer Chris Lee broke down the logistical hurdles the new technique could overcome. By consolidating a 5-10 petawatt laser for around 5-5000 joules of energy for somewhere between a picosecond or femtosecond, scientists can muster an intensity of 1022W/cm2, which is when a plasma state kicks in and creates a conductive gas of excited particles whose electrons reflect light.  Other laser experiments have concentrated as much as 200 petawatts of power on a target for less than a trillionth of a second.  Using a plasma mirror, scientists can reach 1029W/cm2 and accelerate electrons to the point where they will be “generating real charges from the apparent nothingness of empty space.”  “The way the mirror oscillates also means that the light frequencies are all multiples of each other,” writes Chris Lee. “The mirror reflects all these colors together, and they add up to a pulse that is even shorter in time. In fact, the pulse goes from being 20fs in duration to 0.1fs (a femtosecond is 10-15s). This by itself increases the intensity by a factor of 100. The shorter wavelength also means that the light focuses to a smaller spot. “The end result is a factor of 1,000 higher intensity for the same input laser and a simple mirror swap.” “They can all stare in wonder at the hole they made,” Lee concludes.  What is the purpose of using lasers to rip a hole in space/time?  Previous laser experiments have sought to discover virtual particles, extra dimensions, and even dark matter. Last year, Chinese scientists used a 100-petawatt laser—“10,000 times more energy than there is in all the world’s electrical grids combined”—to try and produce electrons out of the quantum ether by separating them from their antimatter twins.  For now it appears we’re going to have to trust that scientists know what they’re doing with the fabric of reality.


sottnet--2019-06-28--Physicists discover new optical phenomenon croissant-shaped twists of light

Physicists discover new optical phenomenon: croissant-shaped twists of light

The pastry-like optical phenomenon could one day be used in industrial applications or to improve communications technology.That's the result of new research revealing a never-before-seen property of light called self-torque This newfound characteristic of photons involvessimilar to a bit of dirt as it whirls down a drain. The odd behavior, described today in the journal Science, might one day lead to improved communications technology and novel ways of manipulating microscopic objects."We're always discovering new things in science, but it's not that often you discover a new fundamental property," says study coauthor Kevin Dorney , a physical chemist at the JILA laboratory run by the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.The recipe for pastry-shaped lasers starts withThis property, itself only officially discovered in 1992, can be imparted to a laser beam when it passes through a seashell-shaped lens.Shine the laser on a surface, and it will look like a fat ring with a hole in the center or, more colloquially, a donut.Dorney and his colleagues had been working on making light with orbital angular momentum in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum known as the- situated between the well-known ultraviolet produced in black light lamps and the high-energy x-rays used in medical technology.The extreme ultraviolet lasers had to be produced using two red optical laser pulses shot into a collection of gaseous argon atoms. The red laser light liberated electrons from the argon, which would then "ride the waves of the laser like a surfer and gain energy," Dorney says.The team then wondered what would happen if their initial red laser pulses had different orbital angular momentum speeds and were out of sync with one another by a few quadrillionths of a second. Simulations showed that the donut-shaped optical pulses would add together in a strange way, causing the resulting helical extreme ultraviolet beams to quickly ratchet up their twisting. In these models, a cross-section of the ultraviolet laser looked like the waning moon or, in pastry terms, a croissant."You wouldn't expect from adding donuts that you would get a croissant," Dorney says. But sure enough, when the researchers tried the experiment with actual light, "we clicked the right button, and it went from a donut to a croissant and back again."because it is akin to a wrench speeding up as it tightens a bolt, except in that case, the torque is being caused by an external agent - the hand accelerating the wrench. True self-torque is seen in very few systems in nature, and generally only in extreme situations. For instance, when two black holes revolve around one another , their gravitational interactions can cause them to yank on each other and rapidly speed up their spinning.So what uses does light with self-torque have?"The short answer is, we're still figuring that out," Dorney says. "The property is so new that the immediate applications are not obvious."But the situation was much the same when light with orbital angular momentum was first produced more than a quarter century ago. Nowadays, it is being used to make ultra-powerful microscopes, move tiny parts of industrial machinery, and send extremely high data rate signals through optical communications networks. Perhaps that's why discovering another new property of light has made other researchers in this field giddy."It's just so exciting and fascinating," says Alan Willner , an electrical engineer at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the recent work. "It's like a gift that keeps giving."


sputnik--2019-09-29--Enigmatic Planet X at Least 45 Billion Km Away From Sun Might Be Dense Black Hole Physicists Say

Enigmatic Planet X at Least 45 Billion Km Away From Sun Might Be Dense Black Hole, Physicists Say

Physicists from the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology at Durham University have suggested that what is thought to be the yet-undiscovered Planet Nine could be a small black hole thought to be the size of a bowling ball.  In a recent paper titled “What if Planet 9 is a Primordial Black Hole?” they theorise that this mysterious object with a mass about five to 15 times that of Earth could disturb rocky bodies floating far beyond Neptune, absorbing matter around it. The astronomers suggest seeking for flashes of gamma rays created by interactions of dark matter particles in the accretion disk surrounding the purported black hole to prove or disprove the theory.  Although researchers admit that it is more likely that this enigmatic body is a simple planet, as was initially thought, they call on astronomers to remain open to the idea.  “By simply focusing on the concept of a planet, you restrict the experimental search that you’re undertaking. Once you start thinking about more exotic objects, like primordial black holes, you think in different ways,” one of the study’s authors, James Unwin, told Gizmodo.  Unwin advocated looking for the object in cosmic ray bursts, along with using typical planet-searching tools, like searching in visible light to identify the theorised object’s existence by the effect it has on light emanating from more distant objects.  Caltech researchers presented mathematical evidence there is a Planet X in 2015 after motions of objects past Neptune appeared to be affected. According to their calculations, the body sits between 45 billion and 150 billion kilometers from the Sun.


fortruss--2019-08-20--Astronomers discover new planet orbiting Milky Way star

Astronomers at the National Center for Scientific Research at Grenoble Alpes University in France have discovered a second planet revolving around the star Beta Pictoris, outside of our solar system.  Beta Pictoris is a young Milky Way star surrounded by a dust disk, according to Nature magazine.  “We talking about a giant planet about 3,000 times more massive than Earth, situated 2.7 times further from its star than the Earth is from the Sun,” said Anne-Marie Lagrange, an astronomer at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research and lead author of a study in Nature Astronomy.  “To better understand the early stage of formation and evolution, this is probably the best planetary system we know of,” Lagrange told AFP.  The new planet, called Beta Pictoris C, has a mass nine times larger than Jupiter and takes 1,200 days to complete its orbit, as does Beta Pictoris B, which is the first exoplanet of this system, discovered in 2009. However, Beta Pictoris C is approximately three times closer to the star they both orbit.  The presence of the new celestial body was determined after analyzing more than ten years of data obtained through the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) high precision spectrograph, installed on the European ESO telescope of the La Silla Astronomical Observatory in Chile.  In addition, the study indicates that more data will be needed to make more accurate estimates of Beta Pictoris C characteristics as well as system dynamics.  Scientists hope to gain new information about the planet from data from the European Space Agency’s astronomy Gaia space mission, as well as from the future Extremely Large Telescope being built.  Beta Pictoris has fascinated astronomers for the past thirty years by allowing us to observe a planetary system during its development process around a star.  Located in the southern constellation of Pictor — “The Painter’s Easel” — Beta Pictoris is the second brightest star in its constellation.


