The universe is expanding faster than estimated, finds new study
The controversy over the universe's expansion rate continues with a new, faster estimate.
14 March, 2021
Credit: Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey
- A new estimate of the expansion rate of the universe puts it at 73.3 km/sec/Mpc.
- This is faster than the previous estimate of expansion in the early universe.
- The discrepancy may mean fundamental theories need rethinking.
<p>How fast is our universe is expanding? Scientists zeroed in on a new estimate of the local expansion rate and found that it doesn't square up with previously-predicted rates of expansion in the early universe, right after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago.</p><p>This is significant because the expansion rate is fundamental to figuring out the universe's evolution as well as the mysterious dark energy, which is believed to make up about 68 percent of the universe and impacts how fast it's growing.</p><p>Scientists made a new estimate using the surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) technique for measuring cosmic distances. They hoped this approach could achieve more precision. The method used average stellar brightness of 63 giant elliptical galaxies to come up with the calculated rate of 73.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/sec/Mpc) for the universe's expansion. That implies that every megaparsec (or 3.3 million light years from Earth), the universe expands an additional 73.3 kilometers per second.</p>
<p>The paper's co-author, cosmologist and University of California, Berkeley professor Chung-Pei Ma, stated that this method holds much promise.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"For measuring distances to galaxies out to 100 megaparsecs, this is a fantastic method," <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/08/how-fast-is-the-universe-expanding-galaxies-provide-one-answer/" target="_blank">said Ma,</a> "This is the first paper that assembles a large, homogeneous set of data, on 63 galaxies, for the goal of studying H-naught [Hubble constant] using the SBF method."</p><p>Ma also leads the MASSIVE survey of local galaxies, which provided data for 43 of the galaxies in this analysis.</p><p>What's controversial is that if you calculate this rate using measurements of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background or density variation data for normal matter in the early universe, you'd get a different result of 67.4 km/sec/Mpc.</p>
The science of expansion: Andromeda, gravity, and the ‘Big Rip’
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9ef22469b5e80dcb83e18bf3ed08e794"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xN82vX9j6t4?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>How is the difference in estimates possible, and what do the nonmatching answers suggest? The central difficulty lies in establishing certainty for the locations and relative distances of objects in space. Astronomers believe the discrepancies in calculations may point to the fact that current cosmological theories are either not fully realized or even dead wrong.</p><p>The paper's first author, John Blakeslee, an astronomer with the National Science Foundation's <a href="https://noirlab.edu/public/" target="_blank">NOIRLab</a>, thinks the implications of this type of research are enormous. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The whole story of astronomy is, in a sense, the effort to understand the absolute scale of the universe, which then tells us about the physics," Blakeslee stated in a <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/08/how-fast-is-the-universe-expanding-galaxies-provide-one-answer/" target="_blank">press release</a>, "The SBF method is more broadly applicable to the general population of evolved galaxies in the local universe, and certainly if we get enough galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope, this method has the potential to give the best local measurement of the Hubble constant."</p>
<p>The ultra-powerful <a href="https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/" target="_blank">James Webb Telescope</a> is on track to be launched in October 2021.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The James Webb telescope has the potential to really decrease the error bars for SBF," Ma <a href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/03/08/how-fast-is-the-universe-expanding-galaxies-provide-one-answer/" target="_blank">agreed</a>.</p><p>Other authors of the study included Jenny Greene of Princeton University, leader of the MASSIVE team, Peter Milne of the University of Arizona in Tucson, and Joseph Jensen of Utah Valley University.</p><p>Check out their new paper published in <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.02221" target="_blank">The Astrophysical Journal.</a></p>
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Astrophysicists find unique "hot Jupiter" planet without clouds
A unique exoplanet without clouds or haze was found by astrophysicists from Harvard and Smithsonian.
23 January, 2021
Credit: M. Weiss/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
- Astronomers from Harvard and Smithsonian find a very rare "hot Jupiter" exoplanet without clouds or haze.
