Lifeboat Foundation

In the late 1990s, astronomers discovered something mysterious pushing galaxies apart faster than gravity pulls them together. It seemed like every little bit of space had some amount of energy that spread it away from every other little bit of space, and that strange pushing came to be known as ‘dark energy’ — dark, because no one knows what it is.

And now a group of physicists have shown that dark energy could probably be explained — as long as we’re willing to give up a fundamental piece of our understanding of light…

Most scientists think that dark energy exists because of what’s known as a cosmological constant — something acting throughout the Universe that tells different bits of space to repel each other. It’s sort of like an anti-gravity force, but it acts everywhere instead of just being between two things with mass and it always acts with the same strength.

A new measurement of the dust around KIC 8462852 reveals that it seems to be consistent with the breakup of a cluster of Halley-like comets.

The Kepler satellite was designed to search for Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of stars by measuring dips in a star’s brightness as orbiting planets move across the stellar disc (transits). Its sensitive camera stares at more than 150,000 stars towards the constellations of Cygnus and Lyrae, and so far has found over 5000 exoplanet candidates. But Kepler also monitors the light fluctuations in all the other stars, even dips not caused by transits, and has found some bizarre situations. Perhaps the strangest is the case of KIC 846852, an otherwise normal star slightly larger than the Sun that has exhibited significant, irregular dips in the flux that last as short as a few days or as long as eighty days, and are as deep as 20%. The source is so far unique in the Kepler database.

Nice

A new three-dimensional map of part of the universe, created by a massive international team of researchers, is refuting the idea that Einstein’s theory of general relativity could be breaking down in the faraway universe, according to a new report in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan.

“We tested the theory of general relativity further than anyone else ever has. It’s a privilege to be able to publish our results 100 years after Einstein proposed his theory,” study author Teppei Okumura, an astrophysicist from The University of Tokyo, said in a news release.

Continue reading “Japanese team confirms that Einstein’s theory works throughout the universe” »

It is fascinating to think that in 100 billion years a new civilization might look into the sky and have all the evidence to think their galaxy is the entire universe.

Even with a perfect understanding of science and a perfect execution of technologies, there are some things we’ll never reach.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., May 12 (UPI) — Researchers say a faint blue galaxy 30 million light-years away may offer insights into the birth of the universe.

The galaxy, discovered by astronomers at Indiana University, is small, faint and relatively unassuming. Its chemical contents, however, make it quite unusual. Researchers found surprisingly few heavy chemical elements inside the galaxy, which they dubbed Leoncino, or “little lion.”

In fact, Leoncino boasts the fewest metals of any observed gravitationally bound star system.

Continue reading “Faint blue galaxy could possess Big Bang clues” »

Nice list of experts on Quantum; however, I would love to see someone from the Lab from Los Alamos to discuss Quantum Internet and University of Sydney from their Innovation Lab or the lady herself “Michelle Simmons” on the panel. Hope to see registration soon.

The announcement was made at the Global Derivatives Trading & Risk Management conference in Budapest, Hungary.

“Quantum computers enable us to use the laws of physics to solve intractable mathematical problems,” said Marcos de López de Prado, Senior Managing Director at Guggenheim Partners and a Research Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Computational Research Division. “This is the beginning of a new era, and it will change the job of the mathematician and computer scientist in the years to come.”

Continue reading “D-Wave launches Quantum for Quants at Budapest derivatives conference” »

NASA just made a new announcement regarding the findings made by the Kepler Space Telescope.

NASA just announced that they have found 1,284 new planets. This is the most exoplanets that have ever been announced at one time, and it doubles the number of known Kepler exoplanets (informally known as ‘alien planets’).

“This announcement more than doubles the number of known exoplanets,” says Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University, and a member of the study.

Continue reading “Kepler Findings: NASA Announces Discovery of More Than 1,200 New Alien Planets” »

Did you see it today?

Happening now. Mercury is making a rare transit across the face of the sun. You can watch it all live right here.” lang=” en-us.

Continue reading “WATCH LIVE: The Transit of Mercury Across the Sun” »

It would take human volunteers 120,000 years to classify every galactic image that comes through a new space telescope. That’s where computers come in.