france24--2019-04-10--Astronomers unveil the first-ever photo of a black hole

European Southern Observatory/AFP | A handout photo provided by the European Southern Observatory on April 10 shows the first photograph of a black hole and its fiery halo released by Event Horizon Telescope astronomers.  Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered throughout the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity.  The image of a dark core encircled by a flame-orange halo of white-hot gas and plasma looks like any number of artists' renderings over the last 30 years.  But this time, it's the real deal.  Scientists have been puzzling over invisible "dark stars" since the 18th century, but never has one been spied by a telescope, much less photographed.  The supermassive black hole now immortalised by a far-flung network of radio telescopes is 50 million lightyears away in a galaxy known as M87.  "It's a distance that we could have barely imagined," Frederic Gueth, an astronomer at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and co-author of studies detailing the findings, told AFP.  Most speculation had centred on the other candidate targeted by the Event Horizon Telescope -- Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.  By comparison, Sag A* is only 26,000 lightyears from Earth.  Locking down an image of M87's supermassive black hole at such distance is comparable to photographing a pebble on the Moon.  It was also a team effort.  "Instead of constructing a giant telescope that would collapse under its own weight, we combined many observatories," Michael Bremer, an astronomer at the Institute for Millimetric Radio Astronomy (IRAM) in Grenoble, told AFP.  Over several days in April 2017, eight radio telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, Spain, Mexico, Chile, and the South Pole zeroed in on Sag A* and M87.  Knit together "like fragments of a giant mirror," in Bremer's words, they formed a virtual observatory some 12,000 kilometres across -- roughly the diameter of Earth.  In the end, M87 was more photogenic. Like a fidgety child, Sag A* was too "active" to capture a clear picture, the researchers said.  "The telescope is not looking at the black hole per se, but the material it has captured," a luminous disk of white-hot gas and plasma known as an accretion disk, said McNamara, who was not part of the team.  "The light from behind the black hole gets bent like a lens."  The unprecedented image -- so often imagined in science and science fiction -- has been analysed in six studies co-authored by 200 experts from 60-odd institutions and published Wednesday in Astrophysical Journal Letters.  "I never thought that I would see a real one in my lifetime," said CNRS astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, author in 1979 of the first digital simulation of a black hole.  Coined in the mid-60s by American physicist John Archibald Wheeler, the term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed as to create a gravity field from which even light cannot escape.  The more mass, the bigger the hole.  At the same scale of compression, Earth would fit inside a thimble. The Sun would measure a mere six kilometres edge-to-edge.  A successful outcome depended in part on the vagaries of weather during the April 2017 observation period.  "For everything to work, we needed to have clear visibility at every [telescope] location worldwide", said IRAM scientist Pablo Torne, recalling collective tension, fatigue and, finally, relief.  Torne was at the controls of the Pico Veleta telescope in Spain's Sierra Madre mountains.  After that, is was eight months of nail-biting while scientists at MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn crunched the data.  The Universe is filled with electromagnetic "noise", and there was no guarantee M87's faint signals could be extracted from a mountain of data so voluminous it could not be delivered via the Internet.  There was at least one glitch.  "We were desperately waiting for the data from the South Pole Telescope, which -- due to extreme weather conditions during the southern hemisphere winter -- didn't arrive until six months later," recalled Helger Rottmann from the Max Planck Institute.  It arrived, to be precise, on December 23, 2017.  "When, a few hours later, we saw that everything was there, it was one hell of a Christmas present," Rottmann said.  It would take another year, however, to piece together the data into an image.  "To be absolutely sure, we did the work four times with four different teams," said Gueth.  Each team came up with exactly the same spectacular, history-making picture of a dark circle encased in a flaming-red halo.


naturalnews--2019-02-06--Astronomers find strong evidence of a frigid alien world just 6 light years away from the sun

(Natural News) Our Sun’s second closest neighboring star might not be alone, after all. A recent Spanish astronomical study theorized that a massive exoplanet is orbiting Barnard’s Star. The newly-discovered world is believed to be a frozen planet that is several times bigger than Earth.  Named after an American astronomer, Barnard’s Star is a red dwarf star found six light-years away from the Sun. Only the trio of stars that make up the Alpha Centauri star system are closer – and in 10,000 more years, that is going to change.  Its proximity make the lone star a popular target for sci-fi writers and planet hunters. The Spanish researchers from the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) and the Institute of Space Sciences (ICE) are the first to claim that they have found strong signs of a planet candidate.  If their hunch turns out to be correct, the planet candidate dubbed Barnard’s Star b (BS b) will become the second closest exoplanet to Earth. First place is still held by Proxima B, an exoplanet in the Alpha Centauri system that is only slightly bigger than our home planet. (Related: Nearby exoplanet could potentially support life.)  Finding Barnard’s Star b required the IEEC-ICE researchers to go through mountains of data on stellar light changes that they could attribute to the gravitational pull of the planet candidate. Starlight affected by this tugging will visibly flip-flop between the red and blue wavelengths of the light spectrum.  Get more news like this without being censored: Get the Natural News app for your mobile devices. Enjoy uncensored news, lab test results, videos, podcasts and more. Bypass all the unfair censorship by Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Get your daily news and videos directly from the source! Download here.  This style of hunting for exoplanets is called the “radial velocity” method. It is normally used to look for big planets that are very close to their parent stars, since these worlds have stronger gravitational pulls that cause bigger changes in the stellar light of their primary.  Although Barnard’s Star b is bigger than Earth, it still counts as a “small” planet. It is also the most distant exoplanet ever discovered through the radial velocity approach.  Furthermore, the Spanish researchers came across faint clues suggesting that there is another exoplanet around Barnard’s Star. The second signal is found much further away than Barnard’s Star b.  However, this second signal was considered to be insufficient for a planet candidate. The researchers have dismissed it for the time being until they get stronger evidence.  The new planet candidate is estimated to have 3.2 times the mass of our planet. That categorizes it as a “super-Earth” planet, bigger than our home planet but smaller than Neptune, Uranus, and other “ice giants.”  Barnard’s Star b is also much closer to its primary than the Earth is to the Sun. It is around 37 million miles (0.4 astronomical units) away from Barnard’s Star, which is roughly comparable to Mercury’s orbit.  But while our Sun has irradiated Mercury into an airless ball of rock, Barnard’s Star is a smaller, dimmer, and cooler star. Its potential planet is therefore in the “snow line” of the star system, which is cold enough to turn liquid water into frozen ice.  This led IEEC-ICE researchers to believe that Barnard’s Star b is a frozen world. They estimate the temperature on the surface of the exoplanet to be minus 275 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 170 degrees Celsius). Winter in Antarctica is scorching by comparison.  The Spanish researchers are currently waiting for data from the latest space observatories and upcoming ground-based equivalents. The new generation of scientific platforms can perform the kind of accurate measurement of stellar position to confirm the existence of Barnard’s Star b.  “Using this spectrum, the characteristics of the planet’s atmosphere — such as its winds and rotation rate — could be inferred,” said IEEC-ICE researcher Ignasi Ribas.


npr--2019-04-01--Young Astronomer Uses Artificial Intelligence To Discover 2 Exoplanets

A team led by 22-year-old Anne Dattilo, an undergraduate student at the University of Texas, Austin, discovered two planets, officially named K2-293b and K2-294b. The planets orbit stars more than 1,200 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius. **Courtesy of Anne Datillo** ****hide caption****  ****toggle caption****  Courtesy of Anne Datillo  A team led by 22-year-old Anne Dattilo, an undergraduate student at the University of Texas, Austin, discovered two planets, officially named K2-293b and K2-294b. The planets orbit stars more than 1,200 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius.  Courtesy of Anne Datillo  A team of astronomers led by an undergraduate student in Texas has discovered two planets orbiting stars more than 1,200 light-years from Earth.  Astronomers already knew of about 4,000 exoplanets, so finding two more might not seem like huge news. But it's who found them and how that's getting attention.  Anne Dattilo, a senior at the University of Texas, Austin, found the planets by using an artificial intelligence program to sift through a mountain of data collected by NASA's [Kepler space telescope](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html). By using AI, the 22-year-old is helping to usher in a new era in astronomical research.  Dattilo got involved in the project about a year and a half ago, after astronomer [Andrew Vanderburg](https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~avanderb/) gave a talk during one of her classes. Vanderburg uses data from Kepler to hunt for planets orbiting distant stars.  "And at the very end, he said, 'I'm taking undergrads if any of you want to do research on this subject finding planets,' " Dattilo recalls. "I decided that's what I wanted to do, so I emailed him."  Kepler, which launched in 2009, was designed to point at a small patch of sky and measure the light from some 100,000 stars in its field of view. If there is a planet orbiting one of the stars, the light coming from that star will dim slightly when the planet passes in front of it.  This illustration made available by NASA shows the Kepler space telescope, the planet-hunting spacecraft that launched in 2009. **NASA via AP** ****hide caption****  ****toggle caption****  NASA via AP  This illustration made available by NASA shows the Kepler space telescope, the planet-hunting spacecraft that launched in 2009.  NASA via AP  Toward the end of Kepler's life, mechanical failures meant it couldn't measure the light quite as accurately, so the data it collected were harder to interpret.  Dattilo modified an artificial intelligence program called AstroNet-K2 to work on data from the latter part of the Kepler mission. Once the modified program found stars that appeared to have planets, Dattilo and her colleagues used ground-based telescopes to confirm the findings.  The newly discovered planets, officially named K2-293b and K2-294b, orbit stars in the constellation Aquarius and are both slightly larger than Earth.  "If we want to know how many planets there are in total, we have to know how many planets we've found," Vanderburg said in [a statement](http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/20190326) from the University of Texas McDonald Observatory. "But we also have to know how many planets we missed. That's where this [AI] comes in."  Vanderburg and Google engineer Chris Shallue[ "first used AI to uncover a planet around a Kepler star](https://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/20171214)" in 2017, according to the statement.  [Jessie Christiansen](http://web.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/christia/), a research scientist with NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology, says she's impressed by what Dattilo's team accomplished. And in a way, she's not all that surprised.  "NASA makes all of the data publicly available," Christiansen says. "You just have to think of a new idea of what to do with the data that no one has done before."  [Michelle Ntampaka](https://itc.cfa.harvard.edu/people/michelle-ntampaka) of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics expects to see lots more astronomers using artificial intelligence techniques to analyze their data in the future. That's because newer telescopes don't so much collect images of stars and galaxies as digital data about these celestial objects.  "We're just going to see unprecedented data volumes, and we're going to have to come up with new ways to deal with that," Ntampaka says.  So writing a machine learning program as an undergrad is good preparation for Dattilo as she heads off to get her graduate degree in astronomy.  The discoveries have been accepted for [publication](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https- 3A__www.cfa.harvard.edu_-7Eavanderb_Deep-5FLearning- 5F2.pdf&d=DwMGaQ&c=E2nBno7hEddFhl23N5nD1Q&r=Z0zpjFSQtaEO1zgUOSHxGw&m =T29PCzgy7J1APJDxuVFNEfo3YBgCAQopIO8xEb1H- oQ&s=j2antBEXw1WhuBvq1yAOGBP6PSK1tkkek0bA8wuTrA8&e=) in _The Astronomical Journal._


