Category: Cosmology

  Oort clouds around other stars should be visible in the cosmic microwave background For decades, scientists have theorized that beyond the edge of the solar system, at a distance of up to 50,000 AU (0.79 ly) from the sun, there lies a massive cloud of icy planetesimals known as the Oort Cloud. Named in…

  In a massive region of space, astronomers find far fewer galaxies than they expected “It was a rare case in astronomy where two competing models … offered precisely opposite predictions,” said UCLA professor Steven Furlanetto. Source: newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/astronomers-find-far-fewer-galaxies-than-they-expected­

Star spotted speeding near black hole at centre of Milky Way Chile’s Very Large Telescope tracks S2 star as it reaches mind-boggling speeds by supermassive black hole Source: www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jul/26/star-spotted-speeding-near-milky-way-black-hole-for-first-time

  The Octonion Math That Could Underpin Physics | Quanta Magazine New findings are fueling an old suspicion that fundamental particles and forces spring from strange eight-part numbers called “octonions.” Source: www.quantamagazine.org/the-octonion-math-that-could-underpin-physics-20180720/

  The Gaia Sausage: The Major Collision That Changed the Milky Way Galaxy | Simons Foundation The Gaia Sausage: The Major Collision That Changed the Milky Way Galaxy on Simons Foundation An international team of astronomers has discovered an ancient and dramatic head-on collision between the Milky Way and a smaller object, dubbed the “Sausage”…

MeerKAT radio telescope inaugurated in South Africa – reveals clearest view yet of center of the Milky Way – SKA SA Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa, Mr David Mabuza, today officially inaugurated the MeerKAT radio telescope. After a decade in design and construction, this project of South Africa’s Department of Science and…

  Gaia Identifies a Stellar Gap New data from the Gaia mission has revealed a surprise hidden among main-sequence stars. Source: aasnova.org/2018/07/11/3796/

‘Ghost’ particles from black-hole jetstream found in Antarctic Neutrinos are the universe’s ghosts. Trillions of these particles move through us all the time at close to the speed of light. We cannot see, feel or sense them Source: www.smh.com.au/national/ghost-particles-from-black-hole-jetstream-found-in-arctic-20180712-p4zr4t.html

An instrument that will help astronomers study dark matter and galaxies in detail has begun to be assembled at the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. Topics – Next Generation of Telescope Equipment Begins Arriving in Hawaii – Subaru Telescope The Metrology Camera is the first of several sub-components currently under construction worldwide to be assembled at…

A swarm of black holes may be lurking in our galaxy’s heart Hundreds of black holes may lie at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, according to a new study. Such a tight swirl of black holes, which had been theorized for decades but never detected, bolsters current models of how galaxies evolve, scientists…

Defying Theories, This Ghostly Galaxy Has Almost No Dark Matter A unique galaxy is making the case for dark matter, even though it has very little of the mysterious substance. Astronomers have determined that the galaxy NGC 1052-DF2, or DF2 for short, has 400 times less dark matter than expected for an object of its…

400 Bad request ​Scientists at Rutgers University–New Brunswick and elsewhere are at a crossroads in their 50-year quest to go beyond the Standard Model in physics. Rutgers Today asked professors Sunil Somalwar and Scott Thomas in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the School of Arts and Sciences to discuss mysteries of the universe. Somalwar’s research focuses on…