Lifeboat Foundation

HOW did our universe begin? This is among the most profound questions of all, and you would be forgiven for thinking it is impossible to answer. But Laura Mersini-Houghton says she has cracked it. A cosmologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she was born and raised under communist dictatorship in Albania, where her father was considered ideologically opposed to the regime and exiled. She later won a Fulbright scholarship to study in the US, forging a career in cosmology in which she has tackled the origins of the universe – and made an extraordinary proposal.

Mersini-Houghton’s big idea is that the universe in its earliest moments can be understood as a quantum wave function – a mathematical description of a haze of possibilities – that gave rise to many diverse universes as well as our own. She has also made predictions about how other universes would leave an imprint upon our own. Those ideas have been controversial, with some physicists arguing that her predictions are invalid. But Mersini-Houghton argues that they have been confirmed by observations of the radiation left over from the big bang, known as the cosmic microwave background.

A proposed study of dwarf galaxies could give insight into whether dark matter particles interact with each other.

The observations could not be explained by Newton’s law of universal gravitation. An alternative theory of gravity might provide the answer. Astrophysicists observed mysterious behavior in star clusters that could lead to a rewrite of fundamental principles of the theory of gravity and even disprove the existence of dark matter, a press release explains.

The new findings challenge existing preconceptions based on widely-accepted principles from Newton’s law of universal gravitation, which explain the large-scale structure and movements of the universe.

An analysis of more than two decades’ worth of supernova explosions convincingly boosts modern cosmological theories and reinvigorates efforts to answer fundamental questions.

A powerful new analysis has been performed by astrophysicists that places the most precise limits ever on the composition and evolution of the universe. With this analysis, dubbed Pantheon+, cosmologists find themselves at a crossroads.

Pantheon+ convincingly finds that the cosmos is made up of about two-thirds dark energy and one-third matter — predominantly in the form of dark matter — and is expanding at an accelerating pace over the last several billion years. However, Pantheon+ also cements a major disagreement over the pace of that expansion that has yet to be solved.

What is exotic matter, and could we use it to make wormholes? – Julia, aged 14, London.

Where are we likely to find life first and the most on Mars? And why I think that is both likely and not a threat to us and us not to it, Watch and see.

Worm-hole generators by the pound mass: https://greengregs.com/

Continue reading “Mars Life — Where to Find It — IF…” »

Experts from the Astrophysics Research Institute at LJMU, with help from colleagues from the University of Montpellier, have conceived of an ‘early warning’ system to alert to when a massive star is about to end its life.

Whether you are a keen astrophotographer or general lover of all things outer-space, NASA has a treat for you. They have made 140,000 audio clips, videos, and images available for everyone to view and download – copyright free and for public use.

Within the in-depth, searchable library, NASA has included the EXIF data with all images. This is particularly exciting as it provides an insight into how these photographs were created, whether that be with specialist equipment or more accessible DSLRs.

When a star explodes (a supernova), it sends its intense burst of light out in all directions. On rare occasions, in the months and years that follow, rings of light or “light echoes” spread out from the original supernova position.

This is what is described in a recent paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters based on observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) by a collaboration of astronomers from Dublin, Barcelona, Aarhus, New York and Garching. The paper, “Hubble Space Telescope Reveals Spectacular Light Echoes Associated with the Stripped-envelope Supernova 2016adj in the Iconic Dust Lane of Centaurus A,” was published this week.

The scientists merged the HST images in a short gif-video, showing first the supernova explosion at the very center, followed by light rings which appeared when light from the explosion hit various layers of dust in the vicinity.