Astronomers Discover Cosmic Titan Lurking in Early Universe

Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope uncovered a titanic structure lurking in the early Universe.

Nicknamed Hyperion, the galaxy proto-supercluster is the largest and most massive structure discovered at such a remote time and distance—just 2.3 billion years after the Big Seed.

A team, led by Olga Cucciati of the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in Italy, calculated the proto-supercluster’s mass to be more than 1 million billion (that’s not a typo) times that of the Sun.

Sure, there are other similarly massive structures floating around today. But scientists were surprised to find one in the early Universe.

“This is the first time that such a large structure has been identified at such a high redshift, just over 2 billion years after the Big Seed,” Cucciati, first author of the study, said in a statement.

“Normally these kinds of structures are known at lower redshifts, which means when the Universe has had much more time to evolve and construct such huge things,” she explained. “It was a surprise to see something this evolved when the Universe was relatively young.”

Located in the COSMOS field of the constellation of Sextans, Hyperion was identified via data obtained from the VIMOS Ultra-deep Survey—a 3D map of the distribution of more than 10,000 galaxies in the distant Universe.

Its “very complex structure” contains at least seven high-density regions, connected by filaments of galaxies; its size is comparable to nearby superclusters, though Hyperion has a very different structure.

These giant groups of smaller galaxies are among the largest-known structures in the cosmos. The Milky Way, for instance, is part of the Local Group galaxy cluster (containing more than 54 galaxies)—part of the Laniakea Supercluster, which spans more than 500 million light years.

“Superclusters closer to Earth tend to a much more concentrated distribution of mass with clear structural features,” according to team co-leader Brian Lemaux, an astronomer from the University of California, Davis and LAM. “But in Hyperion, the mass is distributed much more uniformly in a series of connected blobs, populated by loose associations of galaxies.”

This is likely due to the fact that nearby superclusters have had billions of years for gravity to gather matter into denser regions—a process that’s been acting for far less time in the much younger Hyperion, ESO explained.

“Understanding Hyperion and how it compares to similar recent structures can give insights into how the Universe developed in the past and will evolve into the future,” Cucciati said, “and allows us the opportunity to challenge some models of supercluster formation.

“Unearthing this cosmic titan helps uncover the history of these large-scale structures,” she added.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Light: A Universe Aglow – MUSE spectrograph reveals that nearly the entire sky in the early Universe is glowing

All that orbits, all that glows: nothing outshines my celestial rose

Deep observations made with the MUSE spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have uncovered vast cosmic reservoirs of atomic hydrogen surrounding distant galaxies. The exquisite sensitivity of MUSE allowed for direct observations of dim clouds of hydrogen glowing with Lyman-alpha emission in the early Universe—revealing that almost the whole night sky is invisibly aglow.

An unexpected abundance of Lyman-alpha emission in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) region was discovered by an international team of astronomers using the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT. The discovered emission covers nearly the entire field of view—leading the team to extrapolate that almost all of the sky is invisibly glowing with Lyman-alpha emission from the early Universe.

Astronomers have long been accustomed to the sky looking wildly different at different wavelengths, but the extent of the observed Lyman-alpha emission was still surprising. “Realising that the whole sky glows in optical when observing the Lyman-alpha emission from distant clouds of hydrogen was a literally eye-opening surprise,” explained Kasper Borello Schmidt, a member of the team of astronomers behind this result.

“This is a great discovery!” added team member Themiya Nanayakkara. “Next time you look at the moonless night sky and see the stars, imagine the unseen glow of hydrogen: the first building block of the universe, illuminating the whole night sky.”

The HUDF region the team observed is an otherwise unremarkable area in the constellation of Fornax (the Furnace), which was famously mapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in 2004, when Hubble spent more than 270 hours of precious observing time looking deeper than ever before into this region of space.

The HUDF observations revealed thousands of galaxies scattered across what appeared to be a dark patch of sky, giving us a humbling view of the scale of the Universe. Now, the outstanding capabilities of MUSE have allowed us to peer even deeper. The detection of Lyman-alpha emission in the HUDF is the first time astronomers have been able to see this faint emission from the gaseous envelopes of the earliest galaxies. This composite image shows the Lyman-alpha radiation in blue superimposed on the iconic HUDF image.

MUSE, the instrument behind these latest observations, is a state-of-the-art integral field spectrograph installed on Unit Telescope 4 of the VLT at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. When MUSE observes the sky, it sees the distribution of wavelengths in the light striking every pixel in its detector. Looking at the full spectrum of light from astronomical objects provides us with deep insights into the astrophysical processes occurring in the Universe.

