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Archive for the ‘cosmology’ category: Page 133

Feb 22, 2023

The swan song of a cloud approaching the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole

Posted by in categories: cosmology, evolution

Two decades of monitoring from W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaiʻi reveals a peculiar cloud dubbed X7 being pulled apart as it accelerates toward the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers from the UCLA Galactic Center Orbits Initiative (GCOI) and Keck Observatory have been tracking the evolution of this dusty gas filament since 2002; high-angular resolution near-infrared images captured with Keck Observatory’s powerful adaptive optics system show X7 has become so elongated that it now has a length of 3,000 times the distance between the Earth and sun (or 3,000 astronomical units).

Continue reading “The swan song of a cloud approaching the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole” »

Feb 22, 2023

Physicists create new model of ringing black holes

Posted by in categories: cosmology, mathematics, physics

When two black holes collide into each other to form a new bigger black hole, they violently roil spacetime around them, sending ripples, called gravitational waves, outward in all directions. Previous studies of black hole collisions modeled the behavior of the gravitational waves using what is known as linear math, which means that the gravitational waves rippling outward did not influence, or interact, with each other. Now, a new analysis has modeled the same collisions in more detail and revealed so-called nonlinear effects.

“Nonlinear effects are what happens when waves on the beach crest and crash,” says Keefe Mitman, a Caltech graduate student who works with Saul Teukolsky (Ph. D. ‘74), the Robinson Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at Caltech with a joint appointment at Cornell University.

“The waves interact and influence each other rather than ride along by themselves. With something as violent as a black hole merger, we expected these effects but had not seen them in our models until now. New methods for extracting the waveforms from our simulations have made it possible to see the nonlinearities.”

Feb 21, 2023

A new black hole merger model could help verify an Einstein theory

Posted by in category: cosmology

The new modeling method could help scientists better understand the inner workings of black hole mergers.

A team of researchers from the US has developed an improved method for modeling the mergers of colossal black holes.

Their improved method could help shed new light on the structure of merging black holes and their role in the universe.

Feb 21, 2023

How the “black hole” optical illusion messes with your mind

Posted by in categories: cosmology, neuroscience

Researchers have created a new optical illusion that makes your brain try to predict the future — namely, entering a dark tunnel.

Feb 21, 2023

Why do black holes twinkle?

Posted by in category: cosmology

Black holes are bizarre things, even by the standards of astronomers. Their mass is so great, it bends space around them so tightly that nothing can escape, even light itself.

And yet, despite their famous blackness, some black holes are quite visible. The gas and stars these galactic vacuums devour are sucked into a glowing disk before their one-way trip into the hole, and these disks can shine more brightly than entire galaxies.

Stranger still, these black holes twinkle. The brightness of the glowing disks can fluctuate from day to day, and nobody is entirely sure why.

Feb 21, 2023

Cosmology Lectures

Posted by in category: cosmology

Cosmology playlist.


Share your videos with friends, family, and the world.

Feb 21, 2023

Sean Carroll on Quantum Spacetime

Posted by in categories: cosmology, quantum physics

Interview with Prof. Sean Carroll, Research Professor of Physics at Caltech and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. We mainly talk about quantum spacetime: the idea that our familiar spacetime might be actually emergent from some complex quantum mechanical system. We cover entanglement, decoherence, entropic gravity, the AdS/CFT correspondence, string theory, black holes, along with several philosophical questions concerning these topics, including reduction and emergence, substantivalism vs. relationalism, monism, and much more.

Sean’s website: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/
His recent book concerning these topics: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/somethingdeeplyhidden/
His papers on these topics can be found here: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/research/annotated-publications/
His podcast: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/
And his Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll/

Feb 20, 2023

The enigmatic black behemoths that govern our galaxy

Posted by in category: cosmology

Scientists try to unravel the birth, growth and power of black holes, some of the most forceful yet difficult-to-detect objects in our universe.

It was only last year that astronomers were finally able to unveil the first pictures of the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. But you couldn’t actually see the black hole itself, not directly. That’s because it is so dense that its gravitational pull prevents even light from escaping.

But the image of Sagittarius A, as our galaxy’s black hole is known, revealed a glowing halo of gas around the object—an object that we now know has a million times more mass than our sun.

Feb 20, 2023

The Hubble telescope captures a black hole that forms stars instead of absorbing them

Posted by in category: cosmology

Astronomers in charge of the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a black hole in the heart of a dwarf galaxy that, rather than absorbing stars, generates them.

Feb 20, 2023

A Cartoon Introduction to Whitehead’s Organic Cosmology

Posted by in category: cosmology

Some images to help orient you in the midst of Whitehead’s categoreal forest.