Scientists have discovered the biggest explosion seen in the universe since the Big Bang, a new study reports. The explosion took place at the center of a galaxy that’s about 390 million light years from Earth.
“We’ve seen outbursts in the centers of galaxies before, but this one is really, really massive,” said study co-author Melanie Johnston-Hollitt of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, in a statement. “And we don’t know why it’s so big.”
She added that the explosion happened very slowly, taking place over hundreds of millions of years. It also released five times more energy than the previous record holder.
Black holes are one of the most mysterious objects astronomer have encountered so far. And a new study proposes that black are nothing but just a holographic projection, with a new calculation of the entropy — or also known as disorder. These calculations suggest that these giant enigmas of the Universe being nothing but an optical illusion. Holograph hypothesis was first proposed by physicist Leonard Susskind back in the 1990s, according to this theory, mathematically speaking, the Universe requires just two dimensions — not three — for the laws of physics and gravity to work as they really should.
Frequently used to change scenery in science fiction, parallel universes and the multiverse are indeed possible, but jumping from one to another might be a little tricky.
How can you see something that’s invisible? Well, with Euclid! This future ESA telescope will map the structure of the universe and teach us more about invisible dark matter and dark energy. Scientific coordinator of Euclid and Leiden astronomer Henk Hoekstra explains how this works.
Why do we assume that dark matter exists, if we have never seen it or even measured it? “We are orbiting the centre of our galaxy at 220 kilometres per second,” says Hoeksta. A bizarre speed, which fortunately we don’t notice. Still, something strange is going on. “Based on the number of stars in our Milky Way, the stars at the edge of the Milky Way should have a much lower speed, but they move as fast as the Sun. Yet these stars are not being slung into the universe. Something is holding them together.”
Basically, there can only be one explanation: there is matter that you cannot see, but that exerts extra gravity. In other words, dark matter. Hoekstra: “Or the theory of gravity is wrong. But everything indicates that dark matter exists, only we still don’t know what it is. What we do know is that it does not absorb light or interact with it. So that literally makes it invisible.” If this is not strange enough: since 1998 we know that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. To explain this an even more mysterious ingredient is needed: ‘dark energy,” a term that simply encompasses all ideas that astronomers and physicists are currently studying.
Is our Universe really the only one? A new theory that hopes to solve one of the biggest problems in physics, may have rewritten our perception of time, and found a way through the Big Bang. Video by Howard Timberlake.
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Physicists have long searched for hypothesized dark matter particles called WIMPs. Now, focus may be shifting to the axion — an ultra-lightweight particle whose existence would solve two mysteries at once.
