Lifeboat Foundation

Theoretical physicists have put forward a new hypothesis that aims to connect the world of visible physics to the hidden forces of our Universe: what if there’s a portal that bridges the gap between the standard model to dark matter and dark energy?

The idea is that the reason we struggle to understand things such as dark matter and dark energy isn’t because they don’t exist — it’s because we’ve been oblivious to a portal through which regular particles and these ‘dark particles’ interact. And it’s something that could be tested experimentally.

The idea of portals in the Universe might sound pretty crazy, but let’s be clear for a second: we’re talking portals on the quantum, teeny-tiny scale here — nothing that you could drive a spacecraft through.

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Astronomers have uncovered a supermassive black hole that has been propelled out of the center of a distant galaxy by what could be the awesome power of gravitational waves.

Though there have been several other suspected, similarly booted black holes elsewhere, none has been confirmed so far. Astronomers think this object, detected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, is a very strong case. Weighing more than 1 billion suns, the rogue black hole is the most massive black hole ever detected to have been kicked out of its central home.

Researchers estimate that it took the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovas exploding simultaneously to jettison the black hole. The most plausible explanation for this propulsive energy is that the monster object was given a kick by gravitational waves unleashed by the merger of two hefty black holes at the center of the host galaxy.

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A new computer simulation helps explain the existence of puzzling supermassive black holes observed in the early universe. The simulation is based on a computer code used to understand the coupling of radiation and certain materials. “Supermassive black holes have a speed limit that governs how fast and how large they can grow,” said Joseph Smidt of the Theoretical Design Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, “The relatively recent discovery of supermassive black holes in the early development of the universe raised a fundamental question, how did they get so big so fast?”

Using computer codes developed at Los Alamos for modeling the interaction of matter and radiation related to the Lab’s stockpile stewardship mission, Smidt and colleagues created a simulation of collapsing stars that resulted in supermassive black holes forming in less time than expected, cosmologically speaking, in the first billion years of the universe. “It turns out that while supermassive black holes have a growth speed limit, certain types of massive stars do not,” said Smidt. “We asked, what if we could find a place where stars could grow much faster, perhaps to the size of many thousands of suns; could they form supermassive black holes in less time?” A video about the discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD4xECbHx_I&feature=youtu.be

Of all the laws of physics, this is arguably one of the strangest — scientists have discovered that the forces controlling the behaviour of a black hole’s event horizon are also at play in superfluid helium, an extraordinary liquid that flows without friction.

This entanglement area law has now been observed at both the vast scale of black holes and the atomic scale of cold helium, and could be the key to finally establishing the long sought-after quantum theory of gravity — the solution to one of the deepest problems in theoretical physics today.

Continue reading “A Bizarre Physics Law Is Making Superfluid Helium Behave Like an Actual Black Hole” »

A team of scientists has discovered that a law controlling the bizarre behavior of black holes out in space—is also true for cold helium atoms that can be studied in laboratories. “It’s called an entanglement area law,” says Adrian Del Maestro, a physicist at the University of Vermont who co-led the research. That this law appears at both the vast scale of outer space and at the tiny scale of atoms, “is weird,” Del Maestro says, “and it points to a deeper understanding of reality.”

A central goal that modern physicists share is finding a single theory that can explain the entire Universe and unite the forces of nature.

The standard model, for example, leaves dark matter, dark energy, and even gravity out of the picture — meaning that it really only accounts for a very small percentage of what makes up the Universe.

Continue reading “Why String Theory Could Be the Key to Uncovering the ‘Theory of Everything’” »

Quantum entanglement is one of the more bizarre theories to come out of the study of quantum mechanics – so strange, in fact, that Albert Einstein famously referred to it as “spooky action at a distance.”

Essentially, entanglement involves two particles, each occupying multiple states at once – a condition referred to as superposition. For example, both particles may simultaneously spin clockwise and counterclockwise. But neither has a definite state until one is measured, causing the other particle to instantly assume a corresponding state.

The resulting correlations between the particles are preserved, even if they reside on opposite ends of the universe.

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Bubbles of space-time cropped up during the early stages of our cosmos, ultimately forming black holes that were connected to us by wormholes according to a new theory. Research displays that these bubbles ultimately lost energy, and collapsed into a black hole that was so big, it produced its own universe inside – linked to us by the secret door.

These wormholes would have been very short-lived – no more than fractions of a second. During that time, our universe would have been linked to a vast multiverse – loads of other universes. Andrei Linde told New Scientist: “This subject is actually, really deep. We are just starting to touch the surface and find new things about the multiverse.”

The European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) works to help us better understand what comprises the fabric of our universe. At this French association, engineers and physicists use particle accelerators and detectors to gain insight into the fundamental properties of matter and the laws of nature. Now, CERN scientists may have found an answer to one of the most pressing mysteries in the Standard Model of Physics, and their research can be found in Nature Physics.

According to the Big Bang Theory, the universe began with the production of equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Since matter and antimatter cancel each other out, releasing light as they destroy each other, only a minuscule number of particles (mostly just radiation) should exist in the universe. But, clearly, we have more than just a few particles in our universe. So, what is the missing piece? Why is the amount of matter and the amount of antimatter so unbalanced?

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