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Category: space – Page 383

Is Information the Fifth State of Matter in the Universe?

Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, with the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research via Chris Adami, Paul Davies, AIP Advances, EurekaAlert and University of Portsmouth

“Information,” wrote Arizona State University astrophysicist Paul Davies in an email to The Daily Galaxy, “is a concept that is both abstract and mathematical. It lies at the foundation of both biology and physics.”

Viewing information at the cosmic level, physicist Melvin Vopson at the University of Portsmouth in the UK has estimated in a paper how much information a single elementary particle, like an electron, stores about itself. He then used this calculation to estimate the staggering amount of information contained in the entire observable Universe. Practical experiments can now be used, he suggested, to test and refine these predictions, including research to prove or disprove the hypothesis that information is the fifth state of matter in the universe beyond solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.

Hubble detects ghostly glow surrounding our solar system

Imagine walking into a room at night, turning out all the lights and closing the shades. Yet an eerie glow comes from the walls, ceiling, and floor. The faint light is barely enough to see your hands before your face, but it persists.

Sounds like a scene out of “Ghost Hunters?” No, for astronomers this is the real deal. But looking for something that’s close to nothing is not easy. Astronomers searched through 200,000 archival images from Hubble Space Telescope and made tens of thousands of measurements on these images to look for any residual background glow in the sky.

Like turning out the lights in a room, they subtracted the light from stars, galaxies, planets and the zodiacal light. Surprisingly, a ghostly, feeble glow was left over. It’s equivalent to the steady light of ten fireflies spread across the entire sky.

Ultra-precise readings shed new light on a ‘hell planet’ with an 18-hour year

Planet 55 Cnc e, also known as “Janssen”, orbits so close to its sun that a year is shorter than an Earth day.

Scientists shed new light on planet 55 Cnc e, known by some as the “hell planet”, revealing how it became so fiery.

That wasn’t always the case, though. New, exact measurements of a planet roughly 40 light-years away from Earth allowed scientists to gain further insight into the way planets can turn into fiery hellscapes over many millennia, as per a press statement.

ESA / Hubble, M. Kornmesser.

55 Cnc e orbits its host star so closely it performs an entire rotation around it in only 18 hours. Its surface is essentially an ocean of lava, and its interior is considered teeming with diamonds.

Astronomers reconstruct the chaotic birth of a 2500-year-old nebula

And it’s all thanks to the death of an Earth-sized star as well as a few ‘innocent bystanders.’

The stunning Southern Ring Nebula, NGC 3,132, was created when a star expelled most of its gas 2,500 years ago. It was selected as one of the first five image packages from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The research opens the door for future JWST nebula investigations.

NASA, ESA, CSA, and O. De Marco (Macquarie University). Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)

According to a new study published in Nature, over 70 astronomers from 66 organizations in Europe, North, South, and Central America, and Asia have used JWST photos to piece together this star’s chaotic death.

New information about long gamma-rays shatters astrophysicists’ theory

Until now, it was thought they came from massive star collapses.

Astrophysicists around the world may be shocked to learn that long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) do not solely come from the collapse of massive stars. A new study by astrophysicists at Northwestern University upends the long-standing belief, uncovering new evidence that at least some long GRBs can result from neutron star mergers, which were previously believed to produce only short GRBs, the university’s publication reported.

It all began in December 2021 when the team detected a 50-second-long GRB (any GRB longer than 2 seconds is considered ‘long’).

Aaron M. Geller/Northwestern/CIERA and IT Research Computing Services.

A new study by astrophysicists at Northwestern University upends the long-standing belief, uncovering new evidence that at least some long GRBs can result from neutron star mergers, which were previously believed to produce only short GRBs, the university’s publication reported.

Gamma-ray and meteorites helped life form in outer space, a study suggests

The first-of-its-kind experiment proved that gamma ray-catalyzed reactions can produce amino acids, which contributed to the origin of life on Earth.

How life arose on Earth remains one of science’s most complex mysteries. One of the many myths and hypotheses is the possibility of meteorites delivering amino acids, known as life’s building blocks, to our planet.

In a first-of-its-kind experiment, researchers have shown that amino acids might have formed in early meteorites from reactions driven by gamma rays produced inside space rocks due to the decay of radioactive elements.

In an experiment, researchers demonstrated that the building blocks of life could have formed in early meteorites from reactions driven by gamma rays produced inside the space rocks.