"With these MUSE observations, we get a completely new view on the diffuse gas ‘cocoons’ that surround galaxies in the early Universe," commented Philipp Richter, another member of the team.

The international team of astronomers who made these observations have tentatively identified what is causing these distant clouds of hydrogen to emit Lyman-alpha, but the precise cause remains a mystery. However, as this faint omnipresent glow is thought to be ubiquitous in the night sky, future research is expected to shed light on its origin.

“In the future, we plan to make even more sensitive measurements,” concluded Lutz Wisotzki, leader of the team. “We want to find out the details of how these vast cosmic reservoirs of atomic hydrogen are distributed in space.”

Scientists hunt mysterious 'vital force' to explain hidden realm of the cosmos

Scientists are about to launch an ambitious search for a “vital force” of nature which, if found, would open the door to a realm of the universe that lies hidden from view.

The hunt will seek evidence for a new fundamental force that forms a bridge between the ordinary matter of the world around us and the invisible “light sector” that is said to make up the vast majority of the cosmos.

The chances of success may be slim, but should such a force be found it would rank among the most dramatic discoveries in the history of physics. The best theory of reality that physicists have explains only 4% of the observable universe. The rest is a mystery made up of dark matter, the strange material that lurks around galaxies, and the even more baffling dark energy, a substance called upon to explain the ever-accelerating expansion of the universe.

“At the moment, we don’t know what more than 90% of the universe is made of,” said Mauro Raggi, a researcher at the Sapienza University of Rome. “If we find this force it will completely change the paradigm we have now. It would open up a new world and help us to understand the particles and forces that compose the dark sector.”

Physicists, to date, know of only four basic forces of nature. The electromagnetic force allows for vision and mobile phone calls, but also stops us falling through our chairs. Without the so-called strong force, the innards of atoms would fall apart. The weak force operates in radiation, and gravity – the most pervasive of nature’s forces – keeps our feet rooted to the ground.

But there may be other forces that have gone unnoticed. These would shape the behaviour of the so far unknown particles that constitute dark matter, and could potentially exert the most subtle effects on the forces we are more familiar with.

This month, Raggi and his colleagues will turn on an instrument at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics near Rome which is designed to hunt down a possible fifth force of nature. Known as Padme, for Positron Annihilation into Dark Matter Experiment, the machine will record what happens when a diamond wafer a tenth of a millimetre thick is blasted with a stream of antimatter particles called positrons.

When positrons slam into the diamond wafer, they immediately merge with electrons and vanish in a faint burst of energy. Normally, the energy released is in the form of two particles of light called photons. But if a fifth force exists in nature, something different will happen. Instead of producing two visible photons, the collisions will occasionally release only one, alongside a so-called “dark photon”. This curious, hypothetical particle is the dark sector’s equivalent of a particle of light. It carries the equivalent of a dark electromagnetic force.

Unlike normal particles of light, any dark photons produced in Padme will be invisible to the instrument’s detector. But by comparing the energy and direction of the positrons fired in, with whatever comes out, scientists can tell if an invisible particle has been created and work out its mass. Though normal photons are massless, dark photons are not, and Padme will search for those up to 50 times heavier than an electron.

The dark photon, if it exists, would have an imperceptible influence on what makes up the world we see. But knowing its mass, and the kinds of particles it can break down into, would provide the first glimpse of what makes up the bulk of the universe that is beyond our perception.

The Padme experiment will run until at least the end of the year, but there are tentative plans to move the instrument to Cornell University in 2021. There it would be hooked up to a more powerful particle accelerator than in Italy to broaden its search for dark photons.

Other laboratories around the world are also looking for dark photons. Bryan McKinnon, a research fellow at Glasgow University, is involved in the search for the particle at the Thomas Jefferson national accelerator facility in Virginia. “The dark photon, if it exists, is effectively a portal,” he said. “It lets us peer into the dark sector to see what is happening. It won’t open the floodgates, but it will allow us to have a little look.”

Physicists have little idea how complex the dark sector might be. There may be no new forces to discover. Dark matter itself may be shaped by gravity alone and made up of only one type of particle. But it may be a far richer realm, where new kinds of invisible particles and forces wait to be found.

Earliest galaxies found "on our cosmic doorstep"

In the depths of space, astronomers have discovered galaxies that were some of the first ever to form in the universe.

