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Category: cosmology – Page 113

The European Space Agency (ESA) has just released the first full-color images captured by its groundbreaking Euclid space telescope. These stunning images are part of the mission’s Early Release Observations, which showcase the telescope’s ability to capture razor-sharp astronomical views across a vast expanse of the sky.

Unlike any telescope before it, Euclid is able to capture high-resolution images of the cosmos, revealing cosmic secrets waiting to be uncovered. These captivating images provide a glimpse into the vastness and beauty of our universe.

Euclid’s main objective is to create the most comprehensive 3D map of the universe ever recorded. Over its six-year mission, the telescope will generate an immense amount of data, equivalent to a million DVDs. This massive amount of data will be crucial in unraveling the mysteries surrounding dark matter and dark energy.

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Astronomers are currently pushing the frontiers of astronomy. At this very moment, observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are visualizing the earliest stars and galaxies in the universe, which formed during a period known as the “Cosmic Dark Ages.” This period was previously inaccessible to telescopes because the universe was permeated by clouds of neutral hydrogen.

As a result, the only light is visible today as relic radiation from the Big Bang—the (CMB)—or as the 21 cm spectral line created by the reionization of hydrogen (aka the Hydrogen Line).

Now that the veil of the Dark Ages is being slowly pulled away, scientists are contemplating the next frontier in astronomy and cosmology by observing “primordial ” created by the Big Bang. In recent news, it was announced that the National Science Foundation (NSF) had awarded $3.7 million to the University of Chicago, the first part of a grant that could reach up to $21.4 million. The purpose of this grant is to fund the development of next-generation telescopes that will map the CMB and the gravitational waves created in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang.

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How did we get here? Not just we humans, scrabbling about on a pale blue dot, hurtling around a star, hurtling around a supermassive black hole, hurtling through the local cluster. But how did the dot get here, and the star, and the black hole, and the cluster?

How did the incomprehensibly immense everything of it all get to where it is now, from an unimaginable nothing, billions of years ago?

That’s it, really, the question of questions. And, with the largest project of its kind to date, astronomers are attempting to find answers – by conducting computer simulations of the entire Universe.

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Aalto University researchers will probe the secrets of dark matter using a quantum detector of unprecedented sensitivity.

In the vast darkness of the cosmos lurks an invisible kind of matter. Its presence is seen in the rippling ebb and flow of galaxies, but it’s never been directly observed. What secrets lie beneath the surface, brewing in the deep?

Physicists have long theorized about the composition of dark matter, which is thought to be five times more abundant than regular matter. Among competing hypotheses, one particle has emerged as a promising candidate: the axion.

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This particular burst, called GRB 230307A, was likely created when two neutron stars — the incredibly dense remnants of stars after a supernova — merged in a galaxy about one billion light-years away. In addition to releasing the gamma-ray burst, the merger created a kilonova, a rare explosion that occurs when a neutron star merges with another neutron star or a black hole, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore is the mission operations center for the telescope. It launched last in 2021 from French Guiana.

“There are only a mere handful of known kilonovas, and this is the first time we have been able to look at the aftermath of a kilonova with the James Webb Space Telescope,” said lead study author Andrew Levan, astrophysics professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Levan was also part of the team that made the first detection of a kilonova in 2013.

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In order to comprehend how explosive stellar deaths create the foundation for new star systems, a new sounding rocket mission is being launched into space by NASA. The mission is called the Integral Field Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Experiment, or INFUSE, and it is set to launch from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on Oct. 29, 2023, and head for space to get a closer look at a stellar phenomenon called the Cygnus Loop.

An integral field spectrograph, INFUSE is the first of its kind instrument to be sent into orbit and combines the advantages of spectroscopy and imaging, two approaches to investigating light. It will be researching the Cygnus Loop which is located close to the well-known constellation Cygnus.

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Building upon the foundational paradigms outlined in The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution (2020), my latest work titled The Cybernetic Theory of Mind (2022), a Kindle eBook series published last year, serves as an extension and refinement, operating at the intersection of information physics, quantum cosmology, and simulation metaphysics. The objective is not merely to inform but to elucidate through an “explanatory” theory of everything, providing an integrative framework for a deeper understanding of reality.

#CyberneticTheory #InformationPhysics #QuantumCosmology #SimulationMetaphysics #cybernetics #QuantumGravity #SyntellectHypothesis #CyberneticTheoryofMind #TheoryofEverything #consciousness #TechnologicalSingularity #DigitalPhysics #QuantumMechanics #PhilosophyofMind #posthumanism #UniversalMind #CyberneticImmortality

The Cybernetic Theory of Mind is an explanatory TOE at the intersection of information physics, quantum cosmology and simulation metaphysics.

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The new telescope would allow scientists to “understand the beginning, history, and makeup of the universe.”

In a quest to advance the knowledge concerning the beginning of the universe, known as the Cosmic Microwave Background, the National Science Foundation is set to grant up to $21.4 million to the University of Chicago. The agreement will see $3.7 million awarded to the team next year, in a project aimed at developing final designs for a next-generation set of telescopes that will map the light from the earliest moments of the universe.

The project, named CMB-S4, will be led by researchers at UOC and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and aims to construct infrastructure and telescopes… More.

UOC

Continue reading “Mapping microwave light: .4M boost for telescope probing universe origins” | >

The FLAMINGO project reveals the distribution of dark and ordinary matter in the universe and its impact on the S8 tension in cosmology.

We gaze up at the night sky, captivated by the glittering stars and galaxies that decorate the cosmos. Yet, beneath this mesmerizing spectacle lies a perplexing cosmic conundrum: How is matter truly distributed throughout the universe?

Despite its apparent simplicity, the answer to this question has become a baffling puzzle for scientists. However, a glimmer of hope has emerged in the form of a groundbreaking computer simulation conducted by an international team of astronomers known as the FLAMINGO project, the Royal Astronomical Society announced in a release.

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In 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), made history when it made the first direct detection of gravitational waves—ripples in space and time—produced by a pair of colliding black holes.

Since then, LIGO and its sister detector in Europe, Virgo, have detected gravitational waves from dozens of mergers between black holes as well as from collisions between a related class of stellar remnants called neutron stars. At the heart of LIGO’s success is its ability to measure the stretching and squeezing of the fabric of space-time on scales 10 thousand trillion times smaller than a human hair.

As incomprehensibly small as these measurements are, LIGO’s precision has continued to be limited by the laws of quantum physics. At very tiny, subatomic scales, empty space is filled with a faint crackling of quantum noise, which interferes with LIGO’s measurements and restricts how sensitive the observatory can be.

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