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For more than two decades, astronomers have been systematically tracing mystery sources of high-energy gamma rays to their sources. One, however, remained stubborn - the brightest unidentified source of gamma rays in the Milky Way. It seemed to be coming from a binary system 2,740 light-years away, but only one of the stars could be found. Now, astronomers have solved the mystery and pinned down that second star by searching gamma-ray data obtained between 2008 and 2018. Together, the two stars constitute one of the weirdest binary systems we've ever seen. "The binary star system and the neutron star at...

To measure small differences in time, you need a really tiny clock, and researchers in Germany have discovered the smallest known clock: a single hydrogen molecule. Using the travel of light across the length of that molecule, those scientists have measured the smallest interval of time ever: 247 zeptoseconds. Don’t know what a “zepto” is? Read on… When a bit of light, called a photon, hits an atom with enough energy, it can kick the electron out of that atom and send it flying. When we carefully set up this situation in a laboratory, we can measure the electron shooting...

Explanation: Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast, why galaxies orbit clusters so fast, why gravitational lenses so strongly deflect light, and why visible matter is distributed as it is both in the local universe and on the cosmic microwave background. The featured image from the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium previous Space Show Dark Universe highlights one example of how pervasive dark matter might haunt our universe. In this frame from a detailed computer...

A phenomenon of quantum mechanics known as superposition can impact timekeeping in high-precision clocks, according to a theoretical study from Dartmouth College, Saint Anselm College and Santa Clara University. Research describing the effect shows that superposition—the ability of an atom to exist in more than one state at the same time—leads to a correction in atomic clocks known as "quantum time dilation." The research, published in the journal Nature Communications, takes into account quantum effects beyond Albert Einstein's theory of relativity to make a new prediction about the nature of time. In the early 1900s, Albert Einstein presented a revolutionary...

As pointed out by Dr. Thomas Horn and “Into the Multiverse” host Josh Peck in the internationally-acclaimed books On The Path Of The Immortals (FREE IN OFFER HERE) and Abaddon Ascending, when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) first started up on September 10, 2008, director for research and scientific computing at CERN, Sergio Bertolucci, provoked a whirlwind of speculation with his enigmatic remark that the LHC might open a door to another dimension. During a regular briefing at CERN headquarters, he told reporters, “Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it.”[i] The notion of...

The astoundingly complex LHC “atom smasher” at the CERN center in Geneva, Switzerland, are fired up to its maximum energy levels ever in an endeavor to identify - or perhaps generate - tiny black holes. If successful a very new universe is going to be exposed – modifying completely not only the physics books but the philosophy books too. It is even probable that gravity from our own universe may “transfer” into this parallel universe, researchers at the LHC say. The experiment is assured to accentuate alarmist critics of the LHC, many of whom initially warned the high energy particle...

(ALMA - ESO/NAOJ/NRAO, E/O'Gorman/P.Kervella) ========================================================================= In the wake of recent fluctuations in Betelgeuse's brightness, astronomers have rigorously examined the star's vital statistics, and come up with a bit of a surprise. According to the team led by researchers at Australian National University (ANU), the results change a few important things about our favourite red giant. "The actual physical size of Betelgeuse has been a bit of a mystery – earlier studies suggested it could be bigger than the orbit of Jupiter," says astronomer László Molnár from the Konkoly Observatory in Hungary. "Our results say Betelgeuse only extends out to two...

Do you remember in 1989 when two chemists announced they’d created a setup that created nuclear fusion at room temperature? Everyone was excited, but it eventually turned out to be very suspect. It wasn’t clear how they detected that fusion occurred and only a few of the many people who tried to replicate the experiment claimed success and they later retracted their reports. Since then, mentioning cold fusion is right up there with perpetual motion. Work does continue though, and NASA recently published several papers on lattice confinement fusion which is definitely not called cold fusion, although it sounds like...

A major new milestone has just been achieved in the quest for superconductivity. For the first time, physicists have achieved the resistance-free flow of an electrical current at room temperature - a positively balmy 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit). This has smashed the previous record of -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit), and has brought the prospect of functional superconductivity a huge step forward. "Because of the limits of low temperature, materials with such extraordinary properties have not quite transformed the world in the way that many might have imagined," physicist Ranga Dias of the University of Rochester said...

