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Category: cosmology – Page 3

A new analysis of data from the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) reveals fresh evidence that collisions of even very small nuclei with large ones might create tiny specks of a quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Scientists believe such a substance of free quarks and gluons, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, permeated the universe a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

RHIC’s energetic smashups of gold ions—the nuclei of gold atoms that have been stripped of their electrons—routinely create a QGP by “melting” these nuclear building blocks so scientists can study the QGP’s properties.

Physicists originally thought that collisions of smaller ions with large ones wouldn’t create a QGP because the small ion wouldn’t deposit enough energy to melt the large ion’s protons and neutrons. But evidence from PHENIX has long suggested that these small collision systems generate particle flow patterns that are consistent with the existence of tiny specks of the primordial soup, the QGP.

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In a bold new theory, researchers from Microsoft, Brown University, and other institutions suggest that the universe might be capable of teaching itself how to evolve. Their study, published on the preprint server arXiv, proposes that the physical laws we observe today may have emerged through a gradual learning process, akin to Darwinian natural selection or self-learning algorithms in artificial intelligence.

This radical idea challenges traditional cosmology by imagining a primitive early universe where physical laws like gravity were far simpler or even static. Over time, these laws “learned” to adapt into more complex forms, enabling the structured universe we observe today. For instance, gravity might have initially lacked distinctions between celestial bodies like Earth and the Moon. This progression mirrors how adaptable traits in biology survive through natural selection.

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Primordial black holes could reshape our understanding of dark matter. Researchers suggest these elusive cosmic phenomena might be hiding within hollow asteroids or planetoids, detectable through straightforward, cost-effective methods.

Are Primordial Black Holes real? These elusive objects are thought to have formed during the chaotic early moments of the Universe, shortly after the Big Bang

The Big Bang is the leading cosmological model explaining how the universe as we know it began approximately 13.8 billion years ago.

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Some 275 million light-years from the Milky Way lies a true cosmic mystery.

There, in the heart of a galaxy named 1ES 1927+654, squats a supermassive black hole whose monkeyshines and hijinks have baffled astronomers for years.

Now, we might finally have an explanation for at least some of its wild misbehavior: an orbiting white dwarf star veering precariously close to the brink of the black hole’s event horizon, the point beyond which no matter can ever return.

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What lies beyond the beginning of time? Physicists are exploring groundbreaking ideas that could reveal a hidden universe behind the Big Bang.

This mind-bending theory challenges everything we know about existence and the mysteries of our cosmic origins.

Imagine rewinding the story of our universe —back through billions of years of expansion, past the formation of galaxies, stars, and planets, to the very beginning. What if, instead of a single moment of creation, there was a cosmic reflection—a mirror image of everything we know, moving backward in time?

Continue reading “A Team Of Physicists Says There May Be Another Universe Running Backward In Time Prior To The Big Bang” | >

In February 2016, scientists working for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) made history by announcing the first-ever detection of gravitational waves (GW). These waves, predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, are created when massive objects collide (neutron stars or black holes), causing ripples in spacetime that can be detected millions or billions of light years away. Since their discovery, astrophysicists have been finding applications for GW astronomy, which include probing the interiors of neutron stars.

For instance, scientists believe that probing the continuous gravitational wave (CW) emissions from neutron stars will reveal data on their internal structure and equation of state and can provide tests of General Relativity. In a recent study, members of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration conducted a search for CWs from 45 known pulsars. While their results showed no signs of CWs emanating from their sample of pulsars, their work does establish upper and lower limits on the signal amplitude, potentially aiding future searches.

The LVK Collaboration is an international consortium of scientists from hundreds of universities and institutes worldwide. This collaboration combines data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory’s (LIGO) twin observatories, the Virgo Observatory, and the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA). The preprint of the paper, “Search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in the first part of the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run,” recently appeared online.

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A supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy is rewriting the rules of astrophysics, with unprecedented activity that has left astronomers around the world both fascinated and perplexed. Plasma jets traveling at record-breaking speeds and rapid X-ray fluctuations near the event horizon are just some of the strange phenomena observed in real time. What secrets is this cosmic behemoth revealing, and how might it reshape our understanding of black holes?

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An international team of researchers has detected a binary star orbiting close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. It is the first time a stellar pair has been found in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole.

The discovery, based on data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), helps us understand how stars survive in environments with extreme gravity, and could pave the way for the detection of planets close to Sagittarius A*.

“Black holes are not as destructive as we thought,” says Florian Peißker, a researcher at the University of Cologne, Germany, and lead author of the study published in Nature Communications.

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