Archive for the ‘cosmology’ category
May 19, 2022
New picture answers many questions about our galaxy’s black hole — and reveals some mysteries
Posted by Atanas Atanasov in category: cosmology
The recently-released image shows how Sagittarius A is both mundane and very strange, all at once.
May 17, 2022
How could we find a wormhole hiding in the Milky Way?
Posted by Shubham Ghosh Roy in categories: cosmology, physics
If there was a wormhole in the center of our galaxy, how could we tell? Two physicists propose that carefully watching the motions of a star orbiting the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole might help scientists start to check. The researchers published the idea in a recent paper in the journal Physical Review D.
A wormhole is a hypothetical concept that connects two separate areas of space-time. Wormholes often appear in science fiction narratives like the 2014 film Interstellar as a convenient way to get from point A to point B in the vast universe. Physicists have many theories that describe how wormholes might behave, if they exist, but haven’t yet found any.
Hello darkness, my old friend 🎵
Want to listen to a black hole? The black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster sends out pressure waves that ripple the cluster’s gas, which we can translate into a note. #BlackHoleWeek https://go.nasa.gov/3MQae1I
May 17, 2022
Physicists Found a Way to Trigger The Strange Glow of Warp Speed Acceleration
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: cosmology, physics
Every time you take a step, space itself glows with a soft warmth.
Called the Fulling–Davies–Unruh effect (or sometimes just Unruh effect if you’re pushed for time), this eerie glow of radiation emerging from the vacuum is akin to the mysterious Hawking radiation that’s thought to surround black holes.
Only in this case, it’s the product of acceleration rather than gravity.
Continue reading “Physicists Found a Way to Trigger The Strange Glow of Warp Speed Acceleration” »
May 16, 2022
Black hole science enters its golden age
Posted by Shubham Ghosh Roy in categories: cosmology, science
The idea of black holes have been around for over 200 years. Today, we’re seeing them in previously unimaginable ways.
May 16, 2022
Distant quasars reveal a surprising fact about the first black holes
Posted by Atanas Atanasov in category: cosmology
A new analysis of the early universe shows quasars with growth capped by surrounding matter.
May 16, 2022
Black hole scientist: ‘Wherever we look, we should see donuts’
Posted by Gemechu Taye in categories: cosmology, physics
May 15, 2022
The supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy proves Einstein right
Posted by Atanas Atanasov in categories: cosmology, innovation
Here’s how over 300 astronomers captured the dazzling first image of Sagittarius A*, and why it matters.
Our team was part of the global Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, which has used observations from a worldwide network of eight radio telescopes on our planet — collectively forming a single, Earth-sized virtual telescope — to take the stunning image. The breakthrough follows the collaboration’s 2019 release of the first-ever image of a black hole, called M87*, at the center of the more distant Messier 87 galaxy.
Black holes: Looking into darkness
Continue reading “The supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy proves Einstein right” »
May 15, 2022
Thousands of Mysterious Strands Cross Through the Center of Our Galaxy
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: cosmology
“Some of them are beautiful — they show up like harp-shaped strings next to each other,” says Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University who led a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on the strands.
But researchers are still unsure about the cause of these features in the cosmos. “The big question is: What is the origin of these filaments?” Yusef-Zadeh says. “The puzzle is still there and the mystery continues.”
One hypotheses suggests they might be related to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, which was captured in an image for the first time ever this week.
Continue reading “Thousands of Mysterious Strands Cross Through the Center of Our Galaxy” »