When astronomers detected the first long-predicted gravitational waves in 2015, it opened a whole new window into the Universe. Before that, astronomy depended on observations of light in all its wavelengths.
We also use light to communicate, mostly radio waves. Could we use gravitational waves to communicate?
The idea is intriguing, though beyond our capabilities right now. Still, there’s value in exploring the hypothetical, as the future has a way of arriving sooner than we sometimes think.
A study by cognitive neuroscientists at SISSA investigated how the human brain processes space and time, uncovering that these two types of information are only partially connected.
Imagine a swarm of fireflies flickering in the night. How does the human brain process and integrate information about both their duration and spatial position to form a coherent visual experience? This question was the focus of research by Valeria Centanino, Gianfranco Fortunato, and Domenica Bueti from SISSA’s Cognitive Neuroscience group, published in Nature Communications
<em> Nature Communications </em> is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes high-quality research from all areas of the natural sciences, including physics, chemistry, Earth sciences, and biology. The journal is part of the Nature Publishing Group and was launched in 2010. “Nature Communications” aims to facilitate the rapid dissemination of important research findings and to foster multidisciplinary collaboration and communication among scientists.
Thirty years after the discovery of the first exoplanet, astronomers have detected more than 7,000 of them in our galaxy. But there are still billions more to be discovered. At the same time, exoplanetologists have begun to take an interest in their characteristics, with the aim of finding life elsewhere in the universe. This is the background to the discovery of super-Earth HD 20,794D by an international team including the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the NCCR PlanetS.
The new planet lies in an eccentric orbit, so that it oscillates in and out of its star’s habitable zone. This discovery is the fruit of 20 years of observations using the best telescopes in the world. The results are published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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Mathematics and physics have long been regarded as the ultimate languages of the universe, but what if their structure resembles something much closer to home: our spoken and written languages? A recent study suggests that the mathematical equations used to describe physical laws follow a surprising pattern—a pattern that aligns with Zipf’s law, a principle from linguistics.
This discovery could reshape our understanding of how we conceptualize the universe and even how our brains work. Let’s explore the intriguing connection between the language of mathematics and the physical world.
What Is Zipf’s Law?
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the greater mysteries facing astronomers today, rivaled only by gravitational waves (GWs) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Originally discovered in 2007 by American astronomer Duncan Lorimer (for whom the “Lorimer Burst” is named), these short, intense blasts of radio energy produce more power in a millisecond than the sun generates in a month.
In most cases, FRBs are one-off events that brightly flash and are never heard from again. But in some cases, astronomers have detected FRBs that were repeating in nature, raising more questions about what causes them.
Prior to the discovery of FRBs, the most powerful bursts observed in the Milky Way were produced by neutron stars, which are visible from up to 100,000 light-years away. However, according to new research led by the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), a newly detected FRB was a billion times more radiant than anything produced by a neutron star.
The OS axiom posits that reality operates like a computational construct. Think of it as an evolving cosmic master algorithm—a fractal code that is both our origin and our ultimate destiny. This axiom doesn’t diminish the beauty or mystery of existence; on the contrary, it elevates it. When we think of the universe as a computation, we realize that the laws of physics, the flow of time, and even the emergence of consciousness are not random accidents but inevitable outcomes of this higher-order system.
This concept naturally leads us to the Omega Singularity, a term I use to describe the ultimate point of universal complexity and consciousness. Inspired by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s Omega Point, this cosmological singularity is where all timelines of evolution, computation, and consciousness converge into a state of absolute unity—a state where the boundaries between the observer and the observed dissolve entirely. In The Omega Singularity, I elaborate on how this transcendent endpoint represents not just the culmination of physical reality but the quintessence of the “Universal Mind” capable of creating infinite simulations, much like we create virtual worlds today.
