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Category: cosmology

A student-led experiment sets new limits in the search for axions

In the era of precision cosmology, research often means big science: large observatories, highly complex instruments, international collaborations and substantial funding. Yet even in such an advanced field, progress is still possible—including in the search for elusive dark matter—through more agile approaches, driven by small teams and young researchers, supported by institutions and a good dose of ingenuity.

In a paper titled “A New Limit for Axion Dark Matter with SPACE” published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, a group of then-undergraduate students from the University of Hamburg built a cavity detector to search for axions—among the most promising candidates for dark matter—and set new experimental limits on their properties.

The result was achieved with relatively limited resources, showing that even small-scale experiments can make a meaningful contribution to one of the most open challenges in modern physics.

‘Dancing jets’ from black hole reveal an immense power equivalent to 10,000 suns

New Curtin University-led research has used a radio telescope that spans Earth to snap images that measure the immense power of jets from black holes, confirming scientists’ theories of how black holes help shape the structure of the universe.

In a paper published in Nature Astronomy, researchers found the power of the jets in Cygnus X-1—a system comprised of the first confirmed black hole and a supergiant star—was equivalent to the power output of 10,000 suns.

To record the measurement, researchers used an array of linked-up telescopes separated by large distances to observe the black hole jets being buffeted by the winds of the star as the black hole moved around its orbit—much like how strong winds on Earth can push around water in a fountain.

The Gravity Particle Should Exist. So Where Is It?

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Physics is this close to understanding the entire universe. And what lives in this gap? Many physicists think it’s the elusive graviton—the quantum particle of gravity—whose discovery will finally allow us to stitch together our two great theories of nature into a single master theory. But what is the graviton, and does it even exist?

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Earth’s Core Should Be Impossible. A New State of Matter Explains It

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Is Earth’s core a solid or a liquid? Yes. The mysteries of our own planet’s interior have, in many ways, been harder to crack than those of the rest of the cosmos. We can send probes to the edge of the solar system, and the 42 billion light years to the cosmic horizon are largely transparent—a big enough telescope can see the most distant galaxy. But the 6400km to Earth’s center are both opaque to light and far beyond the reach of any conceivable drill. The best we can do for most of our planetary depths is to listen to the faint rumblings of distant earthquakes and then try to piece together how those seismic waves bounce around the interior.

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https://mailchi.mp/1a6eb8f2717d/space… the Entire Space Time Library Here: https://search.pbsspacetime.com/ Hosted by Matt O’Dowd Written by: Richard Dyer & Matt O’Dowd Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer Directed by Andrew Kornhaber Associate Producer: Bahar Gholipour Executive Producer: Andrew Kornhaber Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: Mike Martin Spacetime is a production of Kornhaber Brown for PBS Digital Studios. This program is produced by Kornhaber Brown, which is solely responsible for its content. © 2026 PBS. All rights reserved. End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg: / multidroideka Space Time Was Made Possible In Part By: Big Bang Adam Van Winkle Alexander Tamas David Paryente Juan Benet Kenneth See Mark Rosenthal Morgan Hough Peter Barrett Vinnie Falco Supernova Ethan Cohen Glenn Sugden Grace Biaelcki Justin Lloyd Mark Heising Stephen Wilcox Tristan Lucian Claudius Aurelius Tyacke Hypernova Alex Kern Ben Delo Cal Stephens chuck zegar Dean Galvin Donal Botkin drollere Gregory Forfa jeff white John R. Slavik Massimiliano Pala Mike Purvis PAUL C PEDERSEN Santiago Scott Gorlick Scott Gray Spencer Jones Stephen Saslow Zachary Haberman Антон Кочков Daniel Muzquiz Gamma Ray Burst Alex Gan aaron pinto Almog Cohen Anthony Leon Arko Provo Mukherjee Ayden Miller Bradley Jenkins Bradley Ulis Brandon Lattin Brian Cook Chris Liao Christopher Wade Chuck Lukaszewski Collin Dutrow Craig Falls Craig Stonaha Dan Warren Daniel Donahue Daniel Jennings Darrell Stewart David Giltinan David Johnston Doyle Vann Eric Kiebler Eric Raschke Eric Schrenker Faraz Khan Frederic Simon gmmiddleton Harsh Khandhadia Isaac Suttell James Trimmier Jason Bowen Jeb Campbell Jeff Harris Jeremy Soller Jerry Thomas jim bartosh John Anderson John De Witt John Funai John H. Austin, Jr. Joseph Salomone Junaid Ali Kacper Cieśla Kane Holbrook Kent Durham Koen Wilde Kyle Atkinson Lori Ferris Marcelo Garcia Marion Lang Mark Daniel Cohen Mark Delagasse Matt Kaprocki Matt Quinn Matthew Johnson Michael Barton Michael Clark Michael Lev Michael Purcell Mikk Mihkel Nurges Nick Hoffenstoffer III Nicolas Katsantonis Onemind Param Saxena Paul Wood Rad Antonov Reuben Brewer Richard Steenbergen Robert DeChellis Ross Kennedy Ross Story Russell Moore SamSword Sandhya Devi Sean Owen Shane Calimlim SilentGnome Terje Vold Thomas Dougherty Todd J Lerner Tybie Fitzhugh Zac Sweers.

