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Category: cosmology – Page 14

A team of physicists from Sofia University in Bulgaria has proposed a fascinating theory that wormholes, hypothetical tunnels linking different parts of the universe, could be hiding in plain sight. These wormholes may resemble black holes so closely that current technology cannot distinguish between the two, according to a new study reported by New Scientist.

Black holes have long been a source of mystery. They absorb everything, even light, leaving no trace of what falls into them. But where does the swallowed matter go? Some physicists have speculated that black holes might connect to “white holes,” which would spew out particles and radiation on the other end. Together, these phenomena could form a wormhole, or more specifically, an Einstein-Rosen bridge, connecting distant regions of space and time.

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Scientists have discovered that cosmic filaments, the largest known structures in the universe, are rotating. These massive, twisting filaments of dark matter and galaxies stretch across hundreds of millions of light-years and play a crucial role in channeling matter to galaxy clusters. The finding challenges existing theories, as it was previously believed that rotation could not occur on such large scales. The research was confirmed through both computer simulations and real-world data, and it opens up new questions about how these giant structures acquire their spin.

After reading the article, a Reddit user named Kane gained more than 100 upvotes with this comment: “What if galaxy clusters are like neuron and glial clusters in a brain. And dark matter is basically the equivalent of a synapse. It connects galaxies and matter together and is responsible for sending quantum information back and forth like a signal chain.”

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When you stare for long enough into the heart of a galaxy to try to catch a glimpse of the black hole that lurks therein, that may not be all you catch.

When a huge collaboration directed telescopes around the world to the heart of galaxy M87 in 2018 in an ultimately successful effort to capture detail of its supermassive black hole, they also managed to observe some of the wild shenanigans such a black hole engages in.

Now, astronomers discovered that one of those shenanigans was a colossal belch – a gamma-ray eruption from one of the powerful jets of plasma launched from the black hole’s poles as it feeds.

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Black holes are some of the most extreme objects in the universe, and a new mission proposal suggests launching a space telescope specifically to study them. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) group, which took both the first-ever image of a black hole in 2019 and the first-ever image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy in 2022, has plans for a new mission called the Black Hole Explorer (BHEX).

The idea of BHEX is to use a space-based telescope to collect even more detailed information from black holes, as there is less interference from water vapor when viewing them from above the Earth’s atmosphere. The aim would be to combine data from this telescope with the many telescopes on the ground that are already used in the EHT project. The next phase of the project is a collaboration between the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO).

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Also known as Virgo A or NGC 4,486, M87 is the brightest object in the Virgo cluster of galaxies, the largest gravitationally bound type of structure in the universe. It came to fame in April 2019 after scientists from EHT released the first image of a black hole in its center.

Led by the EHT multi wavelength working group, a study published in Astronomy and Astrophysics presents the data from the second EHT conducted in April 2018, involving over 25 terrestrial and orbital telescopes.

The authors report the first observation of a high-energy gamma-ray flare in over a decade from the M87, based on nearly simultaneous spectra of the galaxy spanning the broadest wavelength range ever collected.

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Will AI ever surpass human intelligence, discover new laws of physics, and solve the greatest mysteries of our universe?

This week on Into the Impossible, I explore the potential and dangers of artificial intelligence with none other than Max Tegmark!

Max Tegmark is a renowned physicist and machine learning expert who dedicated his career to uncovering the mathematical fabric of reality, proposing that our universe itself might be a vast mathematical structure and that we could be living in a multiverse of endless possibilities. His work goes beyond physics to tackle the transformative power and ethical challenges of artificial intelligence, an area where he believes humanity must tread carefully.

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Stars are born, live and die in spectacular ways, with their deaths marked by one of the biggest known explosions in the universe. Like a campfire needs wood to keep burning, a star relies on nuclear fusion—primarily using hydrogen as fuel—to generate energy and counteract the crushing force of its own gravity.

But when the fuel runs out, the outward pressure vanishes, and the star collapses under its own weight, falling at nearly the speed of light, crashing into the core and rebounding outward. Within seconds, the star is violently blown apart, hurling stellar debris into space at speeds thousands of times faster than the most powerful rocket ever built. This is a .

Astronomers aim to understand what types of stars produce different kinds of explosions. Do more result in brighter explosions? What happens if a star is surrounded by dust and gas when it explodes?

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