- Such planets were formed differently from others and offer unique research opportunities.
- Only one other such exoplanet was found previously.
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">Astronomers detected a first of its kind hot Jupiter-like planet without clouds or haze. Such p</span><span style="background-color: initial;">lanets are very rare, with only one exoplanet with a clear atmosphere previously found – that one classified as a "hot Saturn".</span></p><p>The "hot Jupiter" exoplanet WASP-62b is 575 light years away from Earth, coming in at about half the mass of our Jupiter. It completes a rotation around its sun in only 4.5 days (compared to 12 years for Jupiter). That closeness to the star makes the planet extremely hot. </p><p>The discovery was made by astronomers at the <a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2021-01" target="_blank">Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian</a>. The gas giant was actually first located in 2012 using the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) South survey, but the unique state of its atmosphere has only been understood now. </p>
<p>Munazza Alam, a graduate student from the Center for Astrophysics who led the study, was working on her thesis that involved exoplanet characterization when she zeroed in on the atmosphere of WASP-62b.</p><p>She used the Hubble Space Telescope for data and observations that were made via <em>spectroscopy</em>, a method of detecting chemical elements by studying electromagnetic radiation. In particular, Alam focused on how WASP-62b looked as it came in front of its host star on three occasions. Observing visible light in such instances can show the existence of sodium and potassium in the atmosphere of the planet. The scientist could see no potassium, but a complete fingerprint of sodium's presence. This led her team to conclude that the exoplanet's atmosphere lacked clouds or haze, which would have hidden the sodium's clear signature.</p>
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Munazza Alam – a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Credit: Jackie Faherty
<blockquote>"I'll admit that at first I wasn't too excited about this planet," Alam said in a <a href="https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2021-01" target="_blank">press release</a>. "But once I started to take a look at the data, I got excited." Seeing the sodium was "the smoking gun evidence that we are seeing a clear atmosphere," she added.</blockquote><p>Finding such a planet is very unlikely since <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/aafc63" target="_blank">astronomers estimate</a> under 7 percent of exoplanets have clear atmospheres. Studying them can help us understand why they were formed in a way that is different from most planets, according to Alam. Without clouds and haze getting in the way, it is also easier to study the chemical makeup of such a planet.</p><p>Jupiter itself has a complex and chaotic cloud structure, formed at different altitudes:</p>
Jupiter's Colorful Cloud Bands Studied by Spacecraft
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a6f7d0d4e1f841f419be7a0a80fcc651"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GzUzCesfVuw?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>The astronomers plan to study WASP-62b further upon the launch of the next-generation <a href="https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/" target="_blank">James Web Space Telescope</a> later in 2021.</p><p>Check out the new study published in <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/abd18e" target="_blank">The Astrophysical Journal Letters. </a></p>
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The universe works like a huge human brain, discover scientists
A new study found similarities between the human brain and the cosmic network of galaxies.
19 November, 2020
Credit: natara / Adobe Stock
- A new study finds similarities between the structures and processes of the human brain and the cosmic web.
- The research was carried out by an astrophysicist and a neurosurgeon.
- The two systems are vastly different in size but resemble each other in several key areas.
