It was discovered just 130 days before exploding using two telescopes in Hawaii, allowing a team of experts to investigate it before it exploded in a massive supernova.
“This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die,” said Dr. Wynn Jacobson-Galán, the study’s lead author.
What is the nature of quantum physics? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice get quantum, exploring Schrodinger’s Cat, electrons, Hilbert Space, and the biggest ideas in the universe (in the smallest particles) with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll.
When did the idea of fields originate? Are fields even real or are they just mathematically convenient? We explore electrons, whether they are a field, and whether they exist at all. We also discuss the wave function, Hilbert Space, and what quantum mechanics really is. Do superpositions always exist?
Continue reading “Neil deGrasse Tyson and Sean Carroll Discuss Controversies in Quantum Mechanics” »
The discovery is the best candidate for a class of black holes astronomers have long believed to exist but have never found—intermediate-mass black holes formed in early stages of galaxy evolution.
Visible to the naked eye as a smudge in the night sky from Southern latitudes, Omega Centauri is a magnificent collection of 10 million stars. Viewed through a small telescope, it resembles other globular clusters —a densely packed spherical assembly of stars where the core is so congested that individual stars blur into one another.
Continue reading “Discovery in Omega Centauri: The Missing Link to Massive Black Hole Formation” »
Dark matter could bring black holes together.
Dark matter that interacts with itself could extract significant momentum from a binary supermassive black hole system, causing the black holes to merge.
A gravitational-wave “hum” pervades the Universe.
They say that we ultimately lose information once it enters a black hole, but is this really the case? Let’s find out on today’s video. Have you ever wondered what happens to information when it falls into a black hole? Does it get destroyed forever? Does it arrive somewhere else? Does it enter a girl’s bookcase and call it for Murf? Is there a way for it to escape? Today, we’re diving into one of the biggest mysteries in physics: the black hole information paradox. But first, why should we care? Well, in case a black hole suddenly pops up in your bedroom or office table, this paradox sits at the intersection of quantum mechanics and general relativity, the two pillars of modern physics, and solving it could unlock new understandings of the universe itself. So, let’s get started. Our journey begins with looking at the basics of black holes and the paradox that has puzzled scientists for decades.
Like any good explainer, let’s begin with the basics. What exactly is a black hole? In simple terms, a black hole is a region in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it. No Brad, it’s not a challenge; calm down. This happens when a massive star collapses under its own gravity, compressing all its mass into an incredibly small, incredibly dense point known as a singularity. Surrounding the singularity is the event horizon, the boundary beyond which nothing can return. Think of the event horizon as the ultimate point of no return. Once you cross it, you’re inevitably pulled towards the singularity, and there’s no way back. Feel like you know well about black holes? Great. Now let’s talk about Hawking radiation. In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking proposed that black holes aren’t completely black; instead, they emit a type of radiation due to quantum effects near the event horizon. This radiation, aptly named Hawking radiation, suggests that black holes can slowly lose mass and energy over time, eventually evaporating completely. But here’s where things get tricky: Hawking radiation is thermal. By that, we don’t mean that it’s smoking or anything, but that it appears to carry no information about any of the stuff that fell into the black hole. And this brings us to the heart of our mystery: the black hole information paradox. How can the information about the material that formed the black hole and fell into it be preserved if it’s seemingly lost in the radiation? With this foundation in place, I feel that we’re now ready to explore the paradox itself and the various theories proposed to resolve it.
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DISCUSSIONS \& SOCIAL MEDIA
Continue reading “Are Black Holes Cosmic Vaults or Information Gateways?” »
The expansion rate of the universe, measured by the Hubble constant, has been one of the most controversial numbers in cosmology for years, and we seem at last to be close to nailing it down.
By Leah Crane
Image: Custom colormap package by cmastro; Claire Lamman / DESI collaboration On April 4, 2024, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), a collaboration of more than 900 researchers from over 70 institutions around the world, announced that they have made the most precise measurement of the expansion of the universe and its acceleration.
Scientists studying the earliest black holes may have found an explanation for dark matter, putting Stephen Hawking’s theory on the subject back into the spotlight.
