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Computer simulations are giving us new insight into the riotous behavior of cannibal neutron stars.

When a neutron star slurps up material from a close binary companion, the unstable thermonuclear burning of that accumulated material can produce a wild explosion that sends X-radiation bursting across the Universe.

How exactly these powerful eruptions evolve and spread across the surface of a neutron star is something of a mystery. But by trying to replicate the observed X-ray flares using simulations, scientists are learning more about their ins and outs – as well as the ultra-dense neutron stars that produce them.

Southwest Research Institute has invested in research to enhance the capabilities of spacecraft instruments. Consequently, they have developed more effective conversion surfaces for the detection and analysis of low-energy particles in outer space.

Led by Dr. Jianliang Lin of Mechanical Engineering and Dr. Justyna Sokół of the Space Science Division, the project could potentially change our understanding of space physics and exploration.

An international team of scientists led by astronomers from Tartu Observatory of the University of Tartu has discovered many superclusters in the universe, with the most prominent among them named the ‘Einasto Supercluster’ in honor of Prof. Jaan Einasto, a pioneering figure in the field, who celebrated his 95th birthday on 23 February.

Superclusters, akin to vast metropolitan cities in space, represent the largest and most massive collections and clusters of galaxies in the universe. The team’s findings not only expanded our understanding of these vast structures but also paved the path to shed light on the ongoing mystery of their formation.

In their study, the scientists determined that the typical mass of superclusters is an astonishing 6 million times billion that of the sun, with an average size of 200 million light-years. To put this into perspective, these superclusters are approximately 2,000 times larger than our own Milky Way galaxy.

One day humanity may settle countless worlds, but could any nation hope to govern multiple planets or even star systems?
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Credits:
Multi-Planetary Empires.
Episode 440a; March 31, 2024
Produced, Written \& Narrated by: Isaac Arthur.
Editors:
Donagh Broderick.
Briana Brownell.

Graphics:
Fishy Tree.
Jeremy Jozwik.
Ken York YD Visual.
Mafic Studios.
Sergio Botero.
Udo Schroeter.

Music Courtesy of:

This just in: the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a Tumblr girl, actually.

Since its launch in 2022, the JWST has dazzled the masses with spectacular photos of interstellar sights like the pillars of creation, exploding stars, and — checks notes — squirting moons.

While the public sees those images are seen in striking color, though, that’s not actually how the JWST captures them. As Space.com reports, images snapped by the advanced telescope first arrive to researchers in black and white, and are then colored back on Earth by scientists who use data to make a well-educated guess as to what the cosmic bodies in the pictures might look like in the spectrum of visible light.

Related: Scientists find ‘ghost particles’ spewing from our Milky Way galaxy in landmark discovery (video)

“Because like-charged objects in a vacuum are expected to repel regardless of whether the sign of the charge they carry is positive or negative, the expectation is that like-charged particles in solution must also monotonically repel,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

To test the assumption, the researchers placed charged silica microparticles (measuring just 0.0002 inch, or 5 micrometers, wide — a fraction of the width of a human hair) inside water or one of two types of alcohol. By tracking the charges with a microscope, the team established that, inside water, the positively charged particles pushed themselves away from each other in accordance with Coulomb’s law.