This is a ~1 hour 12 minute talk titled “Computational Symbiogenesis” by Blaise Agüera y Arcas (https://research.google/people/106776/?&type=google), given for our symposium on the Platonic Space (https://thoughtforms.life/symposium-on-the-platonic-space/).
Category: space – Page 3
Scientists get a first look at the innermost region of a white dwarf system
Some 200 light years from Earth, the core of a dead star is circling a larger star in a macabre cosmic dance. The dead star is a type of white dwarf that exerts a powerful magnetic field as it pulls material from the larger star into a swirling, accreting disk. The spiraling pair is what’s known as an “intermediate polar” — a type of star system that gives off a complex pattern of intense radiation, including X-rays, as gas from the larger star falls onto the other one.
Now, MIT astronomers have used an X-ray telescope in space to identify key features in the system’s innermost region — an extremely energetic environment that has been inaccessible to most telescopes until now. In an open-access study published in the Astrophysical Journal, the team reports using NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) to observe the intermediate polar, known as EX Hydrae.
The team found a surprisingly high degree of X-ray polarization, which describes the direction of an X-ray wave’s electric field, as well as an unexpected direction of polarization in the X-rays coming from EX Hydrae. From these measurements, the researchers traced the X-rays back to their source in the system’s innermost region, close to the surface of the white dwarf.
Potentially distinct structure in Kuiper belt discovered with help of clustering algorithm
A vast region of our solar system, called the Kuiper belt, stretches from the orbit of Neptune out to 50 or so astronomical units (AU), where an AU is the distance between Earth and the sun. This region consists mostly of icy objects and small rocky bodies, like Pluto. Scientists believe Kuiper belt objects (KPOs) are remnants left over from the formation of the solar system.
Now, a new preprint paper on arXiv describes a newly identified region that appears to be completely distinct from other parts of the Kuiper belt—but some uncertainty remains.
Are The Fundamental Constants Finely Tuned? | The Naturalness Problem
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Did God have any choice in creating the world? So asked Albert Einstein. He was being poetic. What he really meant, was whether the universe could have been any other way. Could it have had different laws of physics, driven by different fundamental constants. Or is this one vast and complex universe the inevitable result of an inevitable and unique underlying principle, perhaps expressible as a supremely elegant Theory of Everything. It certainly seems that Einstein thought this should be the case … that God had no choice in whether or how to create the world. It seems like a pretty arm-chair philosophical and perhaps unanswerable question, but the modern “problem” of naturalness may lead to an answer.
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A “Very Old, Undisturbed Structure” May Have Been Discovered Beyond The Orbit Of Neptune, 43 AU From The Sun
If confirmed, the structure may be primordial.
Watching gold’s atomic structure change at 10 million times Earth’s atmospheric pressure
The inside of giant planets can reach pressures more than one million times the Earth’s atmosphere. As a result of that intense pressure, materials can adopt unexpected structures and properties. Understanding matter in this regime requires experiments that push the limits of physics in the laboratory.
In a recent paper published in Physical Review Letters, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and their collaborators conducted such experiments with gold, achieving the highest-pressure structural measurement ever made for the material. The results, which show gold switching structure at 10 million times the Earth’s atmospheric pressure, are essential for planetary modeling and fusion science.
“These experiments uncover the atomic rearrangements that occur at some of the most extreme pressures achievable in laboratory experiments,” said LLNL scientist and author Amy Coleman.
Theia and Earth were neighbors, new research suggests
About 4.5 billion years ago, the most momentous event in the history of Earth occurred: a huge celestial body called Theia collided with the young Earth. How the collision unfolded and what exactly happened afterward has not been conclusively clarified. What is certain, however, is that the size, composition, and orbit of Earth changed as a result—and that the impact marked the birth of our constant companion in space, the moon.
What kind of body was it that so dramatically altered the course of our planet’s development? How big was Theia? What was it made of? And from which part of the solar system did it hurtle toward Earth?
Finding answers to these questions is difficult. After all, Theia was completely destroyed in the collision. Nevertheless, traces of it can still be found today, for example in the composition of present-day Earth and the moon.
Airborne sensors map ammonia plumes in California’s Imperial Valley
A recent study led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation shows how high-resolution maps of ground-level ammonia plumes can be generated with airborne sensors, highlighting a way to better track the gas.
A key chemical ingredient of fine particulate matter—tiny particles in the air known to be harmful when inhaled—ammonia can be released through agricultural activities such as livestock farming and geothermal power generation as well as natural geothermal processes. Because it’s not systematically monitored, many sources of the pungent gas go undetected.
Published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, the study focuses on a series of 2023 research flights that covered the Imperial Valley to the southeast of the Salton Sea in inland Southern California, as well as the Eastern Coachella Valley to its northwest. Prior satellite-based research has identified the Imperial Valley as a prolific source of gaseous ammonia.
Dusty star-forming galaxy at high redshift discovered
An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new dusty star-forming galaxy at high redshift. The newfound galaxy, designated AC-2168, was detected using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA). The finding was detailed in a paper published Nov. 11 on the pre-print server arXiv.
The so-called dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs) are highly obscured galaxies undergoing a period of intense star formation, with star-formation rates reaching even 1,000 solar masses per year. They represent the most intense starbursts in the universe and are crucial to improving our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution.
However, although many DSFGs are known, their nuclear structure, which can be essential to better understand the evolution of these galaxies, is still not fully explored. Hence, finding new DSFGs and investigating them in detail could shed more light on this matter.
Scientists Reveal a Theory Suggesting Another Reality Has Been Overlapping Ours
If you think about it, physics has always advanced because of strange little clues that didn’t seem to fit. Mercury’s orbit was off by a tiny fraction; that small mismatch eventually gave us Einstein’s theory of relativity.
The ultraviolet catastrophe in blackbody radiation didn’t make sense because the crisis opened the door to quantum mechanics. So whenever something doesn’t quite add up, it’s worth paying attention. Extra dimensions enter the story because of exactly this kind of mismatch.
If extra dimensions are real, then the forces of nature might not be as separate as they look. Gravity might only appear weak because it’s spread across hidden dimensions, while the other forces are stuck to the space we can see. That would mean unification: the dream of combining all forces under one theory isn’t just possible, but natural.
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Timestamps.
0:00 Extra Dimensions.