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Dismantling the belief in a static universe, Edwin Hubble's revolutionary observations in the 1920s laid the groundwork for our understanding of a continually expanding cosmos. However, we must seek to reconcile this theory with observations that are consistent with a non-expanding universe, writes Tim Anderson. You have been taught that the universe began with a Big Bang, a hot, dense period about 13.8 billion years ago. And the reason we believe this to be true is because the universe is expanding and, therefore, was smaller in the past. The Cosmic Microwave Background is the smoking gun for the Big Bang,...

To everyone who sees them, the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images of the cosmos are beautifully awe-inspiring. But to most professional astronomers and cosmologists, they are also extremely surprising—not at all what was predicted by theory. In the flood of technical astronomical papers published online since July 12, the authors report again and again that the images show surprisingly many galaxies, galaxies that are surprisingly smooth, surprisingly small and surprisingly old. Lots of surprises, and not necessarily pleasant ones. One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: “Panic!”Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what...

A galaxy about 13.3 billion light-years away (inset in this image of a galaxy cluster from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is the most distant galaxy to show signs of rotation. ====================================================================== There is a galaxy spinning like a record in the early universe — far earlier than any others have been seen twirling around. Astronomers have spotted signs of rotation in the galaxy MACS1149-JD1, JD1 for short, which sits so far away that its light takes 13.3 billion years to reach Earth. “The galaxy we analyzed, JD1, is the most distant example of a...

Powerful, radio-wavelength laser light has been detected emanating from the greatest distance across deep space yet. It's a type of massless cosmic object called a megamaser, and its light has traveled for a jaw-dropping 5 billion light-years to reach us here on Earth. The astronomers who discovered it using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have named it Nkalakatha – an isiZulu word meaning "big boss". The discovery has been accepted into The Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available on preprint server arXiv. "It's impressive that, with just a single night of observations, we've already found a record-breaking megamaser,"...

At the center of almost every galaxy in the universe is a supermassive black hole gobbling up incredible amounts of matter, and belching out incredible amounts of radiation. The biggest and hungriest of these gobblers — called quasars (or quasi-stellar objects, because they look deceptively like stars when seen through most telescopes) — are some of the most energetic objects in the universe. As infalling matter swirls around the quasar's maw at near-light-speed, that matter heats up and flies outward, propelled by the incredible force of its own radiation. All that intergalactic indigestion makes a quasar an awesome sight, capable...

Our universe's rate of expansion keeps getting stranger. New data continues to show a discrepancy in how fast the universe expands in nearby realms and more distant locations.  The study's researchers said this "tension" could mean we need to revise our understanding of the physics structuring the universe, which could include exotic elements such as dark matter and dark energy. New measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gaia space telescope together showed that the rate of expansion nearby is 45.6 miles per second per megaparsec. This means that for every 3.3 million light-years a galaxy is farther away from...

Newsflash: the universe is expanding. We've known that since the pioneering and tireless work of Edwin Hubble about a century ago, and it's kind of a big deal. But before I talk about dark energy and why that's an even bigger deal, I need to clarify what we mean by the word "expanding." The actual observation that you can do in the comfort of your own home (provided you have access to a sufficiently large telescope and a spectrograph) is that galaxies appear to be receding from our own Milky Way. On average, of course: galaxies aren't simple creatures, and...

Explanation: Pointy stars and peculiar galaxies span this cosmic snapshot, a telescopic view toward the well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. Bright enough to show off diffraction spikes, the stars are in the foreground of the scene, well within our own Milky Way. But the two prominent galaxies lie far beyond our own, some 41 million light-years distant. Also known as NGC 4747, the smaller distorted galaxy at left is the 159th entry in the Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, with extensive tidal tails indicative of strong gravitational interactions in its past. At about a 100,000 light-years across, its likely companion on...

Explanation: Long ago, far away, a star exploded. Supernova 1994D, visible as the bright spot on the lower left, occurred in the outskirts of disk galaxy NGC 4526. Supernova 1994D was not of interest for how different it was, but rather for how similar it was to other supernovae. In fact, the light emitted during the weeks after its explosion caused it to be given the familiar designation of a Type Ia supernova. If all Type 1a supernovae have the same intrinsic brightness, then the dimmer a supernova appears, the farther away it must be. By calibrating a precise brightness-distance...

Some simple observations about the universe seem to contradict basic physics. Solving these paradoxes could change the way we think about the cosmos Revolutions in science often come from the study of seemingly unresolvable paradoxes. An intense focus on these paradoxes, and their eventual resolution, is a process that has leads to many important breakthroughs. So an interesting exercise is to list the paradoxes associated with current ideas in science. It’s just possible that these paradoxes will lead to the next generation of ideas about the universe. Today, Yurij Baryshev at St Petersburg State University in Russia does just this...

Galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (Pandora’s Cluster), with X-ray emissions in red. Credit: NASA, ESA, ESO, CXC and D. COE (STSCI) J. Merten (Heidelberg/Bologna) If redshift equals distance calculations are incorrect, the Universe could be a much different looking place. “Of course, if one ignores contradictory observations, one can claim to have an ‘elegant’ or ‘robust’ theory. But it isn’t science.” — Halton Arp The speed of light is used as a benchmark for defining cosmological distance calculations. As discussed in past Picture of the Day articles, the shifting of Fraunhofer lines into the red end of electromagnetic spectra is...

Is there definitive evidence for an expanding universe? by John Hartnett The spectral lines for this element still show the same distinctive pattern, but all have been shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. Expansion of the universe is fundamental to the big bang cosmology. No expansion means no big bang. By projecting cosmological expansion backwards in time, they assert, one will, hypothetically, come to a time where all points are the same. Since these points are all there is, then it logically follows that there is no space or time ‘before’ this moment. It is the singularity, and...

Explanation: How far away is "redshift six"? Although humans are inherently familiar with distance and time, what is actually measured for astronomical objects is redshift, a color displacement that depends on exactly how energy density has evolved in our universe. Now since cosmological measurements in recent years have led to a concordance on what energy forms pervade our universe, it is now possible to make a simple table relating observed cosmological redshift, labeled "z", with standard concepts of distance and time, including the extrapolated time since the universe began. One such table is listed above, where redshift z is listed...

Explanation: What does the universe nearby look like? This plot shows nearly 50,000 galaxies in the nearby universe detected by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) in infrared light. The resulting image is anincredible tapestry of galaxies that provides limits on how the universe formed and evolved. The dark band across the image center is blocked by dust in the plane of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Away from the Galactic plane, however, each dot represents a galaxy, color coded to indicate distance. Bluer dots represent the nearer galaxies in the 2MASS survey, while redder dots indicating the more...

Galaxy Observations Show No Change In Fundamental Physical Constant The results are being reported today (Monday, April 18) at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) by astronomer Jeffrey Newman, a Hubble Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory representing DEEP2, a collaboration led by the University of California, Berkeley, and UC Santa Cruz. Newman is presenting the data and an update on the DEEP2 project at a 1 p.m. EDT press conference at the Marriott Waterside Hotel in Tampa, Fla. The fine structure constant, one of a handful of pure numbers that occupy a central role in physics,...

Astronomers have found distant red galaxies—very massive and very old—in the universe when it was only 2.5 billion years post Big Bang. “Previous observations suggested that the universe at this age was home to young, small clumps of galaxies long before they merged into massive structures we see today,” remarked Carnegie Observatories Ivo Labbé, who led the group of astronomers in the study. [Members of the research project are listed at the end of the original article.] “We are really amazed — these are the earliest, oldest galaxies found to date. Their existence was not predicted by theory and it...

An international team of astronomers has discovered within the heart of a nearby spiral galaxy a quasar whose light spectrum indicates that it is billions of light years away. The finding poses a cosmic puzzle: How could a galaxy 300 million light years away contain a stellar object several billion light years away? The team’s findings, which were presented today in San Diego at the January meeting of the American Astronomical Society and which will appear in the February 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal, raise a fundamental problem for astronomers who had long assumed that the “high redshifts” in...

Overview We have written a lot about the red shift of the last decade, the trend toward the Republican party at every level of government. Today’s question is: if you were running the DNC, where would you try to find the votes you need to win. It’s a hard task, given the location of your voters, the growth trends of Republican areas, and the structural problems of the Democratic party. Here are some of the issues in play. The 3 - 4 million Democrats who turned to the dark side John Podhoretz put the figure at 3.6 million; Roger Simon...

Measurements of 11 exploding stars spread throughout the visible universe made by the Hubble Space Telescope confirm earlier, ground-based studies which produced the first evidence that the universe is not only expanding, but expanding at an increasing rate. The new study, which has been posted online HERE and will soon appear in the Astrophysical Journal, also provides some tantalizing new insights into the nature of the mysterious repulsive force, dubbed dark energy, that appears to be propelling this run-away expansion. "As far as the ultimate fate of the universe goes, the most straightforward conclusion is that over the next few...

In earlier articles, we discussed the nature of time and the fallacy of linear and absolute time concepts. We now know that time is a physical property and varies with respect to mass, acceleration, and gravity.1 Time is tied to our concepts of the curvature of space-time, and the velocity of light. The velocity of light is, in fact, a parameter which appears to affect almost every aspect of both cosmological physics on the large scale, as well as quantum physics in the particle scale. It is, of course, considered to be the fundamental constant of physics. Historical Perspective The...