<p>Scientists found similarities in the workings of two systems completely different in scale – the network of neuronal cells in the human brain and the cosmic web of galaxies. </p><p>Researchers studied the two systems from a variety of angles, looking at structure, morphology, memory capacity, and other properties. Their quantitative analysis revealed that very dissimilar physical processes can create structures sharing levels of complexity and organization, even if they are varied in size by 27 orders of magnitude.</p>
<p>The unusual study was itself carried out by Italian specialists in two very different fields – astrophysicist Franco Vazza from the University of Bologna and neurosurgeon <span style="background-color: initial;">Alberto Feletti from the University of Verona.</span></p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The tantalizing degree of similarity that our analysis exposes seems to suggest that the self-organization of both complex systems is likely being shaped by similar principles of network dynamics, despite the radically different scales and processes at play," wrote the scientists in their new <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.525731/full" target="_blank">paper</a>.</p><p>One of the most compelling insights of the study involved looking at the brain's neuronal network as a universe in itself. This network contains about <strong>69 billion neurons</strong>. If you're keeping score, the observable universe has a web of at least <strong>100 billion galaxies.</strong></p><p>Another similarity is the defined nature of their networks–neurons and galaxies–that have <strong>nodes</strong> connected by filaments. By studying the average number of connections in each node and the clustering of connections in nodes, the researchers concluded that there were definite "agreement levels" in connectivity, suggesting the two networks grew as a result of similar physical principles, <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/udb-dth111620.php" target="_blank">according</a> to Feletti. </p>
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Section of the human brain (left) and a simulated section of the cosmos (right).
Credit: University of Bologna
<p>There are also interesting comparisons when it comes to the composition of each structure. About <strong>77 percent </strong>of the brain is water, while about <strong>70 percent</strong> of the Universe is filled with dark energy. These are both passive materials that have indirect roles in their respective structures.</p><p>On the flip side of that, about 30 percent of the masses of each system is comprised of galaxies or neurons.</p>
<p>The scientists also found an uncanny similarity between matter density fluctuations in brains and the cosmic web. </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"We calculated the spectral density of both systems. This is a technique often employed in cosmology for studying the spatial distribution of galaxies," <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/udb-dth111620.php" target="_blank">Vazza said</a> in a press release. "Our analysis showed that the distribution of the fluctuation within the cerebellum neuronal network on a scale from 1 micrometer to 0.1 millimeters follows the same progression of the distribution of matter in the cosmic web but, of course, on a larger scale that goes from 5 million to 500 million light-years."</p><p>Check out the new study "The Quantitative Comparison Between the Neuronal Network and the Cosmic Web", published in <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.525731/full" target="_blank">Frontiers in Physics.</a></p>
Michio Kaku: Consciousness Can be Quantified | Big Think
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="68e9c5ef7a15a5ef9ce672728e1ba08d"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0GS2rxROcPo?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p><em>"Believe it or not, sitting on our shoulders is the most complex object that Mother Nature has created in the known universe. </em><em>You have to go at least 24 trillion miles to the nearest star to find a planet that may have life and may have intelligence. And yet our brain only consumes about 20-30 watts of power and yet it performs calculations better than any large supercomputer." </em>- Michio Kaku</p>
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Astrophysicists reconstruct the Milky Way's family tree
A team of astrophysicists used AI to figure out which clusters of stars merged to become our galaxy.
15 November, 2020
Credit: D. Kruijssen / Heidelberg University
- Scientists use artificial intelligence to reconstruct the globular clusters that merged to form our Milky Way galaxy.
- The researchers ran simulations on a neural network to discover the history and details about our galactic ancestors.
- They found that a collision with a previous galaxy called "Kraken" was so powerful it transformed the Milky Way.
