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When we look into the night sky, we see the universe as it once was. We know that in the past, the universe was once warmer and denser than it is now. When we look deep enough into the sky, we see the microwave remnant of the big bang known as the cosmic microwave background. That marks the limit of what we can see. It marks the extent of the observable universe from our vantage point.

The cosmic background we observe comes from a time when the universe was already about 380,000 years old. We can’t directly observe what happened before that. Much of the earlier period is fairly well understood given what we know about physics, but the earliest moments of the big bang remain a bit of a mystery. According to the standard model, the earliest moments of the universe were so hot and dense that even the fundamental forces of the universe acted differently than they do now. To better understand the big bang, we need to better understand these forces.

One of the more difficult forces to understand is the weak force. Unlike more familiar forces such as gravity and electromagnetism, the weak is mostly seen through its effect of radioactive decay. So we can study the weak force by measuring the rate at which things decay. But there’s a problem when it comes to neutrons.

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Researched and Written by JD Voyek.
Narrated and Edited by David Kelly.
Thumbnail Art by Ettore Mazza.

Continue reading “Why Is The Universe Out Of Balance?” »

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Find out how scientists are mapping the black holes throughout the Milky Way and beyond as well as the answer to the Escape the Kugelblitz Challenge Question. Were you able to save humanity?

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Speaking at the 6th International FQXi Conference, “Mind Matters: Intelligence and Agency in the Physical World.”

The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.

Continue reading “Joscha Bach — Reconciling consciousness with physicalism” »

A BLACK HOLE breakthrough has been made after experts spotted what is being dubbed as a “missing link” in understanding the universe.

Have you ever experimented with food dye? It can make cooking a lot more fun, and provides a great example of how two fluids can mix together well—or not much at all.

Add a small droplet in water and you might see it slowly dissolve in the larger liquid. Add a few more drops and perhaps you’ll see a wave of color spread, the colored droplets spreading and breaking apart to diffuse more thoroughly. Add a spoon and begin stirring quickly, and you’ll probably find that the water fully changes color, as desired.

Researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, led by Ivan Bermejo-Moreno, assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, studied a similar phenomenon with gases at high speeds, with an eye toward more efficient mixing to support supersonic scramjet engines. In the study, published in Physics of Fluids, USC Viterbi Ph.D. Jonas Buchmeier, along with Xiangyu Gao (USC Viterbi Ph.D. ‘20) and former visiting M.Sc. student Alexander Bußmann (Technical University Munich), developed a novel tracking method that zoomed in on the fundamentals of how mixing happens. The study helps understand, for example, how injected fuel interacts with the surrounding oxidizers (air) in the engine to make it operate optimally, or how interstellar gases mix after a supernova explosion to form new stars. The method focuses on the geometric and physical properties of the turbulent swirling motions of gases and how they change shape over time as they mix.

The universe could house black holes smaller than atoms — and they may have left their fingerprints on the moon.