sottnet--2019-06-02--Whats happening to Jupiters Great Red Spot Astronomers see unravelling of 400-year-old storm

What's happening to Jupiter's Great Red Spot? Astronomers see unravelling of 400-year-old storm

Jupiter's iconic storm is dying.Over the past week, amateur astronomers around the world have seen some unusual activity around the solar system's largest and longest-lasting storm, known as the Great Red Spot (GRS).The swirling red clouds that have been raging over the giant planet for centuries have been spotted forming "propellers" along the storm's edges, with these blade-like shapes spinning off and ultimately dissipating."This is very uncharted territory," said Glenn Orton, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who studies Jupiter. "We've never seen it like this before."The Great Red Spot is massive - roughly 13,000 kilometres in diameter - and it's been around for at least 400 years. But it has consistently been getting smaller. Decades ago, it could fit three Earths inside it. Now, it's the size of just one Earth.In 2017, scientists observed similar activity in the same place, along the western edge of the storm, but "not under the same circumstances," said Orton.What is unusual now, said Orton, is there is this "visibly dark line" going around the planet for the first time.Christopher Go, an amateur astronomer from Cebu City, in the Philippines, captured images of part of the storm on May 26 and 27. Witnessing this type of "unravelling" was a first for Go."The oval is ... bleeding material from the GRS," Go said, explaining the process that is transforming the storm. "This material will rotate around the GRS counterclockwise. As it goes south of the GRS, it is expected to distort the GRS, maybe causing it to shrink more."Orton said he is very appreciative of such observations by amateur astronomers, like Go, as it helps professional astronomers catch things that might otherwise have gone undetected. Professional astronomers need to book time in advance on the world's large telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, and that time can be precious."The amateur community is the one resource that gets measurements of Jupiter," Orton said. "They do the continuous monitoring.""At any given moment, there is someone, somewhere around the world imaging Jupiter," added Go. "This really helps us in our long-term understanding of Jupiter.""I hope it's still here," he said. "Nothing lasts forever."And while his outlook might seem a little gloomy, Orton said he's ready for anything."I would have thought that one [propeller] would have come off and that would have been the end of it," he said. "But there was another storm that came by and another shard has come off. So time will tell." Nicole Mortillaro has an avid interest in all things science. As an amateur astronomer, Nicole can be found looking up at the night sky appreciating the marvels of our universe. She is the editor of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the author of several books.


sottnet--2019-09-18--Astronomers discover most massive neutron star ever recorded

Astronomers have detected a neutron star which beggars belief, being so big it challenges our understanding of extreme objects in the universe.The pulsar, with the catchy name J0740+6620, is the first neutron star humans have detected measuring over two solar masses.Using the timing of its pulses, astronomers have calculated its mass to be roughly 2.14 times that of our sun, packed into an area just 30km across (the Sun is 1.391 million km across, so it's a tight squeeze).The object is close to the theoretical upper limit of 2.3 solar masses for a rotating neutron star, based on cutting-edge gravitational wave astronomy calculations from just last year.Neutron stars form after the immensely explosive and violent deaths of stars in a series of thermonuclear explosions that fuse every last bit of material remaining in their cores.After this truly awe-inspiring death rattle, the remaining iron core collapses, packing whatever neutrons are left into an almost inconceivably small space, producing an object roughly as dense as an atomic nucleus.This newly-discovered, truly massive neutron star could bridge the gap in our understanding between neutron stars and black holes (which typically form from stars above five solar masses).J0740+6620 is located some 4,500 light-years away and is what is known as a millisecond pulsar, meaning it is rotating insanely fast, showering the Earth with bright radio waves shooting out from its magnetic poles on every pass.Astronomers were able to use these radio waves to determine that J0740+6620 is located in a binary system and has a white dwarf star swirling around it, which passes between us and the neutron star in what is known as a transit.Using the slight disruptions in the pulses caused by the white dwarf's orbits, astronomers led by Thankful Cromartie of the University of Virginia and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory measured the pulsar's mass."These city-sized objects are essentially ginormous atomic nuclei. They are so massive that their interiors take on weird properties. Finding the maximum mass that physics and nature will allow can teach us a great deal about this otherwise inaccessible realm in astrophysics," Cromartie said


sottnet--2019-09-22--Astronomers capture six galaxies undergoing sudden dramatic transitions

