cosmology – Lifeboat News: The Blog https://lifeboat.com/blog Safeguarding Humanity Tue, 28 Jan 2025 13:44:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 Astronomers discover new lensed, dual and projected quasars https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/astronomers-discover-new-lensed-dual-and-projected-quasars https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/astronomers-discover-new-lensed-dual-and-projected-quasars#respond Tue, 28 Jan 2025 13:44:17 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/astronomers-discover-new-lensed-dual-and-projected-quasars

Chinese astronomers have investigated quasar candidates from the DESI Legacy Surveys (DESI-LS) photometry catalog. As a result, they detected 19 strongly-lensed, dual and projected quasars. The finding was reported in a paper published Jan. 15 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Quasars, or quasi-stellar objects (QSOs), are (AGN) of very high luminosity powered by (SMBHs), emitting electromagnetic radiation observable in radio, infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. They are among the brightest and most distant objects in the known universe, and serve as fundamental tools for numerous studies in astrophysics as well as cosmology.

Two observed with a small separation can be, in some cases, lensed quasars—where the light from a single quasar is bent, resulting in two images of the same quasar. More often, such objects are dual quasars, which means that they are at similar redshift and physically interacting. However, the most common scenario is projected quasars—coincidentally appearing very close to each other along the line of sight, but actually at different redshifts.

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Transcendence: The Fermi Paradox, Enlightenment & Singularity https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/transcendence-the-fermi-paradox-enlightenment-singularity https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/transcendence-the-fermi-paradox-enlightenment-singularity#respond Tue, 28 Jan 2025 13:21:48 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/transcendence-the-fermi-paradox-enlightenment-singularity

Many seek a path to enlightenment through study and meditation, but what does science tell us about transcendence? And could entire civilizations seek to leave this reality behind?

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South African telescope discovers a giant galaxy that’s 32 times bigger than Earth’s https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/south-african-telescope-discovers-a-giant-galaxy-thats-32-times-bigger-than-earths https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/south-african-telescope-discovers-a-giant-galaxy-thats-32-times-bigger-than-earths#respond Mon, 27 Jan 2025 22:24:00 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/south-african-telescope-discovers-a-giant-galaxy-thats-32-times-bigger-than-earths

In some cases, the black hole will even spew jets of plasma, millions of light-years across intergalactic space. The plasma gas is so hot that it’s essentially a soup of electrons moving close to the speed of light. These plasma jets glow at radio frequencies, so they can be seen with a radio telescope and are, aptly, named radio galaxies. In a recent episode of the astronomy podcast The Cosmic Savannah, I likened their appearance to two glow sticks (the plasma jets) poking out of a ball of sticky tack (the galaxy). Astronomers hypothesise that the plasma jets keep expanding outwards as time passes, eventually growing so large that they become giant radio galaxies.

Millions of normally sized radio galaxies are known to science. But by 2020 only about 800 giant radio galaxies had been found, nearly 50 years since they had been initially discovered. They were considered rare. However, a new generation of radio telescopes, including South Africa’s MeerKAT, have turned this idea on its head: in the past five years about 11,000 giants have been discovered.

MeerKAT’s newest giant radio galaxy find is extraordinary. The plasma jets of this cosmic giant span 3.3 million light-years from end to end – over 32 times the size of the Milky Way. I’m one of the lead researchers who made the discovery. We’ve nicknamed it Inkathazo, meaning “trouble” in South Africa’s isiXhosa and isiZulu languages. That’s because it’s been a bit troublesome to understand the physics behind what’s going on with Inkathazo.

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Scientists Pin down the Origins of a Fast Radio Burst https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/scientists-pin-down-the-origins-of-a-fast-radio-burst https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/scientists-pin-down-the-origins-of-a-fast-radio-burst#respond Mon, 27 Jan 2025 17:11:30 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/scientists-pin-down-the-origins-of-a-fast-radio-burst

Fast radio bursts are brief and brilliant explosions of radio waves emitted by extremely compact objects such as neutron stars and possibly black holes. These fleeting fireworks last for just a thousandth of a second and can carry an enormous amount of energy—enough to briefly outshine entire galaxies.

Since the first fast radio burst (FRB) was discovered in 2007, astronomers have detected thousands of FRBs, whose locations range from within our own galaxy to as far as 8 billion light-years away. Exactly how these cosmic radio flares are launched is a highly contested unknown.

Now, astronomers at MIT have pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst using a novel technique that could do the same for other FRBs. In their new study, appearing in the journal Nature, the team focused on FRB 20221022A—a previously discovered fast radio burst that was detected from a galaxy about 200 million light-years away.

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Scientists use black-hole mergers to test symmetries of the universe https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/scientists-use-black-hole-mergers-to-test-symmetries-of-the-universe https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/scientists-use-black-hole-mergers-to-test-symmetries-of-the-universe#respond Mon, 27 Jan 2025 07:08:27 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/scientists-use-black-hole-mergers-to-test-symmetries-of-the-universe

In an article published in Physical Review Letters on Thursday, scientists carried out an innovative study testing the existence of mirror asymmetries in our universe by studying the handedness of the gravitational-wave emission from black-hole mergers detected by Advanced LIGO and Virgo.

The pillar of modern cosmology—known as the Cosmological Principle—states that, when observed at large scales, the universe is isotropic and homogeneous. This is, all observers in the universe will roughly observe the same structures regardless of where they are or where they look. As a consequence, the universe must not display a preference for stuff that rotates clock or anti-clockwise but, which is known as “mirror symmetry.”