But let’s take a step back. How does this all relate to the OS axiom? If the universe is computational, it means that all processes—be they physical, biological, or cognitive—are governed by fundamental rules, much like a computer program. From the fractal geometry of snowflakes to the self-organizing principles of life and intelligence, we see the OS postulate at work everywhere. The question then becomes: Who or what wrote the code? Here, we enter the realm of metaphysics and theology, as explored in Theogenesis and The Syntellect Hypothesis. Could it be that we, as conscious agents, are co-authors of this universal script, operating within the nested layers of the Omega-God itself?
Chinese astronomers have investigated quasar candidates from the DESI Legacy Surveys (DESI-LS) photometry catalog. As a result, they detected 19 strongly-lensed, dual and projected quasars. The finding was reported in a paper published Jan. 15 on the arXiv pre-print server.
Quasars, or quasi-stellar objects (QSOs), are active galactic nuclei (AGN) of very high luminosity powered by supermassive black holes (SMBHs), emitting electromagnetic radiation observable in radio, infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths. They are among the brightest and most distant objects in the known universe, and serve as fundamental tools for numerous studies in astrophysics as well as cosmology.
Two quasars observed with a small separation can be, in some cases, lensed quasars—where the light from a single quasar is bent, resulting in two images of the same quasar. More often, such objects are dual quasars, which means that they are at similar redshift and physically interacting. However, the most common scenario is projected quasars—coincidentally appearing very close to each other along the line of sight, but actually at different redshifts.
In some cases, the black hole will even spew jets of plasma, millions of light-years across intergalactic space. The plasma gas is so hot that it’s essentially a soup of electrons moving close to the speed of light. These plasma jets glow at radio frequencies, so they can be seen with a radio telescope and are, aptly, named radio galaxies. In a recent episode of the astronomy podcast The Cosmic Savannah, I likened their appearance to two glow sticks (the plasma jets) poking out of a ball of sticky tack (the galaxy). Astronomers hypothesise that the plasma jets keep expanding outwards as time passes, eventually growing so large that they become giant radio galaxies.
Millions of normally sized radio galaxies are known to science. But by 2020 only about 800 giant radio galaxies had been found, nearly 50 years since they had been initially discovered. They were considered rare. However, a new generation of radio telescopes, including South Africa’s MeerKAT, have turned this idea on its head: in the past five years about 11,000 giants have been discovered.
MeerKAT’s newest giant radio galaxy find is extraordinary. The plasma jets of this cosmic giant span 3.3 million light-years from end to end – over 32 times the size of the Milky Way. I’m one of the lead researchers who made the discovery. We’ve nicknamed it Inkathazo, meaning “trouble” in South Africa’s isiXhosa and isiZulu languages. That’s because it’s been a bit troublesome to understand the physics behind what’s going on with Inkathazo.
Frequency combs are revolutionizing optics, from telecommunications to astrophysics, but their complexity has been a roadblock.
Recent advancements in lithium tantalate technology have changed the game, creating a compact, user-friendly comb generator with incredible efficiency and bandwidth. This breakthrough could reshape fields like robotics and environmental monitoring, offering exciting new possibilities.
Frequency Combs in Modern Optics.
In an article published in Physical Review Letters on Thursday, scientists carried out an innovative study testing the existence of mirror asymmetries in our universe by studying the handedness of the gravitational-wave emission from black-hole mergers detected by Advanced LIGO and Virgo.
The pillar of modern cosmology—known as the Cosmological Principle—states that, when observed at large scales, the universe is isotropic and homogeneous. This is, all observers in the universe will roughly observe the same structures regardless of where they are or where they look. As a consequence, the universe must not display a preference for stuff that rotates clock or anti-clockwise but, which is known as “mirror symmetry.”
Einstein’s theory of gravity, known as General Relativity, predicts that massive bodies can produce a type of radiation known as gravitational waves, which consist of distortions of spacetime that travel away from their sources at the speed of light. Such waves are produced in some of the most violent events in the universe, like supernovae, black-hole mergers or the big bang itself.
