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Category: cosmology – Page 5

One idea, two cosmic mysteries—linking Little Red Dots and globular clusters

A new study led by astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin proposes a theory that could solve two astronomical riddles at once: the nature of Little Red Dots and the origin of globular clusters. Rather than representing distinct objects, the study suggests that one may instead be the ancestor of the other: Little Red Dots are, in fact, an early form of globular clusters. The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

First detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2022, Little Red Dots are mysterious objects that appear 600 million years after the Big Bang, only to seemingly disappear 1.5 billion years later. They are compact, luminous and shine with a distinctive combination of red and ultraviolet light.

One theory is that Little Red Dots represent supermassive black holes, enshrouded in dense clouds of gas, that pull young stars into dramatic deaths. This scenario explains many of the objects’ signature properties. However, other scenarios could also fit.

Astronomers spot an extremely rare galaxy mega-merger

Scale in the universe is hard to understand from a purely human perspective. Many times, the math just doesn’t sit well with our brains, which evolved to capture and process data about the world around us rather than grok the complexities of stellar dynamics and galaxy mergers. But every once in a while, astronomers find something that, if we can wrap our heads around the numbers, gives a sense of just how big the universe is.

That is precisely what a new paper, available on the arXiv preprint server from a group of astronomers led by Z.L. Wen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, hopes to do when it describes a merger of not one, not two, but six supermassive galaxies and the active dynamics they are subject to.

Admittedly, this paper isn’t the one that originally found the cluster. That was done back in 2018 by several all-sky surveys, including the Two Micron All Sky Survey, WISE and SuperCOSMOS. But it was the first to identify that the cluster contained a group of six merging galaxies at its heart. That tidbit was hidden away in Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys data.

Mysterious ‘little red dots’ at the beginning time may finally have an explanation, thanks to newfound ’little blue companions‘

Astronomers may have found an unexpected origin for the mysterious “little red dots” that appear to be so common in James Webb Space Telescope surveys of the early universe.

Are We Living Inside a Hologram? | Jim Al-Khalili’s Guide To Life

Jim Al-Khalili explores the revolutionary discoveries that transformed modern physics. From Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity and the expanding universe to the bizarre world of quantum mechanics, black holes, entanglement, and the search for a Theory of Everything, this episode examines the ideas that continue to redefine our understanding of space, time, and reality itself. It concludes with one of the boldest concepts in theoretical physics—that the universe may actually be a giant hologram.

Now available on SPOTIFY! ► https://tinyurl.com/2kr4kb2d.

►Subscribe – http://goo.gl/wpc2Q1

Scientists Solve The 40-Year Mystery of a Giant Structure Towering Over The Milky Way

Scientists have just discovered the Milky Way’s equivalent of a giant fake mustache.

For four decades, astronomers have puzzled over a giant loop apparently ballooning out of the center of the Milky Way.

Known as the Galactic center lobe (GCL), the structure has been blamed on everything from the aftermath of a supernova to an ancient eruption from the Milky Way’s core – so many competing explanations that one team described it as “a Rorschach test for Galactic astrophysics.”

Most Of The Universe Is Missing And We Don’t Know Why

Everything you see, touch and are built from is a minority of what the universe is actually made of, and the closer physics looks at the rest, the less the picture holds together. Over the next 3 hours, we move outwards through that problem: from the 85 per cent of matter that is invisible, to the visible matter whose textbook description is admittedly unfinished, to a dimension of space that scientists are now building by hand in a lab, and finally to the question of whether we can ever truly know what reality is made of at all.

Watch our interview with Dark Energy Researcher, Tessa Baker: • What If Dark Energy Comes From Space-Time…

00:00:00 Intro.
00:01:39 We May Be Wrong About Dark Matter.
00:31:38 Frank Close: We Were Wrong About Matter.
01:39:09 Scientists Build A Window Into The Fourth Dimension.
02:01:37 Sean Carroll: We May Never Understand Reality.

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Listening to ‘ringing’ black holes unlocks future gravitational-wave astronomy

Listening to the “ringing” produced by black holes after they collide and merge could allow scientists to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity under the most extreme conditions in the universe while unlocking the secrets of these mysterious objects.

Leading a major international review with the Institute of Physics, astrophysicists at the University of Birmingham, Johns Hopkins University and Instituto Superior Técnico of Lisbon show how black hole “spectroscopy” is rapidly evolving from a theoretical concept into a powerful experimental science. The work is published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.

During the “ringdown” phase following a collision and merger, a newly formed black hole emits characteristic gravitational-wave vibrations known as “quasinormal modes.” By measuring these frequencies, scientists can determine the black hole’s mass and how fast it is spinning, as well as investigate whether Einstein’s theory is correct.

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