Astronomers capture six galaxies undergoing sudden, dramatic transitions

Galaxies come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and brightnesses, ranging from humdrum ordinary galaxies to luminous active galaxies. While an ordinary galaxy is visible mainly because of the light from its stars, an active galaxy shines brightest at its center, or nucleus, where a supermassive black hole emits a steady blast of bright light as it voraciously consumes nearby gas and dust.Sitting somewhere on the spectrum between ordinary and active galaxies is another class, known as low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER) galaxies. While LINERs are relatively common, accounting for roughly one-third of all nearby galaxies, astronomers have fiercely debated the main source of light emission from LINERs. Some argue that weakly active galactic nuclei are responsible, while others maintain that star-forming regions outside the galactic nucleus produce the most light.The team reported their observations, which could help demystify the nature of both LINERs and quasars while answering some burning questions about galactic evolution, in the Astrophysical Journal on September 18, 2019. Based on their analysis, the researchers suggest they have discovered an entirely new type of black hole activity at the centers of these six LINER galaxies."For one of the six objects, we first thought we had observed a tidal disruption event, which happens when a star passes too close to a supermassive black hole and gets shredded," said Sara Frederick, a graduate student in the University of Maryland Department of Astronomy and the lead author of the research paperAll six of the surprising transitions were observed during the first nine months of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), an automated sky survey project based at Caltech's Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California, which began observations in March 2018. UMD is a partner in the ZTF effort, facilitated by the Joint Space-Science Institute (JSI), a partnership between UMD and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.Changing look transitions have been documented in other galaxies--most commonly in a class of active galaxies known as Seyfert galaxies. By definition, Seyfert galaxies all have a bright, active galactic nucleus, but Type 1 and Type 2 Seyfert galaxies differ in the amount of light they emit at specific wavelengths. According to Frederick, many astronomers suspect that the difference results from the angle at which astronomers view the galaxies.Type 1 Seyfert galaxies are thought to face Earth head-on, giving an unobstructed view of their nuclei, while Type 2 Seyfert galaxies are tilted at an oblique angle, such that their nuclei are partially obscured by a donut-shaped ring of dense, dusty gas clouds. Thus, changing look transitions between these two classes present a puzzle for astronomers, since a galaxy's orientation towards Earth is not expected to change.Frederick and her colleagues' new observations may call these assumptions into question."We started out trying to understand changing look transformations in Seyfert galaxies. But instead, we found a whole new class of active galactic nucleus capable of transforming a wimpy galaxy to a luminous quasar," said Suvi Gezari, an associate professor of astronomy at UMD, a co-director of JSI and a co-author of the research paper.Frederick and her colleagues want to understand how a previously quiet galaxy with a calm nucleus can suddenly transition to a bright beacon of galactic radiation. To learn more, they performed follow-up observations on the objects with the Discovery Channel Telescope, which is operated by the Lowell Observatory in partnership with UMD, Boston University, the University of Toledo and Northern Arizona University. These observations helped to clarify aspects of the transitions, including how the rapidly transforming galactic nuclei interacted with their host galaxies."Our findings confirm that LINERs can, in fact, host active supermassive black holes at their centers," Frederick said. "But these six transitions were so sudden and dramatic, it tells us that there is something altogether different going on in these galaxies. We want to know how such massive amounts of gas and dust can suddenly start falling into a black hole. Because we caught these transitions in the act, it opens up a lot of opportunities to compare what the nuclei looked like before and after the transformation."Unlike most quasars, which light up the surrounding clouds of gas and dust far beyond the galactic nucleus, the researchers found that only the gas and dust closest to the nucleus had been turned on. Frederick, Gezari and their collaborators suspect that this activity gradually spreads from the galactic nucleus--and may provide the opportunity to map the development of a newborn quasar."It's surprising that any galaxy can change its look on human time scales. These changes are taking place much more quickly than we can explain with current quasar theory," Frederick said. "It will take some work to understand what can disrupt a galaxy's accretion structure and cause these changes on such short order. The forces at play must be very extreme and very dramatic."In addition to Frederick and Gezari, UMD-affiliated co-authors of the research paper include Adjunct Associate Professor of Astronomy Bradley Cenko, former Neil Gehrels Prize Postdoctoral Fellow Erin Kara and astronomy graduate student Charlotte Ward.Sara Frederick et al, A New Class of Changing-look LINERs, The Astrophysical Journal (2019). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab3a38


sottnet--2019-11-08--Astronomers observe colossal winds blowing out of distant galaxy Makani

For the first time, astronomers have directly observed the massive outflow of gas extending hundreds of thousands of light-years from a galaxy.It is, they say, the first direct evidence of how galactic winds feed the circumgalactic medium - the vast clouds of gas that wrap around galaxies as they float in intergalactic space. But more than that, the wind also reveals some of the wild dynamics of massive galactic collisions.That's because the galaxy - called SDSS J211824.06+001729.4 and nicknamed Makani by the researchers after the Hawaiian word for 'wind' - is no ordinary object. It's actually a sort of galactic Frankenstein's monster, two galaxies that have collided and merged to form one compact, but massive galaxy.Space may be mostly... well, space, but there are a lot of galaxies floating through it. Every now and again, two of these galaxies will be gravitationally drawn together. There won't actually be much stuff bumping into other stuff; instead, they merge.We've seen this in a few different stages of the smoosh process . Makani is what we can see after the smooshing has already taken place, called a late-stage major merger. And this tells us something about why it may be belching out gas."Galaxy mergers often lead to starburst events, when a substantial amount of gas present in the merging galaxies is compressed, resulting in a burst of new star births," explained astrophysicist Alison Coil of UC San Diego."Those new stars, in the case of Makani, likely caused the huge outflows - either in stellar winds or at the end of their lives when they exploded as supernovae."And belching out gas Makani most certainly is. Using the Keck Cosmic Web Imager, the team mapped out a region of hot ionised oxygen that spans 4,900 square kiloparsecs, or roughly 52 billion square light-years.There are two separate outflows depositing metal-enriched gas in an hourglass-shaped bipolar bubble at up to 10,000 Kelvin. These outflows seem to have occurred at different times.The earlier one, shaped a bit like a TIE fighter, was launched around 400 million years ago, and is pushing into intergalactic space at a velocity of up to 1,400 kilometres per second (870 miles per second). The later one, protruding from the other side, was launched about 7 million years ago, and is blowing at up to 2,100 kilometres per second (1,300 miles per second)."The earlier outflow has flowed to large distances from the galaxy, while the fast, recent outflow has not had time to do so," said physicist David Rupke of Rhodes College.Putting together the rest of the puzzle required data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Hubble unveiled the stars in the galaxy, which in turn revealed its mass (huge) and size (compact), from which the team could then extrapolate the recent merger.The ALMA radio data revealed the galaxy contained a mix of old, middle-aged, and very young stars, as well as, probably, an active galactic nucleus.This is consistent with two papers released last year modelling the winds that drive the circumgalactic medium. One found that galactic winds can account for the observed properties of the circumgalactic medium. The other found that outflows from galactic mergers could increase the circumgalactic medium's metallicity.As for what's producing the wind, the speed and size of the bubbles are consistent with the winds produced by mass star formation triggered by a galactic merger, as well as theoretical models of the size of these winds.The hourglass shape of the winds is similar to ones that have been observed in other galaxies - something Rupke knows well, since he conducted a review of them released last year. The difference is the size - never before have galactic winds been seen on the scale produced by Makani.This is what makes the difference when it comes to linking galactic winds to the circumgalactic medium."This means that we can confirm it's actually moving gas from the galaxy into the circumgalactic regions around it, as well as sweeping up more gas from its surroundings as it moves out," Rupke explained."And it's moving a lot of it - at least one to 10 percent of the visible mass of the entire galaxy - at very high speeds, thousands of kilometres per second."It is, the team said, one of the very first direct windows into the evolving circumgalactic medium around a massive galaxy. And it's beautiful, too.The research has been published in Nature Astronomy


sottnet--2019-12-23--Astronomers discover exoplanets with the density of cotton candy

Astronomers have discovered a number of "super-puff" exoplanets in the Kepler 51 star system that are as dense as cotton candy.Utilizing data from the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers found fewer than 15 of the planets that are almost as big as Jupiter but have extremely low density, at less than 100 times the gas giant's mass or less than 0.1 grams per cubic centimeter of volume."They're very bizarre," said the study's lead author, Jessica Libby-Roberts, in a statement. "This is an extreme example of what's so cool about exoplanets in general," said Zachory Berta-Thompson, one of the study's co-authors, said. "They give us an opportunity to study worlds that are very different than ours, but they also place the planets in our own solar system into a larger context."The three "super-puff" exoplanets in the Kepler 51 system were "straight-up contrary to what we teach in undergraduate classrooms," Berta-Thompson added.The Kepler 51 system is approximately 2,400 light-years from Earth and is approximately 500 million years old. A light-year, which measures distance in space, equals 6 trillion miles.Using the Hubble, the researchers also attempted to look at the planets' atmospheres, but ran into issues, as the atmospheres were opaque, rather than transparent."It definitely sent us scrambling to come up with what could be going on here," Libby-Roberts continued. "We expected to find water, but we couldn't observe the signatures of any molecule."Libby-Roberts and the other researchers theorized that the exoplanets are likely mostly comprised of hydrogen and helium, using computer simulations. It's also probable that it is covered by a "thick haze made up of methane," which makes them reminiscent of Saturn's moon, Titan."If you hit methane with ultraviolet light, it will form a haze," Libby-Roberts said. "It's Titan in a nutshell." In June, NASA unveiled a mission that will explore Titan, which could potentially host extraterrestrial life.The researchers also discovered that the exoplanets are losing gas rapidly, with the innermost of the three exoplanets putting an estimated "tens of billions of tons of material into space every second." Should that trend continue, these planets could shrink considerably over the next billion years and might wind up looking similar to "mini-Neptune" exoplanets."People have been really struggling to find out why this system looks so different than every other system," Libby-Roberts said. "We're trying to show that, actually, it does look like some of these other systems.""A good bit of their weirdness is coming from the fact that we're seeing them at a time in their development where we've rarely gotten the chance to observe planets," Berta-Thompson concurred.The research, which is set to be published in The Astronomical Journal, can be read here.


sputnik--2019-01-05--Our Milky Way to Face Double-KO Punch in Two Galactic Collisions - Astronomers