In the early evening of Sunday, October 7, 1900 - 120 years ago - Max Planck found the functional form of the curve that we now know as the Planck distribution of black-body radiation. By my account, it was the birthdate of quantum mechanics. [In Comment #1 - a beautiful photo of Planck, Einstein, and Millikan at a dinner party]

Roger Penrose’s theoretical work demonstrated the objects could form. Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez independently discovered a supermassive one at the center of the Milky Way. Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez are to be awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for their theoretical and observational work on black holes, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Tuesday. Penrose will receive half the 10 million Swedish krona (roughly $1.1 million) prize; Ghez and Genzel will share the other half. Penrose, of the University of Oxford, helped place the previously idealized concept of a black hole on sound...

Researchers build circuit that harnessed the atomic motion of graphene to generate an electrical current that could lead to a chip to replace batteries. ============================================================================ A team of University of Arkansas physicists has successfully developed a circuit capable of capturing graphene’s thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current. “An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,” said Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead researcher in the discovery. The findings, published in the journal Physical Review E, are proof of a theory the...

No one has yet managed to travel through time – at least to our knowledge – but the question of whether or not such a feat would be theoretically possible continues to fascinate scientists. As movies such as The Terminator, Donnie Darko, Back to the Future and many others show, moving around in time creates a lot of problems for the fundamental rules of the Universe: if you go back in time and stop your parents from meeting, for instance, how can you possibly exist in order to go back in time in the first place? It's a monumental head-scratcher...

Spaceflight Now | Breaking News | Relativity mission achieves two major milestones Relativity mission achieves two major milestones NASA-MSFC NEWS RELEASEPosted: March 6, 2002 The NASA Gravity Probe B (GP-B) Relativity Mission has successfully mated its science payload to its spacecraft and after successful systems testing, the GP-B space vehicle was shipped to Sunnyvale, Calif., on Feb. 9, 2002, to prepare for upcoming rigorous environmental tests. The Gravity Probe B spacecraft on a modal stand in preparation for environmental testing. Photo: Lockheed Martin  "These milestones are a huge accomplishment for this dedicated team," said Gravity Probe B program manager Rex ...

“Classical dynamics says if you know the state of a system at a particular time, this can tell us the entire history of the system,” said Germain Tobar, a student in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland. “This has a wide range of applications, from allowing us to send rockets to other planets and modeling how fluids flow.” “For example, if I know the current position and velocity of an object falling under the force of gravity, I can calculate where it will be at any time.” “However, Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts the...

Some huge, some small. Some zip, some crawl. The cosmos is full of objects that defy expectations.... The biggest: UY Scuti Just like in the DC Universe, sometimes the clearest way for astronomers to express something is truly extraordinary is to add the prefix super. It’s the case with Superman, as well as with supergiant stars — a fitting category for the largest known star in the universe, UY Scuti. One day, the Sun will become a red giant. But if it had started its life with a dozen or so times its current mass, it could have eventually evolved...

When humanity finally detected the collision between two neutron stars in 2017, we confirmed a long-held theory - in the energetic fires of these incredible explosions, elements heavier than iron are forged. And so, we thought we had an answer to the question of how these elements - including gold - propagated throughout the Universe. But a new analysis has revealed a problem. According to new galactic chemical evolution models, neutron star collisions don't even come close to producing the abundances of heavy elements found in the Milky Way galaxy today. "Neutron star mergers did not produce enough heavy elements...

Futurism: Your paper argues that the universe might fundamentally be a neural network. How would you explain your reasoning to someone who didn’t know very much about neural networks or physics? Vitaly Vanchurin: There are two ways to answer your question. The first way is to start with a precise model of neural networks and then to study the behavior of the network in the limit of a large number of neurons. What I have shown is that equations of quantum mechanics describe pretty well the behavior of the system near equilibrium and equations of classical mechanics describes pretty well...

It would be extremely optimistic to suggest that we have a good handle on dark matter. But even the slight grasp we do have may be missing something important. New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope have found much higher concentrations of dark matter than expected in some galaxies, by over an order of magnitude. These concentrations are inconsistent with theoretical models, suggesting that there's a big gap in our understanding - the simulations could be incorrect, or there could be a property of dark matter we don't fully understand, according to the research team. "We have done a lot...

L-r: A non-rotating black hole; a rotating black hole; a boson star as they'd appear to the EHT. (Olivares et al., MNRAS, 2020 ===================================================================================== Last year, the astronomical community achieved an absolute wonder. For the very first time, the world collectively laid eyes on an actual image of the shadow of a black hole. It was the culmination of years of work, a magnificent achievement in both human collaboration and technical ingenuity. And, like the best scientific breakthroughs, it opened a whole new world of enquiry. For a team led by astrophysicist Hector Olivares from Radboud University in the Netherlands...