Universe Today (Page 2)

About a Third of Supermassive Black Holes are Hiding Supermassive black holes can have trillions of times more mass than the Sun, only exist in specific locations, and could number in the trillions. How can objects like that be hiding? They’re shielded from our view by thick columns of gas and dust. However, astronomers are developing a way to find them: by looking for donuts that glow in the infrared. It seems almost certain that large galaxies like our own Milky Way host supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in their centers. They grow through mergers with other SMBHs and through accretion. When they’re actively accreting material,Read More →

The First Supernovae Flooded the Early Universe With Water Water is the essence of life. Every living thing on Earth contains water within it. The Earth is rich with life because it is rich with water. This fundamental connection between water and life is partly due to water’s extraordinary properties, but part of it is due to the fact that water is one of the most abundant molecules in the Universe. Made from one part oxygen and two parts hydrogen, its structure is simple and strong. The hydrogen comes from the primordial fire of the Big Bang and is by far the most common element.Read More →

Astronomers See Flares Coming from the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole There’s plenty of action at the center of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole (SMBH) known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) literally holds the galaxy together. Part of that action is the creation of gigantic flares from Sgr A*, which can give off energy equivalent to 10 times the Sun’s annual energy output. However, scientists have been missing a key feature of these flares for decades – what they look like in the mid-infrared range. But now, a team led by researchers at Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute forRead More →

Earth’s Temporary Moon Might Have Come from THE Moon A tiny asteroid loitering in a near-Earth orbit for a few months last year may have an intriguing origin on our Moon. Its characteristics led scientists to ask: is it a chip off the old lunar block, making a pass by Earth for a visit? The object is known as Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) 2024 PT5 (or PT5, for short) and its orbit is very similar to Earth’s. Oddly enough, that region often gets littered with rocket bodies. Interestingly, it’s also a region where debris blasted off the Moon during impacts tends to collect. So, could PT5Read More →

Galaxy Cores May be Giant Fuzzy Dark Stars A fuzzy form of dark matter may clump up to become the cores of galaxies, according to new research. The traditional dark matter hypothesis, that it’s some form of cold, massive particle that hardly ever interacts with itself or with normal matter, has some difficulties. In particular, it can’t quite explain the dense cores of galaxies. Cold, heavy dark matter tends to produce extremely dense cores, far denser than what we observe. But dark matter might be something else. Recently astronomers have hypothesized that dark matter might instead be incredibly light, far lighter than any known particle.Read More →

This Quasar Helped End the Dark Ages of the Universe After the Big Bang came the Dark Ages, a period lasting hundreds of millions of years when the universe was largely without light. It ended in the epoch of reionization when neutral hydrogen atoms became charged for the first time and the first generation of stars started to form. The question that has perplexed astronomers is what caused the first hydrogen atoms to charge. A team of researchers have observed an early quasar that pumped out enormous amounts of x-ray radiation helping to drive the reionization.  The universe began with the Big Bang around 13.8Read More →

Webb Provides an Explanation for “Little Red Dots” When a new space telescope is launched, it’s designed to address specific issues in astronomy and provide critical answers to important questions. The JWST was built with four overarching science goals in mind. However, when anticipating new telescopes, astronomers are quick to point out that they’re also excited by the unexpected discoveries that new telescopes make. There has been no shortage of unexpected discoveries regarding the JWST, especially regarding the very early Universe. In December 2022, after the JWST had been performing science operations for just six months, the telescope revealed the presence of small red objectsRead More →

Astronomers Reveal the 3D Structure of the Ring Nebula I’ve lost count of the number of times I have seen the Ring Nebula. It’s a favourite amongst stargazers around the globe and is surely one of the most well known objects in the night sky. The remains of a Sun-like star, its outer layers have drifted out into space leaving behind a the stellar corpse, a white dwarf. It looks like a giant smoke ring in the sky but what is its true shape? A team of astronomers have mapped carbon monoxide that surrounds the nebula and built a 3D model to reveal its shape. Read More →

It’s Official, 2024 Was the Hottest Year on Record Climate scientists must fear sounding like a broken record when discussing new record temperatures yearly. But once again, last year was the hottest one ever recorded, according to a new study by NASA scientists. Anyone paying close attention to climate news would not be surprised. From June 2023 through August 2024, every consecutive month broke a new monthly temperature record. That is 15 straight months of consistently high temperatures.  Such a streak directly translates into the year’s overall temperature, but just how bad was it? The Paris Agreement on climate change, signed by 195 countries andRead More →

The Webb Shows Us Where Cosmic Dust Comes From Carbon-rich cosmic dust comes from different sources and spreads out into space, where it’s necessary for life and for the formation of rocky planets like ours. When astronomers aim their telescopes at objects in the sky, they often have to contend with this cosmic dust that obscures their targets and confounds their observations. One reason the JWST was built is to see through some of this dust with its infrared vision and unlock new insights into astrophysical processes. In new work, the JWST was tasked with observing the dust itself. The Wolf–Rayet binary WR 140 isRead More →

