Free Republic

'We found this galaxy to be super-chemically abundant, something none of us expected.' A gravitationally lensed view of a ring-shaped slice of the galaxy SPT0418-47, as seen by the ALMA array in Chile. Recent observations by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveal that the galaxy has a satellite that's rich in star formation. A gravitationally lensed view of a ring-shaped slice of the galaxy SPT0418-47, as seen by the ALMA array in Chile. Recent observations by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveal that the galaxy has a satellite that's rich in star formation. (Image credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Rizzo et al.)...

[snip] Eric Weinstein is a Managing Director at Thiel Capital, creator of geometric unity, a unified theory in physics, and the intellectual dark web, a loose coalition of intellectuals dedicated to free thought. Hal Puthoff is former CIA, NSA and AATIP (the government's official UFO investigation program). In the 70's, he oversaw Stargate: the government's psychic spy program at Stanford Research Institute. In this conversation, we discuss the physics of UFO's, private aerospace as the keepers of fundamental science and Hal's experience with parapsychology. Please enjoy 🛸👽*** AMERICAN ALCHEMY is an original series hosted by Jesse Michels that explores the...

March 1 (UPI) -- The amount of helium in underground geological formations could satisfy thousands of years of global demand, researchers said in an article published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Like other essential commodities, there are supply-side concerns for helium as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year. Sanctions and other restrictions mean supplies from Russia's Amur plant, expected to satisfy about 35% of global demand, are no longer available. Researchers from Oxford University, Durham University and the University of Toronto estimate helium is a $6 billion market. The element is used in everything from fiber optics...

If wormholes exist, they could magnify the light of distant objects by up to 100,000 times — and that could be the key to finding them, according to research published Jan. 19 in the journal Physical Review D.

Scientists say that images from the James Webb Space Telescope may change how they understand the origins of the universe after they discovered "the impossible." The findings were published in the journal "Nature" on Wednesday. Astronomers expected to find "tiny, young, baby galaxies" from the cosmic history documented in the images, but they found something else entirely. The study's lead author, Ivo Labbé, explained how shocked he was when he realized what the images meant. "Little did I know that among the pictures is a small red dot that will shake up our understanding of how the first galaxies formed...

Mirabilis, one of the pairs of dwarf galaxies detected. (NASA/CXC/University of Alabama/M. Micic et al./International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA) For the first time, astronomers have spotted evidence of a pair of dwarf galaxies featuring giant black holes on a collision course with each other. In fact, they haven't just found just one pair – they've found two. The first pair of merging dwarf galaxies is in the cluster Abell 133, about 760 million light-years away from Earth, and the other is in the Abell 1758S galaxy cluster, which is about 3.2 billion light-years away. It's hoped that these sightings and further investigations...

Astronomers have sighted a supermassive black hole traveling through space that appears to have been ejected from its host galaxy. Researchers observing the dwarf galaxy designated RCP 28, roughly 7.5 billion light years away from our solar system, noticed an aberrant streak of light via the Hubble telescope. The “streak” appears to be a collection of stars being dragged out of their home galaxy by the immense gravitational force of a black hole. The “runaway” black hole is the first of its kind to be observed, and appears to have been ejected from its original galaxy. “We found a thin...

Imagine you are 40-something and want to go on a date looking like you did 20 years ago. This is impossible in the classical physical world but not in the quantum world, which refers to the subatomic particles that are the foundation for all reality...The team published papers in Physical Review X, Quantum, Arxiv, Physical Review Letters and Optica on theoretical research and experiments proving it's possible to "accelerate, decelerate and reverse the flow of time within arbitrary, even uncontrolled quantum systems."

The discovery offers the first observational evidence that supermassive black holes can be ejected from their home galaxies to roam interstellar space...The researchers discovered the runaway black hole as a bright streak of light while they were using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the dwarf galaxy RCP 28, located about 7.5 billion light-years from Earth.

Astronomers have spotted a runaway supermassive black hole, seemingly ejected from its home galaxy and racing through space with a chain of stars trailing in its wake. - snip - The researchers discovered the runaway black hole as a bright streak of light while they were using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the dwarf galaxy RCP 28, located about 7.5 billion light-years from Earth. Follow-up observations showed that the streak measures more than 200,000 light-years long — roughly twice the width of the Milky Way — and is thought to be made of compressed gas that is actively forming...

What's Going Wrong in Particle Physics? (This is why I lost faith in science.)Sabine Hossenfelder | 21:44 | 759K subscribers | 683K views | February 11, 2023

Black holes are powerful cosmic reactors. They supply the energy for quasars and other active galactic nuclei (AGNs). This is due to the interplay between matter and its enormous gravitational and magnetic forces. A black hole technically lacks a magnetic field, but the dense plasma surrounding it as an accretion disc does possess a magnetic field. As plasma spirals around a black hole, the charged particles inside it create an electrical current and magnetic field. The direction of plasma flow does not spontaneously vary, hence the magnetic field is likely rather stable. Imagine the researchers’ amazement when they discovered evidence...

Most galaxies, like NGCC4414, shine across the spectrum. Dark galaxies remain in shadow. (AURA/STScI/NASA/Public Domain) Galaxies come in many different shapes and sizes, but the basic ingredients seem fairly consistent. There's usually a big black hole at the center, a bunch of stars and gas, and a generous serving of dark matter that helps glue the whole thing together. While dark matter is, well, dark, the stars, gas, and swirling core of heated material stand out with the radiant beauty of a city in the night. However, one newly discovered dwarf galaxy located a mere 94 million light-years away is...

Thanks to a new analysis technique, precision measurements of the Earth-Moon distance should improve estimates of the size of the gravitational-wave background. NASA Precise measurements of the Earth-Moon distance can allow researchers to estimate the maximum possible amplitude of the steady background “hum” of gravitational waves. (This time-lapse series of photos was taken by a satellite a million miles from Ea... Show more The barrage of all gravitational waves that continuously hit Earth in the microhertz frequency range—roughly one oscillation every few weeks—might be detected by measuring their subtle effects on the Earth-Moon system. By exploiting this decades-old idea, researchers...

University of Central Florida College of Optics and Photonics researchers achieved the first observation of de Broglie-Mackinnon wave packets by exploiting a loophole in 1980’s-era laser physics theorem. A research paper by CREOL and Florida Photonics Center of Excellence professor Ayman Abouraddy and research assistant Layton Hall ’22MS has been published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Nature Physics. Observation of optical de Broglie–Mackinnon wave packets highlights the team’s research using a class of pulsed laser beams they call space-time wave packets. In an interview with Dr. Abouraddy, he provides more insight into his team’s research and what it may hold...

An orbiting star begins to eclipse its partner, a rapidly rotating, superdense stellar remnant called a pulsar. Image courtesy of Aurore Simonnet/Sonoma State University/NASA *************************************************************************** Jan. 26 (UPI) -- NASA made a first-of-its-kind discovery with its Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, spotting the first gamma-ray eclipses from a special type of star system. The agency shared the news with Nature Astronomy on Thursday after scientists researched a decade of observations from the telescope that can detect the most astonishing celestial events from gamma bursts to black holes. Gamma-ray eclipses were observed from a special binary star system that is orbited by...

This latest experiment was performed near a telecommunications tower on the Säntis mountain in Switzerland that is frequently struck by lightning - roughly 100 times a year, although the tower itself is protected by a lightning rod. The results from the study found the lightning flowed almost in a straight line near the laser pulses, but the lightning strikes were more randomly distributed when the laser was off. While this study is not the first attempt to direct lightning paths it is the first to show it can be done. The scientists have attributed this to the high power laser...

A Colorado astrophysicist has claimed her field is steeped in white supremacy and sexism because 'hypermasculine' and 'violent' language is used to describe stars. Natalie Gosnell, an assistant professor at Colorado College, takes an unconventional approach to physics by comparing stars with humans to turn science into an art. In an interview with the college newspaper she claimed she has struggled to overcome a division between art and science that is rooted in 'systemic racism

Explanation: The hydrogen in your body, present in every molecule of water, came from the Big Bang. There are no other appreciable sources of hydrogen in the universe. The carbon in your body was made by nuclear fusion in the interior of stars, as was the oxygen. Much of the iron in your body was made during supernovas of stars that occurred long ago and far away. The gold in your jewelry was likely made from neutron stars during collisions that may have been visible as short-duration gamma-ray bursts or gravitational wave events. Elements like phosphorus and copper are present...

For decades physicists have tried to rectify the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which is great at describing the behavior of particles, interactions, and quantum processes on the micro scale, with gravity...the Standard Model, as it is currently constructed, fails to account for gravity at this extremely small scale. ...a number of mathematical models have been proposed that would unify these disparate phenomena, including something called string theory [and] a number of these models feature elements that can be tested in a lab setting. One is known as the Pauli exclusion principle. Pauli exclusion basically means that no two electrons...