Einstein’s theory of gravity, known as General Relativity, predicts that massive bodies can produce a type of radiation known as gravitational waves, which consist of distortions of spacetime that travel away from their sources at the speed of light. Such waves are produced in some of the most violent events in the universe, like supernovae, black-hole mergers or the big bang itself.

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MIND-BLOWING! Scientists Bridge the Gap Between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/mind-blowing-scientists-bridge-the-gap-between-quantum-mechanics-and-general-relativity https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/mind-blowing-scientists-bridge-the-gap-between-quantum-mechanics-and-general-relativity#respond Mon, 27 Jan 2025 07:03:43 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/mind-blowing-scientists-bridge-the-gap-between-quantum-mechanics-and-general-relativity

Explore the latest breakthroughs in science! Learn how Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are changing chemical processes and how naked singularities could unlock the secrets of the universe. Discover how these advancements reshape technology and our understanding of physics. Watch now!
Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4146

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction.
00:39 Advancements in Molecular Diffusion within Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs)
03:32 The Enigmatic Nature of Naked Singularities in Cosmology.
07:14 The Intersection of Molecular Diffusion and Cosmological Singularities.
09:20 Outro.
09:29 Enjoy.

MUSIC TITLE : Starlight Harmonies.
MUSIC LINK : https://pixabay.com/music/pulses-star

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The Science of Interstellar with Science Advisor, Kip Thorne https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/the-science-of-interstellar-with-science-advisor-kip-thorne https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/the-science-of-interstellar-with-science-advisor-kip-thorne#respond Mon, 27 Jan 2025 02:11:22 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/the-science-of-interstellar-with-science-advisor-kip-thorne

Go to https://ground.news/startalk to stay fully informed on the latest Space and Science news. Subscribe through our link for 50% off unlimited access to the Vantage plan this month.

Could you travel back in time through a wormhole? Neil deGrasse Tyson sits down with theoretical physicist and Nobel Laureate Kip Thorne to reflect on discovering gravitational waves with LIGO, the science in the movie Interstellar, black holes, and many more mysteries still yet to be answered.

Discover the origin story of the movie Interstellar on its 10th anniversary. Kip explains how science, not fiction, shaped the film’s narrative—from the colossal waves on Miller’s planet to the physics behind black hole time dilation. Discover the recipe for how to create a wormhole and how turning on a time machine could cause it to self-destruct. Plus, learn about the Casimir effect, exotic particles, and how LIGO manipulated vacuum fluctuations to bypass the uncertainty principle.

Neil and Kip dig into the origins of gravitational wave detection, tracing its roots to Joe Weber’s early experiments and Ray Weiss’s unpublished paper. Kip reflects on the decades of work required to make LIGO a success, the challenges of measuring distortions a fraction of a proton’s width, and the historic detection of gravitational waves in 2016 that confirmed Einstein’s predictions.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Greene Confront the Edge of our Understanding https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-brian-greene-confront-the-edge-of-our-understanding https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-brian-greene-confront-the-edge-of-our-understanding#respond Mon, 27 Jan 2025 02:10:05 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-brian-greene-confront-the-edge-of-our-understanding

How do particles get mass? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice discover squarks, sneutrinos, the Higgs boson, and whether dark matter has a particle with theoretical physicist Brian Greene.

Go to https://ground.news/startalk to stay fully informed on Space and Science news. Save 40% off through my link for unlimited access to the Vantage plan this month.

Can we finally get to the bottom of what happens when a quark falls into a black hole? Learn about the ultraviolet catastrophe, the start of quantum physics, and Max Planck quantizing packets of energy. We also discuss how Einstein won the Nobel prize for the discovery for which he is least famous.

We take a deep dive into the Higgs boson. Who’s Higgs? What’s a boson? Find out about how the Higgs field creates mass, the different quantum particles, and how quarks create protons and neutrons. Brian breaks down the theory of supersymmetry: does every particle have a counterpart? Learn about squarks, sneutrinos, and whether supersymmetry can give an answer to what dark matter is.

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Unlocking the Dark Universe With a Mysterious Fifth Force https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/unlocking-the-dark-universe-with-a-mysterious-fifth-force https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/unlocking-the-dark-universe-with-a-mysterious-fifth-force#respond Sun, 26 Jan 2025 16:23:38 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/unlocking-the-dark-universe-with-a-mysterious-fifth-force

Researchers hypothesize a fifth force of nature that could explain the intricate relationship between dark matter and dark energy, suggesting a revolutionary expansion of the Standard Model of physics.

Could a new, fifth force of nature help answer some of the biggest mysteries about dark matter and dark energy? Scientists are actively exploring the possibility.

The Standard Model of physics is widely regarded as one of the greatest achievements in modern science. It describes the universe’s four known forces — gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces — as well as a diverse array of fundamental particles and their interactions. By many measures, it stands as one of the most successful scientific theories in history.

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Cosmic filaments may be the largest spinning objects in space https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/cosmic-filaments-may-be-the-largest-spinning-objects-in-space https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/cosmic-filaments-may-be-the-largest-spinning-objects-in-space#respond Sun, 26 Jan 2025 11:32:05 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2025/01/cosmic-filaments-may-be-the-largest-spinning-objects-in-space

Cosmic Filaments: Spinning Giants in the Universe

Cosmic filaments, the universe’s largest known structures, have been discovered to rotate, challenging existing cosmological theories. Stretching hundreds of millions of light-years, these tendrils of dark matter and galaxies connect the cosmic web, funneling matter into galaxy clusters at their intersections. This groundbreaking observation reveals rotational motion on an enormous scale, previously thought impossible.

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