"There is a small chance that we might not escape unscathed from the collision between the two galaxies which could knock us out of the Milky Way and into interstellar space," Marius Cautun, a postdoctoral fellow at Durham's Institute for Computational Cosmology, said in a recent statement obtained by Business Insider. NASA Under Fire for Using Nazi Lore in Space Object’s Name  Cautun is lead author on a paper titled: “The aftermath of the Great Collision between our Galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud” published in September in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.  The collision between the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, is unlikely to occur for another 2 billion years, however.  But the crash would still come far sooner that an impending collision between the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, which is expected to happen in a mere 8 billion years, or over half of the existence of the known Universe.  "While 2 billion years is an extremely long time compared to a human lifetime, it is a very short time on cosmic timescales," Cautun noted.  New research reveals that the LMC has twice the dark matter previously believed and that undetected mass could slow down the galaxy so much that it would be unable to escape our Milky Way galaxy’s gravitational pull.  Astronomers also believe that a collision will trigger the Milky Way’s enormous dormant black hole, which would then begin to feed on nearby gas as it grows larger.  "Barring any disasters, like a major disturbance to the solar system, our descendants, if any, are in for a treat: a spectacular display of cosmic fireworks as the newly awakened supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy reacts by emitting jets of extremely bright energetic radiation," study co-author Carlos Frenk noted, cited by the Business Insider.  According to researchers, however, the collision between the two galaxies is behind schedule. NASA New Year's Flyby of Ultima Thule Offers Clues on Solar System Formation (PHOTOS)  Dr. Alis Deason of Durham University's Institute for Computational Cosmology said: "We think that up to now our galaxy has had only a few mergers with very low mass galaxies,” cited by Physics.org.  "This represents very slim pickings when compared to nearby galaxies of the same size as the Milky Way. For example, our nearest neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, devoured galaxies weighing nearly 30 times more than those consumed by the Milky Way. Therefore, the collision with the Large Magellanic Cloud is long overdue and it is needed to make our galaxy typical,” she added.


sputnik--2019-02-20--Astronomers Unveil Tiny New Moon Orbiting Neptune

Hippocamp is one of the seven inner moons of Neptune who orbit the planet once every day. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft passed by Neptune in 1989, it discovered six moons in Neptune’s inner orbit, yet missed Hippocamp because of its dimness and suboptimal camera angles. The other seven satellites of Neptune are located at more of a distance and have trajectories that are more irregular.  After 30 years a team led by Mark Showalter, a senior research scientist at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, pinpointed Hippocamp in images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The team published their findings on Wednesday in Nature magazine.  READ MORE: Astronomers Reveal When Andromeda Galaxy Will Crash Into Milky Way  The scientists believe the new moon was formed after a comet collided with Proteus, the largest of Neptune’s inner moons and 4,000 times the size of Hippocamp. Hippocamp is close to Proteus, orbiting about 12,000 kilometres inside its trajectory, and Proteus has a giant impact crater called Pharos, which stretches at least 230 kilometres across its surface. Showalter and his colleagues suggest that Hippocamp could have been made from broken-off leftovers of whatever had caused the Pharos event.  “The discovery of tiny Hippocamp contributes to our understanding of the history of Neptune’s inner system. Proteus and Hippocamp were even closer in the past because Proteus is migrating outwards owing to tidal interactions with Neptune. It is, therefore, worth exploring the possible connection between these moons,” the scientists wrote in the study.  Based on the rate at which Proteus moved away from Neptune, the team suggested that Hippocamp is a few billion years old. However, in the bigger picture, all seven of Neptune’s inner worlds, including Proteus and Hippocamp, could have been created by the arrival of Triton, Neptune’s largest moon, several billion years ago. Triton has an irregular retrograde orbit, circling Neptune in the opposite direction of the planet’s rotation. Scientists think this is because Triton was once a free object from the Kuiper belt – an accumulation of icy objects such as comets and asteroids located beyond the known planets. Triton became bound to Neptune when it ventured too close.  Neptune probably had a completely different set of inner moons when it captured Triton in its gravity force, but Triton’s gravitational pull caused them to collide with each other, creating Neptune’s thin rings and the seven inner moons.  Showalter’s team believes that this discovery could help to “illustrate the roles that collisions and orbital migration have played in shaping the Neptune system that we see today.”


sputnik--2019-03-25--Astronomers Discover Cannonball Neutron Star Zooming Through Milky Way VIDEO

Astronomers Discover ‘Cannonball’ Neutron Star Zooming Through Milky Way (VIDEO)

A so-called “cannonball” pulsar star rocketing through the Milky Way at breakneck speeds has been detected by an international team of astronomers, NASA reports.  Dubbed PSR J0002+6216 (J0002 for short), the pulsar is hurtling through space at 1,130 kilometres (700 miles) per second, which means that it could cover the distance between Earth and the Moon in just 6 minutes.  “Measuring the pulsar's motion and tracing it backwards shows that it was born at the centre of the remnant, where the supernova explosion occurred”, astrophysicist Matthew Kerr of the Naval Research Laboratory explained.  READ MORE: Despite Harsh Conditions Pulsar Planets Could Be Habitable for Life  Frank Schinzel, a researcher at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico, said in turn that “further study of this object will help us better understand how these explosions are able to ‘kick’' neutron stars to such high speed”.  He referred to the pulsar’s “narrow dart-like tail and a fortuitous viewing angle” which may help the researchers to trace the J0002 “straight back to its birthplace”.  READ MORE: After Half a Century of Searching, First Ever White Dwarf Pulsar Confirmed  Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars which typically emerge after a massive star explodes. Last year, astronomers managed to detect what they described as the slowest spinning pulsar ever.


sputnik--2019-03-31--Brightside Astronomers Confirm the Existence of Galaxies With No Dark Matter

Brightside: Astronomers Confirm the Existence of Galaxies With No Dark Matter

New Research Sheds Light on Major Space Enigma of Dark Matter Dark matter, a little-understood, as-yet-undetected substance theorized to dominate the makeup of the known universe, has been caught missing from two large galaxies, astonishing astronomers and cosmologists.  As dark matter — and its inevitable sidekick dark energy — are currently thought to make up the bulk of the universe, discoveries of massive celestial objects like galaxies that have little to none at all is a total surprise, causing researchers to doubt their early findings.  "If there's one object, you always have a little voice in the back of your mind saying, 'but what if you're wrong?'" stated Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum, cited by Phys.org.  "Even though we did all the checks we could think of, we were worried that nature had thrown us for a loop and had conspired to make something look really special whereas it was really something more mundane," he added, prior to the discovery of a second non-dark matter galaxy.  Galaxy Full of Gigantic 'Bubbles' May Be Bombarding Earth With Cosmic Rays New and groundbreaking observations of the universe come to astronomers rarely and the discovery resulted in a high level of excitement within the scientific community.  "The fact that we're seeing something that's just completely new is what's so fascinating," said Yale University graduate student Shany Danieli, who identified the first non-dark matter galaxy about two years ago.  "No one knew that such galaxies existed, and the best thing in the world for an astronomy student is to discover an object, whether it's a planet, a star, or a galaxy, that no one knew about or even thought about," she said, cited by Phys.org.  Non-intuitively, the existence of galaxies proven to have no dark matter only adds strength to existing dark matter theories, as it is thought to confirm that the mysterious substance does not resonate with what we consider to be 'normal' matter.  "We hope to next find out how common these galaxies are and whether they exist in other areas of the universe," remarked Danieli.  "We want to find more evidence that will help us understand how the properties of these galaxies work with our current theories," she stated, adding, "Our hope is that this will take us one step further in understanding one of the biggest mysteries in our universe: the nature of dark matter."  About 68 percent of the known universe is thought to be comprised of dark energy, while dark matter is estimated to make up another 27 percent, leaving everything that has been physically observed — or at least theorized to physically exist per Newtonian physics — to account for a mere 5 percent of the volume of known space, according to NASA.


sputnik--2019-04-19--Astronomers Spot Universes First Molecule in Diffused Planetary Nebula

