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Manuela Campanelli to lead research team studying electromagnetic signals from merging supermassive black holes.

Rochester Institute of Technology scientists will be the lead researchers on a $1.8 million NASA grant to study electromagnetic signals from merging supermassive black holes.

RIT’s Manuela Campanelli, Distinguished Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics and director of the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation, will lead the collaborative project with help from Yosef Zlochower, professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics. The project will also include researchers from the University of Idaho, Johns Hopkins University, and the Goddard Space Flight Center.

A new study published in Nature Astronomy describes the most luminous object ever observed by astronomers. It is a black hole with a mass of 17 billion Suns, swallowing a greater amount of mass than the sun every single day.

It has been known about for several decades, but since it is so bright, astronomers assumed it must be a nearby star. Only recent observations revealed its extreme distance and luminosity.

The object has been dubbed J0529-4351. This name simply refers to its coordinates on the celestial sphere—a way of projecting the objects in the sky onto the inside of a sphere. It is a type of object called a quasar.

In an experiment reported in the journal Nature, physicists have achieved a remarkable feat by creating the world’s first quantum holographic wormhole. The experiment delves into the profound connection between quantum information and space-time, challenging traditional theories and shedding light on the complex relationship between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

The team, led by Maria Spiropulu from the California Institute of Technology, utilized Google’s quantum computer, Sycamore, to implement the groundbreaking “wormhole teleportation protocol.” This quantum gravity experiment on a chip surpassed competitors using IBM and Quantinuum’s quantum computers, marking a significant leap in the exploration of quantum phenomena.

The holographic wormhole emerged as a hologram from manipulated quantum bits, or “qubits,” stored in minute superconducting circuits. This achievement brings us closer to realizing a tunnel, theorized by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in 1935, that traverses an extra dimension of space. The team successfully transmitted information through this quantum tunnel, further validating the experiment’s success.

Supernovae–stellar explosions as bright as an entire galaxy–have fascinated us since time immemorial. Yet, there are more hydrogen-poor supernovae than astrophysicists can explain. Now, a new Assistant Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has played a pivotal role in identifying the missing precursor star population. The results, now published in Science, go back to a conversation the involved professors had many years ago as junior scientists.

The Enigma of Hydrogen-Poor Supernovae

Continue reading “Supernova Scavenger Hunt: Cracking the Case of Cosmic Ghost Stars” »

One of the primary reasons for this dilemma is that, while three of the universe’s four fundamental forces — electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force — have quantum descriptions, there is no quantum theory of the fourth: Gravity.

Now, however, an international team has made headway in addressing this imbalance by successfully detecting a weak gravitational pull on a tiny particle using a new technique. The researchers believe this could be the first tentative step on a path that leads to a theory of “quantum gravity.”

“For a century, scientists have tried and failed to understand how gravity and quantum mechanics work together,” Tim Fuchs, team member and a scientist at the University of Southampton, said in a statement. “By understanding quantum gravity, we could solve some of the mysteries of our universe — like how it began, what happens inside black holes, or uniting all forces into one big theory.”

With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have figured out a mystery at the heart of a supernova that’s been decades in the making.

As Space.com reports, Supernova 1987A, so named for the year it was discovered here on Earth, exploded so brightly after its death that for more than 30 years, scientists weren’t sure whether it was going to form a mega-dense and compact neutron star or a black hole.

Now, an international team of scientists has begun unraveling the mystery of that long-ago explosion with the discovery of its associated neutron star, as imaged by the JWST and described in their new paper published in the journal Science.

Cosmic dust—like dust on Earth—comprises groupings of molecules that have condensed and stuck together in a grain. But the exact nature of dust creation in the universe has long been a mystery. Now, however, an international team of astronomers from China, the United States, Chile, the United Kingdom, Spain, etc., has made a significant discovery by identifying a previously unknown source of dust in the universe: a Type 1a supernova interacting with gas from its surroundings.

The study was published in Nature Astronomy on Feb. 9, and was led by Prof. Wang Lingzhi from the South America Center for Astronomy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Supernovae have been known to play a role in dust formation, and to date, dust formation has only been seen in core-collapse supernovae—the explosion of massive stars. Since core-collapse supernovae do not occur in elliptical galaxies, the nature of dust creation in such galaxies has remained elusive.