An incredibly object was discovered 1.4 billion years after the BB
A ‘shadow’ cast on the faint, leftover glow of the Big Bang has revealed a giant object in the early Universe that defies our predictions of how the Universe should evolve. It’s a galaxy cluster named SPT2349-56. Spotted a mere 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang, the gas within it is far, far hotter than it should be. The gravitational heating of a galaxy cluster ought to be a slow process that takes billions of years to reach the temperature regime of SPT2349-56. “We didn’t expect to see such a hot object atmosphere so early in cosmic history,” says astrophysics doctoral student Dazhi Zhou of the University of British…
Mars Was Habitable Longer Than We Thought
It is a scientific consensus that water once flowed on Mars, and that it had a denser atmosphere, meaning that it was once habitable. Unfortunately, roughly 4.2 to 3.7 billion years ago, Mars’ rivers, lakes, and global ocean began to disappear as solar wind slowly stripped its atmosphere away. For scientists, the question of how long it remained habitable has been the subject of ongoing inquiry. Where some scientists maintain that Mars ceased being habitable billions of years ago, recent research suggests that it experienced periods of habitability that lasted for eons. This includes recent findings by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been exploring the Gale Crater on Mars to…
Is there a Black Hole inside our Sun?
There’s a hole inside our Sun. A mass equivalent to 1,500 Earths has disappeared. Tracking this over time could change the way we see stars. There’s a hole inside our Sun. Right in the middle. A mass the size of 1,500 Earths has simply disappeared. Much of what we know about the Sun’s behavior says it should be there – but when we interpret the data encoded in the Sun’s light, that mass is nowhere to be seen. Analysis of the transmission of sound and light from the Sun’s surface using a new three-dimensional model, as opposed to the usual 2D models, suggests that the Sun has a much different…
Time Crystals – A Form of Matter That Changes Everything
Of all the names that have science fiction connotations, perhaps none are as mysterious or seemingly impossible as time crystals. The name may make you think of the movie “Back to the Future,” but the reality is much more interesting than the movie. Two different teams of researchers recently reported observing time crystals, or temporal crystals, which reinforces the idea that this theoretical state of matter can be created and observed. And indeed, these crystals can be grown even in a child’s bedroom! You’ve probably heard of crystal growing kits. But it takes nuclear sensors and lasers to help them reach their full potential. Read on to understand what they…
About fractals. A pattern confirmed for the first time
Many people are fascinated by the beautiful images called fractals. Expanding beyond the typical perception of mathematics as a body of complicated, boring formulas, fractal geometry blends art with mathematics to demonstrate that equations are more than just a collection of numbers. What makes fractals even more interesting is that they are the best existing mathematical descriptions of many natural forms. The concept of “fractals” has become increasingly popular, although it first appeared more than two centuries ago, with a prominent and prolific mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. Leibnitz is believed to have first addressed the notion of self-symmetry or self-similarity, but it was not until 1960 that the…