Astronomers Spot Universe's First Molecule in Diffused Planetary Nebula

The molecule was spotted by NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) in a planetary nebula, NGC 7027, according to findings published in Nature magazine. Helium hydride — a combination of helium and hydrogen – was one of the first molecules to develop from atoms as for hundreds of thousands of years after the Big Bang, the universe was too hot and too full of radiation for atoms to bond together. The study suggested that 100,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe cooled enough for helium and hydrogen to combine, forming the molecule known as helium hydride.  The same molecule was earlier produced and tested in a laboratory setting, however, this discovery marks the first time that the molecule has been detected in space, revealing the chemistry of the early universe, according to a statement from NASA.  "This molecule was lurking out there, but we needed the right instruments making observations in the right position — and SOFIA was able to do that perfectly," Harold Yorke, director of the SOFIA Science Center in California's Silicon Valley, said in the statement.  The hydrogen atoms, interacting with helium hydride and creating molecular hydrogen became the basic elements of star formation, and stars went on to produce all the other elements, NASA noted in the statement.  "The lack of evidence of the very existence of helium hydride in interstellar space was a dilemma for astronomy for decades," Rolf Guesten, lead author of the study from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, said in the statement.  NGC 7027 has been a location of interest for helium hydride since the late 1970s. Scientists believed that ultraviolet radiation and heat from the ageing star could create an environment suitable for helium hydride to form. However, astronomers were unable to confirm this theory until now.  Scientists Reveal First Known Interstellar Meteor May Have Hit Earth in 2014 It was possible to detect helium hydride because of the SOFIA instrument — a telescope that is flown on a Boeing 747-SP airplane at an altitude of up to 45,000 feet, where its observations are not impacted by interference from Earth's atmosphere, while also returning to Earth after every flight, allowing scientists to regularly update the instrument with the latest technology. One of the most recent upgrades included adding a specific channel to detect signatures of helium hydride, which previous telescopes did not have.  "This flexibility allows us to improve observations and respond to the most pressing questions that scientists want answered," Naseem Rangwala, SOFIA deputy project scientist, said in the statement.


sputnik--2019-06-02--The END of Stargazing Astronomers Fear SpaceX Satellites Could Clutter up Sky

The END of Stargazing? Astronomers Fear SpaceX Satellites Could Clutter up Sky

Astronomers are gravely concerned that satellite clusters may soon block out our view of the stars, putting an end to stargazing, according to the New York Times.  While entrusted with the much-needed task of helping deliver internet connectivity to remote and rural areas, these man-made constellations of satellites may have the adverse effect of cluttering up the sky for good.  Alex Parker, a planetary astronomer and the director of the Project for Exploration Science Pathfinder Research for Enhancing Solar System Observations (ESPRESSO), has been raising the alarm regarding the brightness of Starlink satellites in particular.  “I know people are excited about those images of the train of SpaceX Starlink satellites, but it gives me pause,” he wrote on Twitter.  “They’re bright, and there are going to be a lot of them. If SpaceX launches all 12,000, they will outnumber stars visible to the naked eye.”  Referencing a model he produced, Parker explained that as many as 500 Starlink satellites will be visible during a midsummer’s midnight in Seattle.  Another expert, Carlos Niederstrasser, a rocket scientist and master systems engineer at Northrop Grumman, offered his own analysis, claiming as many as 18 satellites would still be visible at midnight in some high altitude locations.  Astronomer Tyler Nordgren told the New York Times that Starlink and other satellite constellations have “the potential to change what a natural sky looks like”.  In SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, the operating solar panels deliver a reflection of the sun’s light back to Earth – something company CEO Elon Musk sought to allay fears over, insisting they are programmed to go dark when stars are visible.  But he was also rather dismissive of the complaints.  “There are already 4900 satellites in orbit, which people notice [about] zero percent of the time,” he wrote on Twitter.  “Starlink won’t be seen by anyone unless looking very carefully & will have [about] zero percent impact on advancements in astronomy.”  Many have been expressing doubts, however.  Moreover, the Starlink constellation of satellites is not the only one of its kind. There are plans to build similarly-large internet clusters being conceived by companies like OneWeb, Samsung, and Boeing, with Facebook and Amazon, which are reported to be tentatively exploring the idea.  Thus, in the foreseeable future the sky above us will grow crowded with satellites, with the devastating results visible to more than just astronomers.


sputnik--2019-06-23--Mexican Astronomers at the Forefront of a New Way of Seeing the Universe

“Before we only had photos,” Rosa Becerra, an Astrophysics Professor from the National University of Mexico (NUM), explained.  Now, the study of gravitational waves opens great perspectives for the understanding of space."  Rosa Becerra is one of the young scientists who pioneered the study of gravitational waves in the country right after the new telescope had been launched. The tool, named Coatli, is located in the National Astronomical Observatory of San Pedro Mártir, in Baja California.  The young scientist first completed her Bachelor’s degree in Physics and then her doctorate at the NUM Astronomy Institute. Rosa worked on the development of a new reflector, conducted various experiments, and, eventually, the telescope turned into a tool that brought newfound fame to Mexican astronomers.  The Ratir camera that was placed on a 1.5-metre telescope in San Pedro Mártir has many filters that allow for the study of various characteristics of the same object.  “We installed Coatli a year and a half ago, and it’s currently used specifically for monitoring the optical manifestations of gamma-ray flashes,” Becerra said.  30-year-old Becerra got her doctorate in astronomical research at the NUM. It was then that she devoted herself to studying how to obtain better telescopic images of the farthest universe, through the development of optical techniques that improve real time image capture.  “While working on my MSc Dissertation, I dedicated myself to improving a reflector that was later installed in Puebla, in the National Observatory of Tonantzintla. As soon as the device started operating, the budget was approved to make the Coatli telescope the telescope of San Pedro Mártir, which I used for my doctorate,” the scientist said.  Professors Alan Watson and Salvador Cuevas from the Institute of Astronomy were responsible for the Coatli Project. Becerra was part of this avant-garde team; she reoriented her work and research towards the study of optical manifestations of gamma ray flashes.  “These are the traces we have after a very massive star dies or when two neutron stars or black holes collide. This event first throws out gamma rays, then starts emitting X-rays and then there is optic and radio emission,” she explained.  Both gamma rays and X-rays are trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere, so scientists need space missions to detect such of emissions in the universe. Scientists have long been making optical and radio observations, but not those of gamma ray flashes.  “Gamma-ray flashes occur every day. There are special NASA programmes and equipment with gamma-ray sensors. When they are detected, they inform us about that,” Becerra said.  There the Coatli steps in; it’s a robotic telescope 50 centimetres in diameter designed to study the results of these events, the earliest of which happened many years ago, outside the Milky Way.  Unlike the planets –which will always be where they are – “these events are transient, they only last a few seconds,” Becerra pointed out.  When a very massive star, 50 times the size of the sun, explodes because it no longer has energy to burn, or when two neutron stars begin to close in until they collide, they generate a series of gamma-ray flashes that only last a few seconds.  “The telescopes in San Pedro Mártir are always on to receive the signal, stop what is being done, turn to where the event happened and start receiving data. Our telescopes can move very fast, so that we could start measuring how the object’s luminosity or brightness changes over time as soon as when we get the signal,” the researcher explained.  The information obtained allows astronomers to study the environment in which the event took place, and to determine the gas that surrounded it, the magnetic field, the temperature, density and pressure of the environment.  “We can also find out about the causes of that particular event,” Becerra said.  As they are very brief, gamma-ray flashes present a challenge for their study. The “longest” of them, which last more than two seconds, are associated with the death of massive stars, while the “short” ones – less than two seconds – are the result “of the collision of two compact objects such as black holes or neutron stars.”  “Studying these phenomena, we’ve learned that before in the universe, there were more star formation processes than we have now,” the astronomer said, showing a diagram on her computer.  “With the Coatli we had a chance to observe the gamma-ray flash just 20 seconds after it occurred. The time doesn’t depend on the Mexican research equipment but on the time it takes to send the satellite signal to our email that gives the order to the telescope to monitor a certain area in space. This is the problem that we cannot solve,” Rosa Becerra explained.  However, this hasn’t prevented the Coatli from becoming the fastest telescope to measure gamma-ray flashes, thus helping Mexican researches make significant progress in understanding these hugely complicated extragalactic matters.  “When we manage to catch emissions as quickly as possible, we are able to see more of the centre of the star, its environment, the gas; and all this helps us learn more about the galaxy,” she added.  According to Rosa, when the general public became aware of new data on the nature of gravitational waves, it aroused great interest in the study of these new ways of observing the universe, which don’t depend solely on research into the properties of light rays.  The main focus of Becerra’s team is currently expanding the parameters of the objects under study; she herself, as she says, will be engaged in making "numerical simulations to new types of research”.  “You cannot replay the event in space, but you can do it with a computer. You can change whatever conditions and parameters and replay the event, thus learning what happened before and what led to that event happening,” the astronomer told Sputnik.  It was in August 2017 that scientists first learned that these events also generate gravitational waves, which, unlike light, cannot be detected with a camera. To document them, completely different devices are needed.  “Thus, various human senses, each of which complements the information received, make it possible to build a complete picture of the environment. We already have sensors that detect how space alters, and measure the gravitational waves that are generated around the events we study. And since our telescope responds faster than others, it’s better for the study of these gravitational waves. Using this telescope, we can understand more; and that is why have made significant progress in our work,” Rosa Becerra concluded.


