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Category: cosmology

Is there anything out there?

The concept of primordial black holes has waxed and waned in scientific circles over the decades. At first, it was a fascinating possibility. After all, the first few seconds of the big bang were pretty heady times, and there may have been large enough differences in density to generate black holes of all sorts of sizes, from microscopic to gigantic. But repeated observations have continually been unable to come up with any conclusive evidence for their existence.

And then there’s dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up the vast bulk of matter in the cosmos. Scientists aren’t exactly sure what lies behind dark matter, and primordial black holes are a tantalizing possibility.

But if the universe is flooded with innumerable small black holes, eventually some of those black holes will find each other and merge. And our gravitational wave observatories should be sensitive enough to detect the resulting ripples in spacetime.

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Low-frequency gravitational waves could unlock the secrets of the ancient universe.

But scientists still can’t detect these waves at low frequencies that are often the result of even more massive objects colliding with one another or events that took place shortly after the Big Bang.

A team of researchers from the University of Birmingham suggests combining different methods to detect ultra low-frequency gravitational waves that hold the mystery of ancient black holes and the early universe.

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“idea here is not to go, ‘Yeah, look at me. I’m in space.’” Instead, he said that “the prince is missing the point. The point is these are the baby steps to show people [that] it’s very practical. You can send somebody like me up into space.” — William Shatner

William Shatner may be famous for his fictional otherworldly travels thanks to his role in the “Star Trek” universe, however, on October 13 he took a real-life trip that took him to space.

Along with three other passengers, the actor nabbed a spot on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space capsule, which headed out for a flight that lasted for 11 minutes, according to CNN. While it was obviously an incredible experience for the star, not everyone was impressed.

Fellow “Star Trek” actor George Takei had a few less-than-friendly words to share about Shatner’s space flight, while even Prince William spoke out about the recent space-based trips. Talking to the BBC’s “Newscast,” he addressed whether or not he would be traveling off of our planet and responded by saying he wouldn’t.

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For example, the end could come as “heat death” (a reverse of the Big Bang known as the Big Crunch) or The Big Rip (when dark energy becomes so powerful it tears everything we know to pieces). But another possibility that has gained traction is the Cosmic Death Bubble.

The details of this death by bubble are pretty complicated, but it’s based on the idea that the universe is metastable, which means it’s not in its lowest or most stable energy state. While we’re okay for now, there’s the (remote) possibility that the universe could drop into a lower energy state, which would set off a giant light-speed bubble that destroys everything it touches.

Now, as Erik Vance at LiveScience reports, researchers have calculated how long before this Cosmic Death Bubble comes for us, if it happens at all.

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Scientists are getting closer to being able to spot Hawking radiation – that elusive thermal radiation thought to be produced by a black hole’s event horizon. Just understanding the concept of this radiation is tricky though, let alone finding it.

A new proposal suggests creating a special kind of quantum circuit to act as a ‘black hole laser’, essentially simulating some of the properties of a black hole. As with previous studies, the idea is that experts can observe and study Hawking radiation without actually having to look at any real black holes.

The basic principle is relatively straightforward. Black holes are objects that warp spacetime so much, not even a wave of light can escape. Swap spacetime for some other material (such as water) and make it flow quickly enough so that waves passing through are too slow to escape, and you’ve got yourself a fairly rudimentary model.

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Astronomers have discovered unusual signals coming from the direction of the Milky Way’s center. The radio waves fit no currently understood pattern of variable radio source and could suggest a new class of stellar object.

“The strangest property of this new signal is that it is has a very high polarization. This means its light oscillates in only one direction, but that direction rotates with time,” said Ziteng Wang, lead author of the new study and a Ph.D. student in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.

“The brightness of the also varies dramatically, by a factor of 100 and the signal switches on and off apparently at random. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

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