abluegirl:

Dark Matter Signal Possibly Registered on International Space Station:

A $2-billion particle detector mounted on the International Space Station has registered an excess of antimatter particles in space, the experiment’s lead scientist announced April 3. That excess could come from fast-spinning stellar remnants known as pulsars and other exotic, but visible sources within the Milky Way galaxy. Or the antiparticles might have originated from the long-sought dark matter, the hypothetical massive particles that constitute some 27 percent of the universe.

Full Article

This is really exciting news, because up until now scientists have been unable to directly observe dark matter.  Dark matter is really important. Not only is there four times more of it than regular matter, but due to the gravitational force it exerts on galaxies, it plays an important role in galaxy formation and in determining the structure of the universe itself. Yet, scientists still aren’t really sure what it is, exactly. Gaining direct evidence of its existence goes a long way to figuring that out.

Just keep in mind that dark matter is one possible reason for these results there are of reasons to be suspicious of any conclusions that are drawn from them.

ucresearch:

“The vast majority of the mass in the universe is completely invisible. It’s not made of atoms — in fact it’s not even made of the things that atoms are made of: protons, neutrons, and electrons. It’s something completely different.”

— Joel Primack, Professor of Physics, UC Santa Cruz

[Calvin and Hobbes was created by the wonderful Bill Waterson]

ikenbot:

Monster Black Holes Are Most Massive Ever Discovered

Scientists have discovered the largest black holes yet, and they’re far bigger than researchers expected based on the galaxies in which they were found. The discovery suggests we have much to learn about how monster black holes grow, scientists said.

All large galaxies are thought to harbor super-massive black holes at their hearts that contain millions to billions of times the mass of our sun. Until now, the largest black hole known was a mammoth dwelling in the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87. This black hole has a mass 6.3 billion times that of the sun.

Now research suggests black holes in two nearby galaxies are even bigger. The scientists used the Gemini and Keck observatories in Hawaii and the McDonald Observatory in Texas to monitor the velocities of stars orbiting around the centers of a pair of galaxies. These velocities reveal the strength of the gravitational pull on those stars, which in turn is linked with the masses of the black holes lurking there.

The new findings suggest that one galaxy, known as NGC 3842, the brightest galaxy in the Leo cluster of galaxies nearly 320 million light years distant, has a central black hole 9.7 billion solar masses large. The other, named NGC 4889, the brightest galaxy in the Coma cluster more than 335 million light years away, has a black hole of comparable or larger mass. Both encompass regions or “event horizons” about five times the distance from the sun to Pluto.

“For comparison, these black holes are 2,500 times as massive as the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, whose event horizon is one-fifth the orbit of Mercury,” said study lead author Nicholas McConnell at the University of California, Berkeley. Astronomers had suspected that black holes more than 10 billion solar masses large exist, based on light from quasars, cosmic objects from the early universe that are no more than a light year or two across but are thousands of times brighter than our entire galaxy.

The light of quasars is thought to come from matter driven to incandescent brightness as it spirals at high speeds into supermassive black holes. This is the first time scientists have detected black holes approaching such theorized giants in size.

“These two new supermassive black holes are similar in mass to young quasars, and may be the missing link between quasars and the supermassive black holes we see today,” said study co-author Chung-Pei Ma, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley.

(via kenobi-wan-obi)

electricspacekoolaid:

Dark Matter Could Play a Role in Creating Life in The Universe

First Image : A Hubble Space Telescope image of Dark Matter mapped in a 3d representation.

Second Image: Abel 1689 galaxy cluster.

Dark matter makes up the majority of mass in our universe. However, we cannot directly measure the stuff as it doesn’t interact with electromagnetic radiation (i.e. it doesn’t emit or reflect any light), but we can indirectly observe its presence. In the Hubble Space Telescope image above, the distribution of mostly dark matter has been calculated and mapped. Basically, the location and density of anything with mass has been plotted in a 3D representation of the cosmos.

A 2011 study suggests that mysterious, invisible dark matter could warm millions of starless planets in regions such as Abell 1689 (image below) and make them habitable.

Scientists think the invisible, as-yet-unidentified dark matter which we know exists because of the gravitational effects it has on galaxies, makes up about 85 percent of all matter in the universe.  Current prime candidates for what dark matter might be are massive particles that only rarely interact with normal matter.

These particles could be their own antiparticles, meaning they annihilate each other when they meet, releasing energy. These invisible particles could get captured by a planet’s gravity and unleash energy that could warm that world, according to physicist Dan Hooper and astrophysicist Jason Steffen at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Hooper and Steffen’s propose that rocky “super-Earths” in regions with high densities of slow-moving dark matter could be warmed enough to keep liquid water on their surfaces, even in the absence of additional energy from starlight or other sources.The density of dark matter is expected to be hundreds to thousands of times greater in the innermost regions of the Milky Way and in the cores of dwarf spheroidal galaxies than it is in our solar system.

The scientists concluded that on planets in dense “dark-matter” regions, it may be dark matter rather than light that creates the basic elements you need for organic life without a star”

Now take a moment to think how this could change the way we view evolution of life on other worlds. A dark matter evolved life form definitely gives me tingling sensations just trying to think of it despite how theoretical the assertion may be.

(via sagansense)

ikenbot:

Messier 57

Here is the Hubble image of M57 combined with data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. The data was kindly provided by Robert Gendler.

Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive, which is a collaboration between the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI/NASA), the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF/ESA) and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC/NRC/CSA) and data from the Subaru 8.2 m telescope (NAOJ).

— Processing: André van der Hoeven/Robert Gendler

ikenbot:

Black Holes Spew Out Surprise

Black holes come in a variety of sizes, ranging from 10 times the mass of the sun to a billion times as massive. But new research shows that black holes of completely different masses, ages and locations can produce jets of ionized gas that behave similarly.

Image: This illustration shows a black hole emitting jets of fast-moving plasma above and below it, as matter swirls around in an orbiting disk. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

“As scientists, we are always seeking universal principles,” Rodrigo Nemmen, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com.

Nemmen and his colleagues studied a wide variety of black holes in an attempt to compare how efficiently their jets emitted light. “I was very surprised,” Nemmen said of the results.

Discovering similarities between ancient supermassive black holes in the center of distant galaxies and baby black holes born as stars collapse should help scientists gain a firmer understanding of these jets.

Cosmic accelerators

Black holes are well known for their ability to pull matter into them. But not all material near a black hole finds itself lost. Some bits of matter just outside the point of no return (called the event horizon) are accelerated away at near-light speeds, creating jets of particles shooting out above and below the black holes.

“I like to call black holes ‘cosmic LHCs,’ or very powerful particle accelerators,” Nemmen said, referring to the Large Hadron Collider, an underground machine in Switzerland that speeds protons to 99.9999991 percent the speed of light.

When matter is spun away from a black hole in the form of a jet, most of its energy goes into its motion, but some of it is changed into light in the form of gamma-rays. Nemmen and his team studied findings on 293 previously observed black holes and calculated how efficiently the jets converted energy to light. They found that the rate scaled across the range of black holes.

“This was one of the surprises of this work, that this efficiency of conversion of the energy into light is essentially the same for black holes with very different masses, very different ages and completely different environments,” Nemmen said.

Black holes are powerful beasts, interesting in and of themselves. But by accelerating ionized gas, they also have the potential to change their environment. Heating up space, they could affect the production of new stars, thereby influencing the galaxy they live in.

“These jets might be powerful agents of creating changes in the host galaxy,” Nemmen said.

Scientists still don’t have a strong understanding of how these violent particle outflows form. But the fact that the energy efficiency of the jets scales across black holes may help theorists better understand how something that pulls in most particles could shoot away others, and how the outflow of energy may affect surrounding space.

The findings were published online today (Dec. 13) in the journal Science.

(via kenobi-wan-obi)

ikenbot:

Smoky Shells at NGC 7354

Located in a relatively vacant region of space about 4200 light-years away and difficult to see using an amateur telescope, the lonesome planetary nebula NGC 7354 is often overlooked.

However, thanks to this image captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope we are able to see this brilliant ball of smoky light in spectacular detail.

Just as shooting stars are not actually stars and lava lamps do not actually contain lava, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. The name was coined by Sir William Herschel because when he first viewed a planetary nebula through a telescope, he could only identify a hazy smoky sphere, similar to gaseous planets such as Uranus.

The name has stuck even though modern telescopes make it obvious that these objects are not planets at all, but the glowing gassy outer layers thrown off by a hot dying star.

It is believed that winds from the central star play an important role in determining the shape and morphology of planetary nebulae. The structure of NGC 7354 is relatively easy to distinguish. It consists of a circular outer shell, an elliptical inner shell, a collection of bright knots roughly concentrated in the middle and two symmetrical jets shooting out from either side. Research suggests that these features could be due to a companion central star, however the presence of a second star in NGC 7354 is yet to be confirmed.

NGC 7354 resides in Cepheus, a constellation named after the mythical King Cepheus of Aethiopia and is about half a light-year in diameter.

ikenbot:

Glowing Nebula Photo Marks New Telescope’s Inauguration

A gorgeous photo of a star-forming region of space called the Carina Nebula marks the inauguration of a new telescope — the largest instrument in the world devoted to surveying the sky in visible light.

Image: The spectacular star-forming Carina Nebula has been captured in great detail by the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. This picture was taken with the help of Sebastián Piñera, President of Chile, during his visit to the observatory on June 5, 2012 and released on the occasion of the new telescope’s inauguration in Naples on Dec. 6, 2012. Credit: ESO. Acknowledgement: VPHAS+ Consortium/Cambridge

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile was officially inaugurated today (Dec. 6) in Naples, Italy.

While the Carina nebula has been photographed many times before, most telescopes can only observe a small part of it at once. The VST, designed for large surveys of the sky, has a very wide field of view, and was able to image almost all of Carina in a single photo.

(via kenobi-wan-obi)