sputnik--2019-08-10--Astronomers May Have Mapped Most Distant Mammoth Black Hole Lurking in Disguise in Midst of Universe

Astronomers from NASA have arguably found the most distant cloaked black hole ever seen by anyone on Earth, with the mammoth zone of extremely strong gravitation being the first to have been enveloped with gas at such an early time in the history of the cosmos, the US space agency reported on its website.  As NASA stated, supermassive black holes typically expand by taking in surrounding matter, and such rapid growth generates large amounts of radiation accumulated in a tiny region around the black hole, a “quasar”.  It is observations of a quasar named PSO167-13, which was first mapped by the Hawaii-based Pan-STARRS optical-light telescope, that helped lead astronomers to the mysterious “cloaked” black hole. The previous surveys, however, focused on solely locating unobscured black holes, because the radiation in the region is suppressed by thin clouds of dust and gas alike.  Initially, PSO167-13 was expected to be unobscured as well, but one of the researchers, Fabio Vito, a CAS-CONICYT fellow at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, put this idea to the test by leveraging Chandra to study PSO167-13 and nine other quasars.  The 16 hours of observations led the research team to detect only three X-ray light photons, which all appeared to have rather high energies. Considering that low-energy X-rays are more absorbable than higher energy ones, it’s possible that the quasar is highly shrouded by gas, enabling only high-energy X-rays to be detected.  Earlier, astronomers discovered an “ultra-massive” black hole - one of the most gargantuan ever mapped. A team of German researchers believe that a monster with a mass 40 billion times greater than our sun is hiding at the centre of a galaxy called Holmberg 15A.  Separately, a new search mechanism was proposed by Japanese scientists to detect a whopping 100,000,000 “isolated black holes” that are likely lurking somewhere in the galaxy, and potentially much closer than the one thought to be nearest to our planet, located less than 3,000 lightyears away from Earth.  In their paper, the team said these stealthy leviathans emit what they referred to as “synchrotron radiation” during “outflows” produced as they suck up gas – a signal that may help pinpoint such “greedy” cosmic areas.


sputnik--2019-08-13--Universe Could Be Swallowed by Supermassive Black Hole Astronomer Suggests - Report

Universe Could Be Swallowed by Supermassive Black Hole, Astronomer Suggests - Report

Dr David Whiteshouse, astronomer and author, says that our universe could one day be swallowed by a giant black hole. In an interview he explained that a supermassive black hole recently discovered by astronomers in South America provided scientists with a new perspective as to how big these objects can be, according to The Daily Express.  “We’re beginning to realise that we had thought that there was a limit to the size of black holes in the centre of a galaxy because they can only swallow so many stars. Black holes grow by swallowing matter and gas and stars and dust,” he explained. “This one is enormous, so perhaps there are even bigger black holes out there.”  According to the astronomer, various physical theories speculate that at some point in the distant future a black hole could become big enough to absorb more and more stars and eventually consume the universe.  “And there are some theories which suggest that eventually, in the vast length of time, more time in the future than we can imagine, everything will end up in a black hole,” Whitehouse said. “The whole universe.”  Whitehouse said that studying black holes is important because their unique physical properties provide scientists with a “different view on how the universe works and what the universe can create.”  “Black holes come in all sorts of sizes. There are black holes the size of atoms and there are black holes billion times the size of the sun at the centre of very large galaxies,” he said. “And they’re fascinating and revealing objects.”  Black holes are so dense that they create gravitational forces that capture light. Nothing can escape a black hole. However, this incredible mass also warps time and space in its vicinity, so that time in proximity of this object occurs entirely differently than it does to an outside observer. According to theoretical equations, only stars many times bigger than our Sun can form a black hole.  Earlier this month, NASA reported that during a survey of quasar PSO167-13 and nine other quasars, astronomers using NASA’s Chandra telescope have possibly detected a huge and very distant black hole.


sputnik--2019-09-20--Astronomers Reveal More Than a Dozen Alien Megastructure Stars

Astronomers Reveal More Than a Dozen 'Alien Megastructure' Stars

The original star was noticed in 2015 when scientists noticed unusual fluctuations in the light from a star named KIC 8462852. This otherwise-normal F-type star, which is slightly larger and hotter than Earth's sun, sits about 1,480 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cygnus.  However, when the researchers analysed data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, astronomer Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian, then at Yale University, and her colleagues found dozens of odd instances of KIC 8462852 dimming by up to 22%, with such dips lasting anywhere from a few days to a week. These events did not appear to follow any pattern and seemed far too substantial to be caused by planets or dust crossing the star's face.  The analyses of KIC 8462852 — now nicknamed "Boyajian's star" – made researchers consider the possibility that they might have detected signs of intelligent alien life. Specifically, researchers have suggested that the star is surrounded by a Dyson sphere, a hypothetical megastructure that is built around a star to capture as much of its light as possible. Mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson even made a bold suggestion that such megastructures could help power an advanced civilization. Further analyses have pointed to more prosaic explanations, such as clouds of dust or comet fragments.  Now, study author Edward Schmidt, an astrophysicist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, suggests that he may have discovered more than a dozen stars like Boyajian's star, with the same patterns. Schmidt looked for counterparts of Boyajian's star using software that searched for analogous dimming events from about 14 million objects with varying brightness monitored in the Northern Sky Variable Survey from April 1999 to March 2000, detailing his findings July 18 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.  Using data from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernova,  he followed up on promising candidates by examining their long-term behaviour, ruling out sources whose dimming could be caused by conventional explanations such as an eclipsing companion star or some intrinsic variability in brightness, and found at least 21 stars falling into the same category. Fifteen of them were nicknamed "slow dippers" that dimmed at rates similar to Boyajian's star, and six were "rapid dippers" that showed even more extreme variability in their dimming rates.  "The thing that surprised me the most were these stars that had so many dips, the ones I called 'rapid dippers,'" Schmidt told Space.com. "I expected more occasional dips like Boyajian's star."  Further analysis revealed that these potential dippers tended to be either conventional "main-sequence" stars with about the same mass as the sun or red giant stars with about twice the sun's mass. The slow and rapid dippers are seen in both groups, which may suggest that they represent varying degrees of the same mechanism, Schmidt said.  However, Schmidt noted that the Northern Sky Variable Survey did not contain records of Boyajian's star itself darkening during the year of data in that catalogue, meaning that there might be other stars that were missed.  "We're obviously missing some of these stars because of the catalogs we have," Schmidt said. "By looking at more catalogs, we may get a better picture of what's going on, even though it won't be a complete picture."  Schmidt is now intending to follow up on the “rapid dippers,” he said, noting that “at least one seemed to be slowing way down in its dipping rate over the five years of coverage we have of it. It'd be interesting to find out what happened in its past, which may help give a better idea of what's going on with these stars.”


sputnik--2019-09-27--Astronomers Discover Massive Exoplanet That Defies Known Science