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Stephen Hawking’s black hole information paradox could be solved — if the universe has 7 dimensions

The new research explores a universe with more dimensions than the familiar four. In this framework, the cosmos contains seven dimensions, three of which are compact and invisible at everyday scales.

“We experience three dimensions of space and one of time — four dimensions in total,” Pinčák said. “Our model proposes that the universe actually has seven dimensions: the four we know, plus three tiny extra dimensions curled up so tightly that we cannot directly perceive them.”

These extra dimensions are arranged in a highly symmetrical structure known as a G₂ geometry. This mathematical framework, often explored in advanced theories such as a version of string theory known as M-theory, determines how the hidden dimensions are “folded.”

10 Terrifying Theories About What Exists Outside The Universe

All right, let’s go. Number 10, the infinite bubble bath.
In 1980, physicist Alan Guth proposed a theory that solved several major problems in cosmology at once. His idea, called cosmic inflation, suggested that in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the universe expanded faster than the speed of light, doubling in size repeatedly until it became the cosmos we observe today.

DESI Completes Planned 3D Map of the Universe and Continues Exploring

DESI has mapped more than 47 million galaxies and quasars, creating the largest high-resolution 3D map of our Universe to date. Because of the instrument’s excellent performance and hints that dark energy might evolve, DESI will continue observations into 2028 and further expand the map. DESI was constructed with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and is mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter telescope.

Last night, the 5,000 fiber-optic eyes of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) swiveled onto a patch of sky near the Little Dipper. Roughly every 20 minutes, they locked onto distant pinpricks of light, gathering photons that had traveled toward Earth for billions of years. When the Sun rose, DESI collaborators marked the completion of a major milestone: successfully surveying all of the area in DESI’s planned map of the Universe.

The five-year survey, finished ahead of schedule and with vastly more data than expected, has produced the largest high-resolution 3D map of the Universe ever made. Researchers use that map to explore dark energy, the fundamental ingredient that makes up about 70% of our Universe and is driving its accelerating expansion.

A monster black hole appeared first, then its galaxy began to grow around it

Using observations gathered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an international team of astronomers have revealed that one supermassive black hole in the early universe must have formed before a galaxy developed around it. Publishing their results in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team led by Roberto Maiolino at the University of Cambridge hope their results could lead to a better understanding of the origins of these immense objects.

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) are known to lurk at the centers of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Carrying up to billions of times the mass of the sun, they have presented a long-standing conundrum to astronomers.

According to our latest models, black holes form from the remnants of supernova explosions, which most often occur when massive stars reach the ends of their lives. Afterwards, they can grow by consuming gas from surrounding accretion disks—but their growth rate is restricted by a brightness threshold called the “Eddington limit.” Beyond this point, the outward pressure from radiation exceeds the gravitational pull, and material is ejected into space.

Dark matter could explain the earliest supermassive black holes

A growing mystery in astronomy is the presence of gargantuan black holes—some weighing as much as a billion suns—existing less than a billion years after the Big Bang. According to the standard theory of black hole formation, these black holes simply should not have had enough time to grow so large. A study led by University of California, Riverside graduate student Yash Aggarwal shows that dark matter decays could be the key to understanding the origin of these cosmic behemoths. Published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, the research shows that the energy released from dark matter decay could alter the chemistry of early galaxies enough to cause some of them to directly collapse into black holes rather than forming stars.

The result is timely, since NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope continues to observe unusually large black holes in the early universe that could have formed by direct collapse. Astronomers had believed this process requires a coincidence of nearby stars shining onto pre-stellar gas and so expected it to be rare.

Aggarwal’s team goes beyond the standard approach by using dark matter—the unknown 85% of the matter in the universe that helps form galaxies. They show that if dark matter decays, it can leak a small amount of its energy into the gas and supercharge the direct collapse rate. Each decaying dark matter particle would only need to inject an amount of energy that is a billion trillionths of the energy of a single AA battery.

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