27 May 2016

Ingredients regarded as crucial for the origin of life on Earth have been discovered at the comet that ESA's Rosetta spacecraft has been probing for almost two years.

They include the amino acid glycine, which is commonly found in proteins, and phosphorus, a key component of DNA and cell membranes.
Scientists have long debated the important possibility that water and organic molecules were brought by asteroids and comets to the young Earth after it cooled following its formation, providing some of the key building blocks for the emergence of life.

See full text

This illustration represents the best evidence to date that the direct collapse of a gas cloud produced supermassive black holes in the early Universe. Researchers combined data from NASA’s Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer telescopes to make this discovery.
Credits: NASA/CXC/STScI

Using data from NASA’s Great Observatories, astronomers have found the best evidence yet for cosmic seeds in the early universe that should grow into supermassive black holes.

Researchers combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope to identify these possible black hole seeds. They discuss their findings in a paper that will appear in an upcoming issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“Our discovery, if confirmed, explains how these monster black holes were born,” said Fabio Pacucci of Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) in Pisa, Italy, who led the study. “We found evidence that supermassive black hole seeds can form directly from the collapse of a giant gas cloud, skipping any intermediate steps.”

Scientists believe a supermassive black hole lies in the center of nearly all large galaxies, including our own Milky Way. They have found that some of these supermassive black holes, which contain millions or even billions of times the mass of the sun, formed less than a billion years after the start of the universe in the Big Bang.

See full text

May 24, 2016

Dark matter is a mysterious substance composing most of the material universe, now widely thought to be some form of massive exotic particle. An intriguing alternative view is that dark matter is made of black holes formed during the first second of our universe's existence, known as primordial black holes. Now a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, suggests that this interpretation aligns with our knowledge of cosmic infrared and X-ray background glows and may explain the unexpectedly high masses of merging black holes detected last year.

"This study is an effort to bring together a broad set of ideas and observations to test how well they fit, and the fit is surprisingly good," said Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard. "If this is correct, then all galaxies, including our own, are embedded within a vast sphere of black holes each about 30 times the sun's mass."

In 2005, Kashlinsky led a team of astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to explore the background glow of infrared light in one part of the sky. The researchers reported excessive patchiness in the glow and concluded it was likely caused by the aggregate light of the first sources to illuminate the universe more than 13 billion years ago. Follow-up studies confirmed that this cosmic infrared background (CIB) showed similar unexpected structure in other parts of the sky.

See full text

The nonprofit Simons Foundation will fund a new observatory to search for signs of stretching in the very early universe
By Clara Moskowitz on May 12, 2016

How did it all begin? The origin of the cosmos is probably the biggest mystery in science—but amazingly, researchers do have some hard evidence to consult in their attempts to solve it. The cosmic microwave background (CMB), a microwave fog that pervades space, is the oldest light in existence—it was released about 13.7 billion years ago when the extremely hot and dense baby universe cooled enough to allow photons to travel freely for the first time. That was about 380,000 years after the big bang, and the light has been flying through space ever since. Although the light itself is already unimaginably ancient, it may preserve a record of things that happened even earlier—specifically, it might contain imprints from gravitational waves that may have ripped through the cosmos in the very first moments of space and time.

See full text

NASA's Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets – the single largest finding of planets to date.

“This announcement more than doubles the number of confirmed planets from Kepler,” said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This gives us hope that somewhere out there, around a star much like ours, we can eventually discover another Earth.”

Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope’s July 2015 planet candidate catalog, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent – the minimum required to earn the status of “planet.” An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates previously verified by other techniques.

See full text

Space-based detector draws interest, but regulatory hurdles might complicate a partnership.

Elizabeth Gibney
04 May 2016

In the wake of the historic detection of gravitational waves by a terrestrial US experiment, a space-borne European effort is drawing interest from a range of parties. But although advisers to the European Space Agency (ESA) recommended increasing international contributions to the billion-euro gravitational-wave detector on 12 April, regulatory hurdles may hinder proposed partnerships with the United States and China.