A huge Jupiter-like exoplanet was found orbiting a tiny star some 31 light years away, forcing astronomers to review their knowledge of how star systems are formed, The Daily Mail reported Friday.  According to the report, scientists have until now believed that large gas planets form as a solid core of ice and rock that then attracts surrounding gas from the disc of matter that orbits a young star.  Contrary to this theory, the newly-discovered planet that orbits the red dwarf GJ 3512 did not form as a solid core, but apparently came into existence of its own from orbiting stellar matter due to gravitational instabilities. To put it another way, a large chunk of the star disc collapsed into itself under its own mass, the scientists stated.  “Usually we think of giant planets starting life as an icy-core, orbiting far out in a disc of gas surrounding the young star, and then growing rapidly by attracting gas onto itself. But the authors [of the new study] argue that the discs around small stars don't provide enough material for this to work,” astrophysicist Peter Wheatley of the University of Warwick, said.  “This find prompts us to review our models,” admitted Hubert Klahr of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, the author of the paper.  GJ 3512 is a small star, estimated to be a mere 12 percent of the mass of our Sun, which itself is far from being large on a galactic scale. The gas giant planet orbiting GJ 3512 is almost as big as its host star, according to Juan Carlos Morales of the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia, a lead author on the study.  Very little is known about the planet, although study authors calculate that the planet is at least half as heavy as Jupiter, and that its stellar orbit equals approximately 200 Earth days. The host star’s tiny size complicates observations and scientists cannot currently measure the planet’s size with a sufficient level of precision, The Daily Mail reports.  According to Yale University astronomer Greg Laughlin, as some 4,000 exoplanets have been identified, the detection of another new exoplanet is not necessarily noteworthy.  But “one that challenges current theories of planet formation can animate astronomers,” he said.


sputnik--2019-11-10--Astronomers Observe Galactic Winds For First Time - Study

Space is often thought of as a cold, dead void with no atmosphere where everything either floats motionless or moves so fast that we won’t know about it until it takes us out. Recent astronomical observations, however, now offer proof that cosmic mechanics can cause galactic winds that span billions of light years.  Research published in the Natural Astronomy journal details observations of a distant galaxy called SDSS J211824.06+001729.4, nicknamed Makani after the Hawaiian word for ‘wind,’ made using the Keck Cosmic Web Imager. Makani is actually not one, but two galaxies which collided billions of years ago.  When galaxies collide, enormous amounts of gas become compress, leading to the creation of massive new stars – a phenomenon known as a ‘starburst.’ The collision itself, the star formation and exploding supernovas, create massive outbursts of hot ionized gas, notes astrophysicist Alison Coil of UC San Diego.  And by ‘massive,’ they mean 4,900 square kiloparsecs, or roughly 52-billion square light-years. That is a lot of gas.  What makes it more remarkable is that the ionized gas is very hot oxygen, astronomers assert, adding that gas temperatures can reach up to 10,000 degrees Kelvin (about 9726.85 degrees Celsius or 9726.85 degrees Fahrenheit).  There are two ongoing outbursts in Makani, which astronomers believe formed at different times. Shaped like hourglasses, the two energy sources are expanding into space at a whopping 1,400 kilometres per second and 2,100 kilometres per second each.  "The earlier outflow has flowed to large distances from the galaxy, while the fast, recent outflow has not had time to do so," said physicist David Rupke of Rhodes College.  According to Rupke, the two outbursts suck in galactic matter as they move through space, and currently have captured huge amounts.  Astronomers say this is one of the first insights into the formation process of a so-called circumgalactic medium around a massive galaxy.


sputnik--2019-11-21--Tera Electron Volt! Astronomers Have Detected Highest Energy Burst in the Universe

After decades of research astronomers have spotted the biggest light emission in the universe. It came from two explosions. The intense radiation as a result of gamma ray bursts occurred in galaxies billions of light years away from Earth and was detected by NASA satellites in July 2018 and January 2019.  Gamma ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe and scientists presume they are the result of supernovae – and event that occurs when stars reach the end of their life cycle and collapse into black holes or neutron stars, releasing radiation that flies across the universe. Gamma ray bursts appear without warning and last for several seconds, but they release as much energy in just a few second as the Sun will produce during its whole lifetime. They begin with an intense flash of light followed by an afterglow.  First spotted during the Cold War by space-based satellites, gamma ray bursts were never detected on Earth’s surface until now. Astronomers were able to spot them after NASA satellites alerted a team at MAGIC – Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes – and pointed the telescopes in the direction of the outburst.  Now scientists hope that the new finding could help them delve deeper into the mysterious phenomena of gamma ray bursts. More findings are expected when they switch to the Cherenkov Telescope Array, made up of more than 100 telescopes and able to detect gamma rays over a larger area and wider range.


sputnik--2019-12-20--Watch Out! Astronomers Detect Two Galaxy Groups on Violent Collision Course

What might be the most violent collision of galaxies ever observed has got a team of astronomers on high alert, keeping a close eye on two groups of galaxies currently moving towards each other at around 6.4 million kilometres (or 4 million miles) an hour.  With the drama unfolding at a distance of around 380 million light-years from Earth, in a system called NGC 6338, the two groups of galaxies will most likely form a larger group, known as a cluster, in a process that could offer priceless insights into how such clusters evolve, write the scientists in a study entitled “Building a cluster: shocks, cavities, and cooling filaments in the group–group merger NGC 6338”, published in the September issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.  The team studying the anticipated event has enlisted some formidable assistance, such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory operated by NASA, the ESA's XMM-Newton in space, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) and the Apache Point Observatory on the ground.  "The NGC 6338 system provides an excellent example of both rapid radiative cooling and violent merger processes at the group scale," the team writes in a study documenting this collision.  While the speed of the galaxy collision makes NGC 6338 special, there is more than that…The heat issue also has researchers fascinated, as hot gas in the system is reaching around 20 million degrees Celsius (just over 36 million degrees Fahrenheit). This heating happening as the galaxy groups collide had been predicted by computer models before, but has now been observed for the first time.  There is a perplexing fact in the current data: what's missing is heat generated by supermassive black holes; this heat source is commonly found in galaxy groups and clusters, but it appears to be absent in NGC 6338.  Pulled together by gravity, galaxies frequently band together in groups and clusters, sometimes as large as made up of thousands of galaxies, say scientists, but astronomers still have plenty left to learn about the physics of such massive congregations.  Researchers have already found galaxy clusters invaluable in probing the mysteries of dark matter, as a method is used whereby starlight between the clusters is conducive to mapping where dark matter might be concealed.  The magnetic fields stretching between galaxy clusters potentially hold the key to explaining the gravitational dynamics of that bring these big groups of galaxies together.  Due to the forces at work, clustering of galaxies also affects star formation. As the two groups of galaxies currently being monitored rush towards each other, astronomers anticipate many more discoveries on the way.


sputnik--2019-12-21--Zapped by Aliens? Astronomers Ponder Mysterious Disappearance of 100 Red Objects in Deep Space

At least one hundred mysterious red objects in the sky have vanished inexplicably over the past 70 years, claims a group of scientists, as they suggest that alien technology could be one possible explanation for their disappearance.  The team published the results of their study, “The Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations Project. I. USNO Objects Missing in Modern Sky Surveys and Follow-up Observations of a \Missing Star',” in The Astronomical Journal on 12 December.  The initial discovery of the disappearing objects was made by an international collaboration of scientists during work on the project called "Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations," or VASCO, seeking to locate objects in space that have appeared or disappeared by comparing older photos with recent ones, often using data from military records.  The study analyses images of the sky from public records dating as far back as the 1950s.  From the comparison work, the study identified about 150,000 candidate objects that might have disappeared, so far examining 15 per cent and pinpointing 100 objects that seemed to vanish in short periods, with some of these experiencing a sudden augmented brightness prior to disappearing.  The astronomers have suggested that the mysterious objects could be a sign of alien activity, with some of these disappearing red images possibly lasers, used by aliens use to communicate across interstellar space.  The objects could also be stars that disappeared because an alien civilization built large structures around them, called Dyson spheres, to harness the stars' energy, suggest the astronomers.  If the missing objects have nothing to do with aliens, the scientists think they may have discovered the first evidence of a "failed supernova" - stars that undergo a never-before-seen process of collapsing into a black hole without the characteristic explosion of a supernova.  In a press release, the project leader Beatriz Villarroel said:  A supernova explosion occurs after a massive star runs out of hydrogen fuel. The heavier elements in its core start to fuse, and the star's core burns every element until it reaches iron. Fusing iron takes more energy than it produces, so the star can't build up enough internal pressure to maintain its shape and size.  Eventually, the star succumbs to its own gravity, the outer layers exploding, while the core collapses into a black hole or neutron star.  Theoretically, in the event of a failed supernova, a dying star would skip the explosion and collapse almost immediately into a black hole.  Somewhat dashing the hopes of those who seek confirmation of alien existence, one of the authors of the study, Martin López Corredoira, said:  Still, the VASCO researchers say the 100 disappearing objects should be investigated further, as they intend to open the project up to citizen scientists and use artificial intelligence to identify more mysterious vanishing objects.