Lifeboat Foundation

New telescope imagery suggests that stars can survive encounters with black holes, a phenomenon that has been modeled but seldom observed, astronomers say. Using an X-ray telescope orbiting the Earth, astronomers peered 1 billion light-years into deep space and observed black holes partially destroying the same stars over and over, according to the European Space Agency.

“Putting together this 3D map of the Local Bubble will help us examine superbubbles in new ways.”

Did you know that we live in a bubble? Sure, some of us do, but we’re talking about another one. An enormous 1,000-light-year-wide “superbubble” called the Local Bubble. Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have now unveiled a first-of-its-kind map that reveals the bubble’s magnetic field.

Continue reading “Astronomers mapped the magnetic field of the space bubble surrounding us” »

Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have unveiled a first-of-its-kind map that could help answer decades-old questions about the origins of stars and the influences of magnetic fields in the cosmos.

The map reveals the likely magnetic field structure of the Local Bubble—a giant, 1,000-light-year-wide hollow in space surrounding our Sun. Like a hunk of Swiss cheese, our galaxy is full of these so-called superbubbles. The explosive supernova deaths of massive stars blow up these bubbles, and in the process, concentrate gas and dust—the fuel for making new stars —on the bubbles’ outer surfaces. These thick surfaces accordingly serve as rich sites for subsequent star and planet formation.

Continue reading “Cosmic superbubble’s magnetic field charted in 3D for the first time” »

A mix of computer simulations and gamma-ray burst observations shed new light on merging neutron stars.

Astronomers trawled through archival observations of short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and detected the rapid evolution of two merging neutron stars into a superheavy neutron star, which then collapsed into a black hole.

Continue reading “Scientists detect superheavy neutron star that existed for only a fraction of a second” »

While studying a nearby pair of merging galaxies using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)—an international observatory co-operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)—scientists discovered two supermassive black holes growing simultaneously near the center of the newly coalescing galaxy.

A new study finds that giant neutron stars can exist for a few milliseconds in a merger.

Everything you ever wanted to know about parallel universes, time, entropy, free will and more, explained by physicist Sean Carroll.

Up next, Michio Kaku: The Universe in a nutshell (Full Presentation) ► https://youtu.be/0NbBjNiw4tk.

Continue reading “The Universe in 90 minutes: Time, free will, God, & more | Sean Carroll” »

Despite numerous searches, we have yet to detect dark matter particles.

In this video, I explain why the anthropic principle is a good, scientific principle. First I explain the difference between the strong and the weak anthropic principle. Then I name some examples of the use of the weak anthropic principle and explain its relation to the multiverse. Finally I explain that the weak anthropic principle is merely a constraint on the laws of nature.

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