<p>The Milky Way, the galaxy that contains our Solar System, is estimated to be about 13.6 billion years old. But what was there before? A loaded question that scientists are getting closer to answering. A team of astrophysicists reconstructed the cosmic ancestry of our galaxy. They figured out its family tree by using artificial intelligence to analyze <em>globular clusters</em> that orbit the Milky Way. </p><p>Globular clusters are collections of up to a million stars, almost as old as the Universe itself. Over 150 clusters of this kind are present in the Milky Way. Scientists believe that many of them were created in smaller galaxies that merged to form our galaxy. Astronomers treat them as "fossils" for reverse engineering the history of our home in space. The latest study allowed the research team to do exactly that.</p>
<p><span style="background-color: initial;">The group led by </span><span style="background-color: initial;">Dr. Diederik Kruijssen from the University of Heidelberg (ZAH) and Dr. Joel Pfeffer from Liverpool John Moores University</span> modeled the merger story of the Milky Way. They designed sophisticated computer simulations called E-MOSAICS to represent a complete model of the creation, evolution and demise of globular clusters. The researchers linked ages, the chemistry, and orbital motions of these clusters to the composition of the preceding galaxies that formed them, over 10 billion years ago. The analysis allowed the scientists to pinpoint how many stars the progenitor galaxies had as well as when their merger forming the Milky Way took place.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"The main challenge of connecting the properties of globular clusters to the merger history of their host galaxy has always been that galaxy assembly is an extremely messy process, during which the orbits of the globular clusters are completely reshuffled," Kruijssen <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-11-family-tree-milky-deciphered.html" target="_blank">pointed out.</a></p>
Check out how E-MOSAICS simulations shows the formation of a galaxy like the Milky Way:
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a3f1f9d6b35bba6d8a15a116fd547b03"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/v-v5bSnDZs8?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p><span style="background-color: initial;">Once they trained their artificial neural network to investigate the galactic merger history, the researchers "</span><span style="background-color: initial;">tested the algorithm tens of thousands of times on the simulations and were amazed at how accurately it was able to reconstruct the merger histories of the simulated galaxies, using only their globular cluster populations," <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-11-family-tree-milky-deciphered.html" target="_blank">according</a> to Kruijssen.</span></p><p>To dive deep into the prehistory of our galaxy, the researchers directed their AI to study global clusters that they suspected were formed in the progenitor galaxies. The orbital motion of the clusters informed their predictions. The AI was able to pinpoint the masses of the stars and the details of the mergers with great precision. It also discovered a collision 11 billion years ago between the Milky Way and a mysterious galaxy the scientists evocatively dubbed "<em>Kraken.</em>"</p>
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Credit: D. Kruijssen / Heidelberg University
<p><em>Galaxy merger tree of the Milky Way. The main progenitor of the Milky Way is shown by the trunk of the tree, with color representing its stellar mass. Black lines show the five identified satellites. Grey dotted lines demonstrate other mergers that the Milky Way likely underwent, but could not be connected to a particular progenitor. From left to right, the six images at the top list the identified progenitor galaxies: Sagittarius, Sequoia, Kraken, the Milky Way's Main progenitor, the progenitor of the Helmi streams, and Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage.</em></p><p>Kruijssen called this collision with Kraken "the most significant merger the Milky Way ever experienced." This event would have superseded the collision with the Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage galaxy of 9 billion years ago and was likely much more transformative, since our galaxy at that time was four times less massive.</p><p>Overall, the researchers think the Milky Way consumed about five galaxies of over 100 million stars, as well as 15 galaxies with 10 million stars or more. The scientists hope their findings will be used to locate debris from all of our galactic ancestors.</p><p>Check out their study "Kraken reveals itself – the merger history of the Milky Way reconstructed with the E-MOSAICS simulations" <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/498/2/2472/5893320?redirectedFrom=fulltext" target="_blank">published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.</a></p>
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Gamma-ray space telescope study may have spotted dark matter
New study of gamma rays and gravitational lensing points to the possible presence of dark matter.
28 March, 2020
NASA
- Analyzing data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, researchers find hints of dark matter.
- The scientists looked to spot a correlation between gravitational lensing and gamma rays.
- Future release of data can pinpoint whether the dark matter is really responsible for observed effects.
