Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: cosmology – Page 9

Just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang, galaxies were already shaped by where they lived

A large protocluster of galaxies that existed 12.6 billion years ago, first discovered with the Subaru Telescope, has been examined in detail using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The study found that galaxies in crowded regions are more extended than similar galaxies in less dense environments. The results, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, show that even when the universe was only 1.2 billion years old, environment was already influencing how galaxies grow.

In today’s universe, galaxies are not spread evenly through space. They have gathered into groups, and those groups form enormous galaxy clusters containing hundreds or even thousands of galaxies. But these giant structures did not exist at the beginning of the universe.

In the early universe, slightly denser regions of matter gradually grew under gravity and eventually developed into galaxy clusters. These “seeds” of galaxy clusters are known as protoclusters.

After 100 years, scientists finally uncover hidden rule behind cosmic rays

A mysterious new cosmic pattern discovered by the DAMPE space telescope may finally crack the century-old mystery of cosmic rays. Scientists studying mysterious ultra-powerful cosmic rays have uncovered a surprising hidden pattern that could finally help explain where these particles come from. Using the DAMPE space telescope, researchers found that cosmic ray particles—from tiny protons to heavy iron nuclei—all begin fading away more sharply at the exact same point, hinting at a universal rule governing their behavior across the galaxy.

For more than 100 years, scientists have been trying to understand cosmic rays, incredibly powerful particles that travel across the universe at extreme energies. Despite decades of research, many questions about where they come from and how they are accelerated remain unanswered. Now, researchers working with the DAMPE (Dark Matter Particle Explorer) space telescope have uncovered an important new clue. Their findings, published in Nature, reveal a common feature shared by these mysterious particles and could help scientists better understand their origins.

Cosmic rays are the highest energy particles ever observed in nature. They carry far more energy than particles produced by even the most advanced accelerators on Earth. Scientists believe they are created by some of the universe’s most violent events, including supernova explosions, jets from black holes, and pulsars.

Astrophysicists strike black gold with treasure trove of gravitational wave detections

Researchers from the University of Glasgow’s Institute for Gravitational Research are celebrating the publication of a vast new treasure trove of gravitational wave detections, hailed as a milestone marking the coming of age of gravitational astronomy.

The Gravitational Wave Transient Catalogue-5.0, or GWTC-5, is released online, with corresponding scientific papers submitted to Astrophysical Journal and Astrophysical Journal Letters.

This latest update details a total of 161 new signals from colliding black holes detected between April 2024 and the end of January 2025 by the gravitational wave detectors LIGO in the United States, Virgo in Italy, and KAGRA in Japan, known as the LVK collaboration. The publication brings the total number of gravitational wave signals detected to date to 390.

Hydrogen puts quantum wormhole conjecture to the test

A new Physical Review Letters study places constraints on the ER = EPR conjecture, showing that under the authors’ assumptions, the conjecture would imply possible alterations to the hyperfine structure and effective charge of the hydrogen atom—effects that have never been observed.

In 1935, Einstein co-authored two distinct papers. The first proposes the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox describing the quantum entanglement of particles. The second one introduces Einstein-Rosen (ER) bridges connecting distant regions of spacetime, which we today call wormholes.

Nearly a century later, in 2013, physicists Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind proposed the ER = EPR conjecture, proposing a link between quantum entanglement and wormholes. This links entanglement, a cornerstone of quantum mechanics, with spacetime connectivity, general relativity. This remains one of the major open questions in modern physics.

Universe’s most distant ‘Hot DOG’ yet may owe extreme infrared glow to polar dust, Webb reveals

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed fresh details about one of the most luminous known objects in the universe: the dust-shrouded quasar W2246−0526, seen just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. The paper outlining the results was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on May 14.

W2246−0526 is a hot dust-obscured galaxy, also known as Hot DOG, that is mainly powered by an actively feeding supermassive black hole at its center. Hot DOGs are extremely luminous, with their luminosities at infrared wavelengths exceeding 1014 times that of the luminosity of the sun, making astronomers wonder what causes them to reach such extreme brightness.

At z = 4.6, W2246−0526 is the most distant and luminous of its kind discovered so far. Previous studies have shown that it is dominated by hot dust whose temperatures reach 450 Kelvin or almost 180 degrees Celsius. The high temperature of this range suggests the domination of an active galactic nucleus (AGN).

Black hole jets measured in real time, revealing 10,000-sun power

For the first time, scientists have measured the instantaneous mind-blowing power of jets blasting from a black hole.

The jet power from this relatively close black hole-star system is equivalent to 10,000 suns, an international research team reported Thursday. They also tracked the jet speed: roughly 355 million mph (540 million kph)—half the speed of light.

Located 7,200 light-years away, Cygnus X-1 features not only a black hole—the first one ever identified more than a half-century ago—but a blue supergiant star, its constant companion. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.7 trillion kilometers).

Why the intrinsic quantum effects of axion dark matter are completely undetectable

Dark matter is an elusive form of matter that almost never emits, absorbs or reflects light, while only weakly interacting with regular matter. These properties make it very difficult to detect using conventional experimental techniques and instruments.

Over the past decades, physicists have inferred the existence of dark matter indirectly, by probing its influence on the gravity of stars, galaxies and other cosmological objects. As it has never been directly observed before, the exact composition and nature of dark matter remain unknown.

A hypothetical dark matter particle is the axion, an ultralight particle that is predicted to be highly abundant in the universe. Most existing work describes axions as a classical field, a wave-like entity that resembles an electromagnetic field.

Using pulsars as ultra-precise gravitational probes to ‘weigh’ neighboring galaxies

Researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, have identified a promising new method for measuring the mass of galaxies orbiting the Milky Way by using pulsars, some of the universe’s most precise natural clocks, to detect tiny gravitational effects across our galaxy.

The work, published on the arXiv preprint server, offers a novel approach for studying the hidden dark matter contained within nearby satellite galaxies. The findings could have broad implications for astrophysics and cosmology.

The study was authored by UAH astrophysicists Dr. Thomas Donlon, postdoctoral research assistant II, and Dr. Sukanya Chakrabarti, a professor and Pei-Ling Chan Endowed Chair in the College of Science, in collaboration with Dr. Jason A. S. Hunt, an astrophysicist at the University of Surrey, U.K. The research examines how the gravitational pull of neighboring dwarf galaxies subtly disturbs the Milky Way.

/* */