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Category: cosmology – Page 10

Simulations hint at a hidden population of companionless black holes

So far, almost all stellar-mass black holes detected by astronomers have been found in binary systems. However, astronomers have long suspected that these binary black holes are the exception and that, within the Milky Way, most exist on their own.

Through new simulations, researchers led by Wagg at the Flatiron Institute in New York have calculated that more than 90% of stellar-mass black holes in our galaxy could be isolated in this way, hinting at the possibility of a vast reservoir of as-yet unobserved bodies. Their results have been published on the arXiv preprint server.

Scientists reveal the hidden force driving the universe’s hottest fluid

When atomic nuclei crash into one another at nearly the speed of light, they briefly produce quark-gluon plasma, an extraordinarily hot state of matter in which quarks and gluons can move freely. This exotic material behaves like an almost perfect fluid and offers scientists a way to study conditions similar to those that existed shortly after the Big Bang.

Researchers have devoted considerable attention to the plasma’s intense swirling motion and powerful electromagnetic fields. Its acceleration, however, has received far less scrutiny, even though it directly contributes to the fireball’s rapid expansion. In hydrodynamics, acceleration is considered just as fundamental as vorticity, much as electric and magnetic fields are treated as equally important parts of electromagnetism.

CERN Experiments Detect Signs of the Universe’s Primordial Matter

All four major LHC experiments have found new evidence that collisions between oxygen and neon may produce the extreme state of matter that existed during the first microseconds after the Big Bang.

Inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), collisions between relatively light oxygen and neon nuclei may be producing matter from the earliest moments of the Universe. One year after the collider’s first oxygen runs, all four major LHC experiments, ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb, have reported signs of quark–gluon plasma (QGP).

QGP forms under immense pressure at temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the center of the Sun. In these conditions, composite particles break apart into quarks and the gluons that normally bind them together. This state of matter is thought to have filled the Universe during the first millionths of a second after the Big Bang. Nearly 14 billion years later, physicists can briefly recreate it through high-energy nuclear collisions at the LHC.

Moon’s thick crust could amplify elusive gravitational-wave signals

Gravitational waves are tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime that are produced when massive objects in the cosmos accelerate or collide. By detecting these waves, astrophysicists can study various cosmic events, including black hole mergers, neutron star collisions and the early evolution of the universe.

There are several gravitational-wave observatories in different geographic regions worldwide. While these detectors are highly sensitive to the tiny changes associated with ripples in spacetime, they cannot yet detect waves across all frequency ranges.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University recently revisited the possibility of using the moon to amplify gravitational waves with frequencies between 0.01 and 1 hertz (Hz), a range that remains largely inaccessible to current gravitational-wave detectors.

Near a black hole, gravity changes a quantum circuit’s readings, not its rules

Imagine holding one of our most precise quantum devices at a fixed position outside a black hole. A Josephson junction—two superconductors separated by an ultrathin barrier—can turn a voltage into a quantum oscillation with extraordinary precision. Would intense gravity change that quantum rule, or only change how a faraway observer reads the device?

In our study published in the Journal of High Energy Physics, we found a clean answer. The local Josephson physics remains intact. Gravity instead changes the translation between measurements made beside the circuit and measurements assigned by an observer far from the black hole.

Oxygen collisions at the LHC show new indications of extreme state of matter

All four main LHC experiments have found new signs that oxygen and neon collisions may create the extreme state of matter that existed during the first microseconds after the Big Bang.

One year after the first-ever collisions of oxygen at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the main LHC collaborations—ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb—have each reported signs of the state of matter known as quark–gluon plasma (QGP) produced in these collisions.

QGP is a state of matter that forms under intense pressure and at temperatures more than 100,000 times hotter than the center of the sun. Under these extreme conditions, composite particles break down into quarks and the gluons that ordinarily hold them together. Scientists believe this was the state of the universe in the first microseconds after the Big Bang. In the present-day universe, nearly 14 billion years later, they can recreate and study QGP with high-energy nuclear collisions at the LHC.

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