<p>By comparing data derived from gravitational lensing and gamma ray observations by the <strong>Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope</strong>, a study showed that certain regions of the sky emit more gamma rays. While the main cause of this phenomenon may be supermassive black holes, the researchers think that some of the emissions may be because of <em>dark matter</em>. It's a so-far-undetected substance that supposedly takes up as much as <strong>27% </strong>of all matter in the Universe, with <em>dark energy</em> taking up another <strong>68%</strong> (<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy" target="_blank">as per NASA</a>).</p><p>The study builds on nine years of gamma-ray data from the <strong>Large Area Telescope (LAT)</strong> that's part of the <a href="https://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/" target="_blank">Fermi space observatory,</a> and was carried out by <a href="https://rubrica.unito.it/rubricaRisultati.php?tipoRic=cog&lang=ita&txtNome=Simone&txtCognome=AMMAZZALORSO" target="_blank">Simone Ammazzalorso</a> at the University of Turin in Italy, <span style="background-color: initial;"><strong>Daniel Gruen</strong> at Stanford University in California, </span><span style="background-color: initial;">and colleagues.</span></p>
<p>The data from the telescope previously pinpointed many individual gamma-ray sources, like the remains of supernova explosions or jets of ionized matter called <a href="https://astronomy.com/news/2018/07/what-is-a-blazar" target="_blank"><em>blazars</em></a> created from accretion of material by supermassive black holes.</p><p>While many sources were located, some of the radiation that was detected by the LAT could not be traced. To investigate this, Ammazzalorso and the team of researchers compared gamma-ray background data with the first-year data from the <a href="https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/" target="_blank">Dark Energy Survey</a>, carried out by the Dark Energy Camera on the <a href="http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/node/9" target="_blank">Victor Blanco 4-m Telescope</a> in Chile, which took optical snapshots of 40 million galaxies.</p><p>The research team was trying to figure out if there's a correlation between the location of gravitational lenses and gamma ray photons. <strong>Gravitational lensing</strong> measures the distribution of the Universe's matter by utilizing an effect predicted by Einstein. The effect takes place when light traveling to Earth from a distant object is distorted by the gravitational pull of the matter on the way. </p>
The Difference Between Quasars, Blazars, Pulsars and Radio Galaxies
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e0d47837baa64b9051399d44ac4b83f1"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kc_d_sNBuN8?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Comparing two sets of data, the scientists realized that regions of the sky with more matter were also responsible for emitting more gamma rays. On the flip side, the regions that were less dense produced fewer gamma rays. </p><p>Specifically, the researchers observed this relationship holding at at high energies and <em>small angular scales, </em><a href="https://physicsworld.com/a/gamma-rays-and-gravitational-lensing-provide-hints-of-dark-matter/" target="_blank">as reports Physics World.</a> Blazars were likely the cause of these kinds of gamma ray emissions, according to the physicists. </p><p>The scientists spotted a weaker version of this kind of emission at larger <a href="http://physicsformom.blogspot.com/2010/09/angular-scales-from-cmb.html" target="_blank">angular scales.</a> This other source of the gamma rays was likely dark matter, thinks <a href="http://lapth.cnrs.fr/pg-nomin/calore/" target="_blank">Francesca Calore</a>, an astroparticle physicist at Annecy-le-Vieux Theoretical Physics Lab in France, who wrote a commentary for the new paper.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"This result is exciting as it marks one of the few hints at the existence of dark matter via indirect detection methods, and it opens up new possibilities for probing dark matter particle models," <a href="https://physicsworld.com/a/gamma-rays-and-gravitational-lensing-provide-hints-of-dark-matter/" target="_blank">said Calore. </a></p><p>She warned that there is still a chance the noticed correlation could be due to blazars, which are still not completely understood.</p>
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An overlap of gravitational lenses and gamma-ray signals could indicate the presence of dark matter.
Credit: D. Gruen/SLAC/Stanford; C. Chang/University of Chicago; A. Drlica-Wagner/Fermilab
<p>New data that will be released from the Dark Energy Survey, including 100 million galaxies, as well as other upcoming sky research like the <a href="https://www.lsst.org/" target="_blank">Legacy Survey of Space and Time</a> at the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile should shed more light on the matter.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"With deeper redshift coverage and a better angular resolution, future instruments will enable scientists to better understand the sources behind the universe's gamma-ray glow and, potentially, uncover the nature of dark matter," Calore stated.</p><p>Check out the new study in <a href="https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.101102" target="_blank">Physical Review Letters.</a></p>
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