And it could reveal secrets about the origins of our universe.
And it’s billions of years old.
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Category: cosmology – Page 380
This is a supernova remnant in a nearby galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud. Don’t miss the full-size of this stunning image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory: https://go.nasa.gov/2EFFL7z
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More information: Mireia Montes et al, Intracluster light: a luminous tracer for dark matter in clusters of galaxies, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2018). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2858, dx.doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2858
Provided by: ESA/Hubble Information Centre.
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Black holes are great at sucking up matter. So great, in fact, that not even light can escape their grasp (hence the name).
But given their talent for consumption, why don’t black holes just keep expanding and expanding and simply swallow the Universe? Now, one of the world’s top physicists has come up with a new explanation.
Conveniently, the idea could also unite the two biggest theories in all of physics.
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We’re taught at school that energy can’t be created, merely converted from one form to another. But at the birth of the Universe – that is, everything – the energy needed for the Big Bang must have come from somewhere. Many cosmologists think its origin lies in so-called quantum uncertainty, which is known to allow energy to emerge literally from nowhere. What isn’t clear, however, is why this cosmic energy persisted long enough to drive the Big Bang.
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When vast amounts of gas fall toward a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy cluster, gravitational and electromagnetic forces spray most of the gas away continuously for tens of millions of years. See for yourself: https://go.nasa.gov/2GfhvLd
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And how to build a time machine.
The concept of time travel has always captured the imagination of physicists and laypersons alike. But is it really possible? Of course it is. We’re doing it right now, aren’t we? We are all traveling into the future one second at a time.
But that was not what you were thinking. Can we travel much further into the future? Absolutely.
If we could travel close to the speed of light, or in the proximity of a black hole, time would slow down enabling us to travel arbitrarily far into the future. The really interesting question is whether we can travel back into the past.
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