In February, researchers working on the US-based Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced that they had detected ripples in space-time that had been produced by the merger of two black holes. The space-based observatory planned by ESA would be able to detect ripples with much lower frequencies than would be possible on Earth, bringing into view a greater variety of astronomical events, including mergers between supermassive black holes.

See full text

BY KARAN JANI ON 07/05/2016

Kip Stephen Thorne is a noted astrophysicist and a central figure in the legacy of gravitational physics research. He is the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology. He has made seminal contributions to theories underpinning the origin, characteristics and properties of blackholes, and theorised about the existence and behaviour of wormholes. Thorne is also famously interested in communicating ideas in advanced physics to the general public. He has written many popular books, notably Black Holes and Time Warps (1994), and helped helped Carl Sagan ideate on wormhole travel for the latter’s novel Contact (1985). The science behind the 2014 film Interstellar was defined by Thorne.

Even more recently, he has been in the limelight for the LIGO experiment’s discovery of gravitational waves. Thorne was instrumental in developing the idea of the instrument (alongside Rai Weiss and Ronald Drever), securing its funding, evolving a thrumming community of researchers around it, and getting it going. Karan Jani, a doctoral researcher at the Centre for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Institute of Technology, and a member of the team that discovered the gravitational waves, spoke to Thorne on behalf of The Wire (from the lab of Laura Cadonati, Chair of the LIGO Data Analysis Council). The full interview (edited for clarity) follows.

See full text

To do so, they looked to a second black hole orbiting the first

By Caleb Scharf on May 1, 2016

Black holes may be massive, but they are also extraordinarily compact. That combination of properties makes them challenging regions to evaluate across vast cosmic distances. To learn more about these objects' physical properties, astronomers must therefore come up with measuring tricks. An international team of astronomers recently invented a new one: in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the members report how to determine a black hole's spin using the interactions of two giant holes bound in mutual orbit.

OJ 287, a binary supermassive black hole system, sits about 3.5 billion light-years from Earth. The duo's primary black hole weighs in at an estimated 18 billion solar masses; the second is a mere 150 million solar masses. Because of this dramatic inequality in size, the smaller hole follows an orbit that punches through a disk of superheated matter swirling around the larger hole. These “outburst” events always occur within a 12-year orbit and are read by astronomers as changes in the system's visible light, which is for the most part produced by the superheated material.

Link of the article : http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.04171

See full text

By Nola Taylor Redd

Sometimes, a flaw in your magnifying glass can be a good thing; in the case of some new research, it can even reveal invisible dark matter galaxies.

Astronomers probing the sky used the gravity of a massive galaxy as a natural magnifying glass, and they found a strange distortion on its edge. That distortion proved to be a smaller, invisible galaxy composed of dark matter. The discovery, explained in a new video, could pave the way to finding more of these unusual objects, providing a better understanding of the mysterious material that makes up most of the matter in the universe.

"We can find these invisible objects in the same way that you can see rain droplets on a window," lead author Yashar Hezaveh said in a statement. Like raindrops, the massive clumps of matter warp objects seen through them. Hezaveh, an astronomer at Stanford University in California, worked with a team of scientists that used a massive radio telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) inChile, to find a clump of missing matter in the outer rim of a larger galaxy that.

See full text

Einstein's theory of general relativity is to be put to the test by a newly launched satellite in an experiment that could upend our understanding of physics.

The French "Microscope" orbiter will try to poke a hole in one of Einstein's most famous theories, which provides the basis for our modern understanding of gravity.
Scientists will use the kit to measure how two different pieces of metal—one titanium and the other a platinum-rhodium alloy—behave in orbit.
"In space, it is possible to study the relative motion of two bodies in almost perfect and permanent free fall aboard an orbiting satellite, shielded from perturbations encountered on Earth," said Arianespace, which put the satellite into orbit on Monday.
Einstein's theory suggests that in perfect free-fall, the two objects should move in exactly the same way. But if they are shown to behave differently "the principle will be violated: an event that would shake the foundations of physics", Arianespace added.

