Stars that vanish from the sky may be collapsing directly into black holes without going supernova first, a new study of a bizarre binary star system suggests.
Joint research led by Michiko Fujii of the University of Tokyo demonstrates a possible formation mechanism of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters, star clusters that could contain tens of thousands or even millions of tightly packed stars.
Fewer miniature black holes found:
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have found that the universe contains far fewer miniature black holes than previously thought, potentially shaking up current theories about dark matter.
Using advanced quantum field theory, typically reserved for subatomic particles, they applied this understanding to the early universe. They discovered new insights into primordial black holes (PBHs), which have been a strong contender for dark matter. Upcoming observations could soon confirm their surprising findings.
After starting science operations in February, Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) studied the monster black hole at the center of galaxy NGC4151.
“XRISM’s Resolve instrument captured a detailed spectrum of the area around the black hole,” said Brian Williams, NASA’s project scientist for the mission at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The peaks and dips are like chemical fingerprints that can tell us what elements are present and reveal clues about the fate of matter as it nears the black hole.”
XRISM (pronounced “crism”) is led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in collaboration with NASA, along with contributions from ESA (European Space Agency). It launched Sept. 6, 2023. NASA and JAXA developed Resolve, the mission’s microcalorimeter spectrometer.
Are dark matter and dark energy stable and constant? Since we don’t understand their true physical nature, we can’t be sure. But astronomers can see if they vary depending on which direction in space they look. This is a test of whether the universe is lopsided or the same everywhere (the physics term for this is isotropic). It turns out that the amount of dark matter surrounding galaxies is the same in every direction, and the strength of dark energy is also the same in every direction.
To see whether the influence of dark matter and dark energy has changed over cosmic time, astronomers look deep into space. Distant light is old light, so telescopes act as time machines, probing billions of years into the past. By measuring the redshift and brightness of distant objects, astronomers map out the expansion history of the universe. Dark matter dominated for most of that history since the Big Bang. That’s because when the universe was smaller, the gravity exerted by dark matter was stronger, while the force exerted by dark energy has stayed the same. Now is the only time in the entire history of the universe when the two entities’ influences are about equal. In the future, the effects of dark energy will increasingly dominate, and the universe will accelerate forever.
If black holes are just regions of spacetime, where the slope of spacetime is infinite at it’s center, how can black holes even move? When matter moves through spacetime, it bends the spacetime around it, but if black holes are just regions of spacetime, how can a region in spacetime bend other regions of spacetime? And another question arises. If black holes are just regions in spacetime, how can it bend the spacetime around it, so it can remain a black hole, if there is no matter to continuously bend it?
Scientists have just identified the formation processes of some of the Universe’s earliest galaxies in the turbulent era of the Cosmic Dawn.
JWST observations of the early Universe around 13.3 to 13.4 billion years ago – just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang – have revealed telltale signs of gas reservoirs being actively slurped into three newly forming and growing galaxies.
“You could say that these are the first ‘direct’ images of galaxy formation that we’ve ever seen,” says astrophysicist Kasper Elm Heintz from the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, who led the research.
Scientists “took a picture” of the Big Bang by capturing the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, which is like the afterglow of the Big Bang. They used satellites like the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and the Planck spacecraft to measure this ancient light. These instruments detected faint microwave signals that have been traveling through space for about 13.8 billion years. By analyzing these signals, scientists created a detailed map of the early universe, showing tiny temperature fluctuations. This “picture” helps us understand the universe’s origins and how it has evolved over time. #brightside Credit: Galaxy Cluster Abell: NASA Hubble — https://flic.kr/p/2e8LH2d, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.…, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi… Cosmic Microwave: ESA and the Planck Collaboration, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.…, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi… NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Animation is created by Bright Side.
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The rate at which the universe is currently expanding is known as the Hubble Rate. In recent years, different measurements have given different results for the Hubble rate, a discrepancy between theory and observation that’s been called the “Hubble tension”. Now, a team of astrophysicists claims the Hubble tension is gone and it’s the fault of supernovae data. Let’s have a look.
Continue reading “A Huge Cosmology Problem Might Just Have Disappeared” »
Astronomers have discovered black holes ranging from a few times the sun’s mass to tens of billions. Now a group of scientists has predicted that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find a class of “featherweight” black holes that has so far eluded detection.
Today, black holes form either when a massive star collapses or when heavy objects merge. However, scientists suspect that smaller “primordial” black holes, including some with masses similar to Earth’s, could have formed in the first chaotic moments of the early universe.
“Detecting a population of Earth-mass primordial black holes would be an incredible step for both astronomy and particle physics because these objects can’t be formed by any known physical process,” said William DeRocco, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz who led a study about how Roman could reveal them.