Here’s How We Could Measure the Mass of SgrA* to Within One Solar Mass There is a gravitational monster at the heart of our galaxy. Known as Sagittarius A*, it is a supermassive black hole with a mass of more than four million Suns. Long-term observations of the stars closely orbiting Sag A* place it at about 4.3 solar masses, give or take 100,000 or so. Observations of light near its horizon by the Event Horizon Telescope pin the mass down to 4.297 solar masses, give or take about 10,000. Those results are astoundingly precise given how difficult the mass is to measure, but supposeRead More →

Jupiter’s Clouds Contain Smoggy Ammonium Hydrosulphide, Not Ammonia Ice Jupiter’s clouds aren’t what we thought they were. Planetary atmosphere experts have studied them for many years, uncovering new and puzzling mysteries. Recently, several researchers banded together to solve a long-standing mystery about those clouds. It turns out they aren’t made of ammonia ice, which is what everyone has thought for years. Instead, they seem to be largely a mix of smog and ammonium hydrosulfide. That compound forms in the atmosphere as hydrogen sulfide gas passes through ammonia. Most of us are familiar with the Jovian clouds and know that ammonia and water are involved inRead More →

How to Debate a Flat-Earther The problem with debating a flat-Earther is that they didn’t arrive at their conclusions from the weight evidence, so using the evidence isn’t going to work to change their minds. That said, the evidence for the curved Earth is abundant. Besides the enormous body of photographic documentation, it’s even possible to do the experiment yourself. For example, I recently flew from New York City to Doha, from there to Singapore, then to Brisbane, then to Dallas, then back home. I followed an eastward course for my entire journey, and ended up back where I started. That’s only possible on aRead More →

LIGO Has Detected Unusual Black Holes Merging, But they Probably Don’t Explain Dark Matter The traditional theory of black hole formation seems to struggle to explain how black holes can merge into larger more massive black holes yet they have been seen with LIGO. It’s possible that they may have formed at the beginning of time and if so, then they may be a worthy candidate to explain dark matter but only if there are enough of them. A team of researchers recently searched for microlensing events from black holes in the Large Magellanic Cloud but didn’t find enough to account for more than aRead More →

Gravitational Waves Could Give Us Insights into Fast Radio Bursts Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are mysterious pulses of energy that can last from a fraction of a millisecond to about three seconds. Most of them come from outside the galaxy, although one has been detected coming from a source inside the Milky Way. Some of them also repeat, which only adds to their mystery. Though astrophysicists think that a high-energy astrophysical process is the likely source of FRBs, they aren’t certain how they’re generated. Researchers used gravitational waves (GWs) to observe one nearby, known source of FRBs to try to understand them better. The onlyRead More →

As We Explore the Solar System, Radiation Will Be One of Our Greatest Threats The Sun can kill. Until Earth developed its ozone layer hundreds of millions of years ago, life couldn’t venture out onto dry land for fear of exposure to the Sun’s deadly ultraviolet radiation. Even now, the 1% of its UV radiation that reaches the surface can cause cancer and even death. Astronauts outside of Earth’s protective ozone layer and magnetic shield are exposed to far more radiation than on the planet’s surface. Exposure to radiation from the Sun and elsewhere in the cosmos is one of the main hurdles that mustRead More →

LIGO Fails to Find Continuous Gravitational Waves From Pulsars In February 2016, scientists working for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) made history by announcing the first-ever detection of gravitational waves (GW). These waves, predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, are created when massive objects collide (neutron stars or black holes), causing ripples in spacetime that can be detected millions or billions of light years away. Since their discovery, astrophysicists have been finding applications for GW astronomy, which include probing the interiors of neutron stars. For instance, scientists believe that probing the continuous gravitational wave (CW) emissions from neutron stars will reveal data onRead More →

Astronauts Deploy the First Wooden Satellite into Orbit Wood has been a mainstay of human machines and construction for millennia. Its physical properties offer capabilities that are unmatched by almost any synthetic replacements. However, it has only very rarely been used in space. That might change based on the results of a new test run by Japan’s Space Agency (JAXA). LignoSat, one of the world’s first wooden satellites, was deployed from the ISS in December.  We previously reported on the satellites’ history and launch. Matt’s article here provides an in-depth look at LignoSat’s path to eventual deployment. Now that LignoSat has officially been deployed, whatRead More →

Dormancy Could Be One of the Keys to Life on Earth (and Beyond) It’s easy to forget that, despite life having existed on Earth for billions of years and despite our relatively carefree existence from total destruction, throughout history there have been events that wiped out nearly everything! Fortunately for many life forms, they have the ability to go dormant and enter a state of reversible, reduced metabolic activity. In this state they are protected from decay and can survive long harsh periods where life would otherwise not survive. Is it just possible therefore that dormancy could also allow life to survive on other worldsRead More →

The Wavey Reality Behind the Uncertainty Principle It’s turns out that you don’t need a high-powered quantum experiment to observe Heisenberg’s uncertainty Principle. You just need to go the beach. Heisenberg’s famous principle tells us that the more precisely we try to measure the position of a subatomic particle, the less we know about its momentum, and vice versa. While the roots of this principle lay in a fundamental mathematical property of quantum mechanics, it’s easy enough to see this play out in a completely different context. The next time you’re at a beach, check out the waves rolling onto shore. If you happen toRead More →