Lifeboat Foundation

Woven across our universe is a weblike structure of galaxies called the cosmic web. Galaxies are strung along filaments in this vast web, which also contains enormous voids. Now, astronomers using Webb have discovered an early strand of this structure, a long, narrow filament of 10 galaxies that existed just 830 million years after the big bang. The 3 million light-year.

A light year is the distance that a particle of light (photon) will travel in a year—about 10 trillion kilometers (6 trillion miles). It is a useful unit for measuring distances between stars.

The announcement last week of the discovery of the gravitational wave background has rocked astronomy, but work has already begun on how this new window to the universe can be used to tease apart how the universe works.

At this week’s National Astronomy Meeting 2023 at Cardiff University in Wales, UK, an international team of cosmologists revealed that observations of gravitational waves from merging black holes may reveal the true nature of “dark matter.”

Observations of gravitational waves from merging black holes—and their absence—may unveil the true nature of dark matter, according to new research.

Continue reading “Gravitational Waves Will Help Us Find ‘Dark Matter,’ Say Scientists” »

A black hole 10 billion light-years away suddenly ‘switched on’, becoming one of the brightest transient objects ever detected.

An object lurking in the foggy dawn of the Universe has given astronomers a big surprise.

Observations collected through the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed an active supermassive black hole 9 million times the mass of the Sun – one that is actively growing as it slurps up matter from the space around it.

Continue reading “The Earliest Supermassive Black Hole Ever Found Has Been Identified” »

A new paper suggests the early solar system was shielded from the destructive force of a dying star.

Our sun may have been shielded from a massive supernova explosion by a shield of molecular gas during the early evolution of our solar system, a press statement reveals.

The researchers, led by National Astronomical Observatory of Japan astrophysicist Doris Arzoumanian, believe their findings could shed light on the early formation of the solar system at the same time as helping us better understand how distant star systems evolve over time.

Lewis and Brendon Brewer of the University of Auckland are co-authors on a new paper describing the long-sought after confirmation of time dilation effects in the variability of quasars. A quasar is powered by an accreting supermassive black hole at the heart of an extremely active galaxy. Because the accretion disk around the black hole is relatively small, fluctuations in the light emitted by the quasar can take place in just days. This makes them easier to track.

However, in the time since the light, and its fluctuations, was emitted from the 12 billion-year-old quasars, the universe has expanded greatly. This means that we are seeing the quasars as they existed over 12 billion years ago.

“We expected quasars to also exhibit this behavior, but previous searches had failed to find it,” said Lewis.

Subtle shifts in stellar signals reveal pervasive waves from mergers of giant black holes.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo pool knowledge of robotics and tissue culturing to create a controllable robotic finger covered with living skin tissue. The robotic digit has living cells and supporting organic material grown on top of it for ideal shaping and strength. As the skin is soft and can even heal itself, the finger could be useful in applications that require a gentle touch but also robustness. The team aims to add other kinds of cells into future iterations, giving devices the ability to sense as we do.

Albert Einstein proved decades ago that time and space are inseparable. However, because of the expansion of the Universe, events that occurred after the Big Bang now appear to have slowed down. As it turned out, time flowed many times slower at the dawn of the Universe than it does today.

Continue reading “A 20-year study of 190 supermassive black holes has shown that time flowed five times slower at the dawn of the Universe than it does now” »

A team of astronomers led by researchers from the University of Birmingham, University College London and Queen’s University Belfast have discovered one of the most dramatic ‘switches on’ of a black hole ever seen. They will present their findings on Tuesday 4 July at the 2023 National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff. The work will also be published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

J221951-484240, known as J221951, is one of the most luminous transients—astrophysical objects that change their brightness over a short period of time—ever recorded. It was discovered by Dr. Samantha Oates, an astronomer at the University of Birmingham, and her team, in September 2019 while searching for the electromagnetic light from a gravitational wave event. The team were using the Ultra-Violet and Optical Telescope on board the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory to look for a kilonova, the sign of a neutron star merging with another neutron star or a black hole. A kilonova typically appears blue, then fades and turns more red in color over a timescale of days. What they found instead something even more unusual: J221951. The transient appeared blue, but didn’t change color or fade rapidly as a kilonova would.

Multiple telescopes were used to follow-up J221951 and determine its nature, including NASA’s Swift/UVOT and Hubble Space Telescope, the South African Large Telescope, and ESO facilities such as the Very Large Telescope and the GROND instrument on the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory.