There are billions of black holes in our universe. Maybe gazillions. Stephen Hawking says they give off a strange kind of radiation. So we should see them, right? Here’s a cosmological Catch-22. To set the scene, the Albert Einstein Institute says: ‘If, in our universe’s fiery youth, “mini black holes” of very little mass had […]
This week we take a look at a new telescope. It is called CHIME. Its design is unconventional, using cylinder-shaped antennae rather than dishes. There are five of them. Each has a parabolic shape to focus the signal. Construction of the 10,000 sq. m. array is now underway. First operation is set for next year. CHIME […]
The latest science news features a big black hole that is way too big. Big black holes are hot these days. There are two reasons. Big black holes are so extreme they confront us with puzzles that test the limits of our theories. And new telescopes are showing us more crazy things that big black […]
Here’s more news from big telescopes. The galaxy depicted in the illustration is called CR7. It has a football flavor: Google tells me CR7 is Cristiano Ronaldo, star player for famed Spanish soccer team, Real Madrid. The galaxy named after him shows up way down on page three of my search results! That bright patch […]
Another stunning discovery hits the astronomic news: Seems there are big black holes in galaxies all over. This opens a new chapter in the quest to understand the role of black holes in our universe. But its significance may run even deeper: a step toward unraveling the mystery of dark matter. Last year I reviewed […]
Think for a moment about the big picture of physics research. New physics comes from analyzing strange events. That’s why the biggest and most expensive experiments create strange events. Such events usually happen in small volumes for brief times. For example, the $10-billion-dollar 27-km-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC) mashes two protons into a subatomic-sized volume […]
Scientists are building better ways to look back into time. A discovery announced last week may be the most exciting thing in physics: a big black hole (called SDSS J0010+2802). It’s not just big; for its age it is a monster. It compels us to rethink our current concepts of the universe. How can we […]
How about those jets! Jets in space are hot in science news these days. They are hot because they are a huge problem. How huge? Try thinking of a billion times a billion miles. Let’s start small. Archerfish find breakfast using water jets. Their jets are longer than their body size. How they shoot their […]
For most people, what they hear or see speaks to the here and now. But for astronomers, a telescope looking at deep space captures a message from the past because it shows a picture that took time to travel at the speed of light. Thus they measure distances in light years – in other […]