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Category: cosmology – Page 365

Why is there any matter in the universe at all? New study sheds light

Scientists at the University of Sussex have measured a property of the neutron—a fundamental particle in the universe—more precisely than ever before. Their research is part of an investigation into why there is matter left over in the universe, that is, why all the antimatter created in the Big Bang didn’t just cancel out the matter.

The team—which included the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, and a number of other institutions—was looking into whether or not the neutron acts like an “electric compass.” Neutrons are believed to be slightly asymmetrical in shape, being slightly positive at one end and slightly negative at the other—a bit like the electrical equivalent of a bar magnet. This is the so-called “” (EDM), and is what the team was looking for.

This is an important piece of the puzzle in the mystery of why matter remains in the Universe, because scientific theories about why there is matter left over also predict that neutrons have the “electric compass” property, to a greater or lesser extent. Measuring it then it helps scientists to get closer to the truth about why matter remains.

Parallel universes exist and we will soon explore them, physicist says

At a quantum level, the vanishingly tiny particles that make up the building blocks of everything don’t even have a set location, just a smear of possible positions dictated by complex rules of probability.

And theoretical physicist Sean Carroll is entirely happy with that. He says that the fact that tiny particles like electrons and photons don’t have one set place in the universe is evidence that there are many parallel universes.

Kaboom! Astronomers detect the universe’s biggest explosion since the Big Bang

Scientists have discovered the biggest explosion seen in the universe since the Big Bang, a new study reports. The explosion took place at the center of a galaxy that’s about 390 million light years from Earth.

“We’ve seen outbursts in the centers of galaxies before, but this one is really, really massive,” said study co-author Melanie Johnston-Hollitt of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, in a statement. “And we don’t know why it’s so big.”

She added that the explosion happened very slowly, taking place over hundreds of millions of years. It also released five times more energy than the previous record holder.

Black Holes Are Nothing But Holograms, New Study Finds

Black holes are one of the most mysterious objects astronomer have encountered so far. And a new study proposes that black are nothing but just a holographic projection, with a new calculation of the entropy — or also known as disorder. These calculations suggest that these giant enigmas of the Universe being nothing but an optical illusion. Holograph hypothesis was first proposed by physicist Leonard Susskind back in the 1990s, according to this theory, mathematically speaking, the Universe requires just two dimensions — not three — for the laws of physics and gravity to work as they really should.

This is how ESA telescope Euclid is going to visualize dark matter

How can you see something that’s invisible? Well, with Euclid! This future ESA telescope will map the structure of the universe and teach us more about invisible dark matter and dark energy. Scientific coordinator of Euclid and Leiden astronomer Henk Hoekstra explains how this works.

Why do we assume that exists, if we have never seen it or even measured it? “We are orbiting the centre of our galaxy at 220 kilometres per second,” says Hoeksta. A bizarre speed, which fortunately we don’t notice. Still, something strange is going on. “Based on the number of stars in our Milky Way, the stars at the edge of the Milky Way should have a much lower speed, but they move as fast as the Sun. Yet these stars are not being slung into the . Something is holding them together.”

Basically, there can only be one explanation: there is matter that you cannot see, but that exerts extra gravity. In other words, dark matter. Hoekstra: “Or the theory of gravity is wrong. But everything indicates that dark matter exists, only we still don’t know what it is. What we do know is that it does not absorb light or interact with it. So that literally makes it invisible.” If this is not strange enough: since 1998 we know that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. To explain this an even more mysterious ingredient is needed: ‘dark energy,” a term that simply encompasses all ideas that astronomers and physicists are currently studying.

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