Read more 

• Hawking's theory couldn't be proven, as it didn't relate effects of radiation
• Most believed impossible for information to hide while black hole shrunk
• Two separate groups of researchers have evidence to back up these claims
• These discoveries could help win the physicist the Nobel Prizε

For forty years ago, Stephen Hawking famously announced black holes evaporate and shrink because they emit radiation.
This so-called 'Hawking radiation' was a revolutionary theory, but due to the fragile nature of the escaping radiation, has been difficult to prove.

Now, two separate groups of researchers have discovered evidence to back up Hawking's claims - and their discoveries could finally help win the eminent physicist a Nobel Prize.

There has been a long standing belief that when a black hole dies, everything inside is destroyed.
Hawking's theory states that black holes should have the ability to thermally create and emit sub-atomic particles until they are completely depleted of their energy, known as Hawking radiation.

Read more: 

A European Space Agency effort to try to detect gravitational waves in space is not only technically feasible but compelling, a new report finds.

A panel of experts was asked to perform a "sanity check" on the endeavour, which is likely to cost well in excess of one billion euros.
The Gravitational Observatory Advisory Team says it sees no showstoppers.

It even suggests ESA try to accelerate the project from its current proposed launch date in 2034 to 2029.

Whether that is possible is largely a question of funding. Space missions launch on a schedule that is determined by a programme's budget.

"But after submitting our report, Esa came back to us and asked what we thought might be technically possible, putting aside the money," explained Goat chairman, Dr Michael Perryman.

See full text

IN BRIEF

Scientists at Advanced LIGO believe they may be able to begin discerning as many as 2,000 faint echoes of black hole mergers within three years.

SEARCHING FOR MEANING IN A SEA OF NOISE

The long-awaited detection of gravitational waves was announced with a clear and unmistakable note—it was a “chirp” that noticeably rose above the welter of background noise. It was the swan song of two roughly 30-Solar-mass black holes coalescing into a single spacetime-warping monster some 1.3 billion light-years away.

But such chirps may be few and far between, and now scientists at the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) think they may be able to discern the distant roar of multiple black hole mergers in that background noise.

The study, detailed in the April 1 issue of Physical Review Letters, predicts that scientists may be able to discover these ephemeral signals in as little as three years.

See full text

X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Detlef Hartmann; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Data from galaxies such as M101, seen here, allow scientists to gauge the speed at which the universe is expanding.

Davide Castelvecchi
11 April 2016

The most precise measurement ever made of the current rate of expansion of the Universe has produced a value that appears incompatible with measurements of radiation left over from the Big Bang1. If the findings are confirmed by independent techniques, the laws of cosmology might have to be rewritten.

This might even mean that dark energy — the unknown force that is thought to be responsible for the observed acceleration of the expansion of the Universe — has increased in strength since the dawn of time.

“I think that there is something in the standard cosmological model that we don't understand,” says astrophysicist Adam Riess, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who co-discovered dark energy in 1998 and led the latest study.

Kevork Abazajian, a cosmologist at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the study, says that the results have the potential of “becoming transformational in cosmology”.

Uncertainty limits
In the accepted model of cosmology, the Universe evolves mostly through the competing action of dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter’s gravity tends to slow cosmic expansion, while dark energy pushes in the opposite direction and makes it accelerate. Earlier observations made by Riess and others suggest that dark energy’s strength has been constant throughout the history of the Universe.

See full text

Findings by University of Cape Town, University of Western Cape offer glimpse of early universe to be revealed when SKA is operational

By Alexis Haden - April 11, 2016

Deep radio imaging by researchers in the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape has revealed that supermassive black holes in a region of the distant universe are all spinning out radio jets in the same direction – most likely a result of primordial mass fluctuations in the early universe, a new paper in MNRAS reports today.

The new result is the discovery – for the first time – of an alignment of the jets of radio galaxies over a large volume of space, a finding made possible by a three-year deep radio imaging survey of the radio waves coming from a region called ELAIS-N1 using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT).

The radio jets are produced by the supermassive black holes at the centres of these galaxies, and the only way for this alignment to exist is if supermassive black holes are all spinning in the same direction, says Prof Andrew Russ Taylor, joint UWC/UCT SKA Chair, Director of the recently-launched Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy and principal-author of the study.

See full text