New theory makes testable predictions.
Category: cosmology – Page 6
One theory beyond the standard model could allow wormholes that you could actually fly through
Wormholes are a popular feature in science fiction, the means through which spacecraft can achieve faster-than-light (FTL) travel and instantaneously move from one point in spacetime to another. And while the General Theory of Relativity forbids the existence of “traversable wormholes,” recent research has shown that they are actually possible within the domain of quantum physics.
Study shows how scientists can use black holes as supercolliders
As federal funding cuts impact decades of research, scientists could turn to black holes for cheaper, natural alternatives to expensive facilities searching for dark matter and similarly elusive particles that hold clues to the universe’s deepest secrets, a new Johns Hopkins study of supermassive black holes suggests.
The findings, which appear in Physical Review Letters, could help complement multi-billion-dollar expenses and decades of construction needed for research complexes like Europe’s Large Hadron Collider, the largest and highest-energy particle accelerator in the world.
“One of the great hopes for particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider is that it will generate dark matter particles, but we haven’t seen any evidence yet,” said study co-author Joseph Silk, an astrophysics professor at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Oxford, UK.
Supercomputer simulation reveals how merging neutron stars form black holes and powerful jets
Merging neutron stars are excellent targets for multi-messenger astronomy. This modern and still very young method of astrophysics coordinates observations of the various signals from one and the same astrophysical source. When two neutron stars collide, they emit gravitational waves, neutrinos and radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. To detect them, researchers need to add gravitational wave detectors and neutrino telescopes to ordinary telescopes that capture light.
Precise models and predictions of the expected signals are essential in order to coordinate these observatories, which are very different in nature.
“Predicting the multi-messenger signals from binary neutron star mergers from first principles is extremely difficult. We have now succeeded in doing just that,” says Kota Hayashi, a postdoctoral researcher in the Computational Relativistic Astrophysics department at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in the Potsdam Science Park. “Using the Fugaku supercomputer in Japan, we have performed the longest and most complex simulation of a binary neutron star merger to date.”
Astronomers discovered the biggest black hole jet ever seen, the size of three Milky Ways
That hurdle has now been cleared. A newly analyzed radio image reveals twin lobes stretching roughly 66,000 light-years on each side of a quasar called J1601+3102.
Because the radio waves began their trip across space more than 12.1 billion years ago, the observation shows the quasar as it was when the universe had completed only about nine percent of its history.
This particular quasar, J1601+3102, belongs to a youthful universe – it flared into view when the cosmos was less than 1.2 billion years old.
The Universe’s Most Powerful Cosmic Rays May Finally Be Explained
Somewhere in our galaxy are engines capable of driving atomic fragments to velocities that come within a whisker of lightspeed.
The explosive deaths of stars seems like a natural place to search for sources of these highly energetic cosmic bullets, yet when it comes to the most powerful particles, researchers have had their doubts.
Numerical simulations by a small international team of physicists may yet save the supernova theory of cosmic ray emissions at the highest of energies, suggesting there is a brief period where a collapsing star could still become the Universe’s most extreme accelerator.
Unveiling the birth of star cluster groups in the Milky Way
A study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics has identified four previously unknown primordial open cluster (OC) groups in the Milky Way.
Open clusters, loose assemblies of stars born from the same giant molecular cloud (GMC), are typically considered to form in isolation. However, the newly discovered OC groups consist of multiple member clusters originating from the same GMC, formed through sequential star formation processes.
Notably, two of these groups, labeled G1 and G2, appear to have formed via a hierarchical mechanism triggered by multiple supernova (SN) explosions.