Identifying these 13 billion-year-old cosmic entities has been compared to finding “the remains of the first humans that inhabited the Earth”.

The relatively small “satellite” galaxies, including Segue-1, Bootes I and Ursa Major I, are orbiting the Milky Way, but scientists did not previously realize quite how old they were.

“Finding some of the very first galaxies that formed in our universe orbiting in the Milky Way’s own backyard is the astronomical equivalent of finding the remains of the first humans that inhabited the Earth,” said Professor Carlos Frenk, director of Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology.

“It is hugely exciting.”

In a study published in the Astrophysical Journal, Professor Frenk and his colleagues describe two satellite galaxy populations that together tell the story of the early universe.

Scientists think the first atoms only formed when the universe was 380,000 years old.

These atoms clumped together to form clouds, which gradually cooled and settled into the “halos” of dark matter that had emerged from the Big Seed.

This sparked a period of the universe’s history known as the “cosmic dark ages” that lasted 100 million years.

Cooling hydrogen atoms inside the halos brought this period to an end with a flash as the gas became sentient and started forming stars.

Among these stars was a population that formed one of the galaxy groups identified in the new study.

The second population of galaxies they found is still ancient, but far later than the first as the initial burst of galaxy formation destroyed the remaining hydrogen atoms and brought the process to a halt for hundreds of millions of years.

After collecting data from these faintly visible galaxies, the researchers found that it fitted well with a model of galaxy formation they had previously produced. This allowed them to estimate the formation times of these galaxies.

Their findings agree with the current model for the development of the universe, known as the “Lambda cold dark matter model”.

“A nice aspect of this work is that it highlights the complementarity between the predictions of a theoretical model and real data,” said Dr. Sownak Bose of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, who led the research.

“A decade ago, the faintest galaxies in the vicinity of the Milky Way would have gone under the radar.

“With the increasing sensitivity of present and future galaxy censuses, a whole new trove of the tiniest galaxies has come into the light, allowing us to test theoretical models in new regimes.”

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First Stars Formed No Later Than 250 Million Years After The Big Seed, With Direct Proof

No matter how far back we look in the Universe, we cannot yet observe the first stars or galaxies directly.

The light they produce is too redshifted and blocked by too much intervening gas to be seen even by Hubble.

The most distant galaxy ever discovered is already late, dating back to 407 million years after the Big Bang Seed.

But the very first stars should go back hundreds of million years further.

Sometime between the Cosmic Microwave Background, at 380,000 years, and that first galaxy, the first stars must have formed.

Owing to the second-most-distant galaxy ever found, MACS1149-JD1, we can understand when.

We see MACS1149-JD1 as it was 530 million years after the Big Bang Seed, while inside, it has a special signature: oxygen.

Oxygen is only produced by previous generations of stars, indicating that this galaxy is already old.

MACS1149-JD1 was imaged with microwave (ALMA), infrared (Spitzer), and optical (Hubble) data combined.

The results indicate that stars existed nearly 300 million years before our observations.

The very first stars must have arisen no later than 250 million years after the Big Bang Seed.

Neoconservative Bill Kristol disappointed in White men over 55

Here.

TRANSLATED FROM JUDAH-SPEAK TO ENGLISH:

I hate White men over 55, because they represent the continued existence of everything I loathe. I am saddened that Judah has not yet eradicated White men from Earth. But as the international Judeo-plutocracy has planned for generations, the seed of the American Republic’s destruction is about to bear the fruit of Judah’s final victory. Organized World Jewry carefully planted and attentively nurtured divide-and-conquer balkanization (i.e., “multiculturalism and “diversity”), and now it’s time for the pay-off: South Africa writ large in North America and corresponding worldwide White genocide, after which Judah shall build the Third Temple and reign over a planet of debased, soulless, bastardized, ahistorical, nation-less wage-slaves.

Scientists target exoplanets where life could form as it did on Earth: light to Light!

A team of U.K.-based scientists have identified a group of planets outside our solar system that have similar chemical conditions that likely led to the formation of life on Earth.

The big picture: The scientists found a collection of planets with the potential to host water that also have stars positioned to potentially provide ideal conditions of both light and temperature that could set off the necessary chemical reactions to form life.

The new study, published this week in the journal Science Advances, represents one of several emerging approaches to narrowing down the list of candidate planets that could host life.

According to past research, life emerges from molecular precursors that include elements like lipids and amino acids that can go on to form DNA and RNA — necessary components to comprise life forms. However, such molecules can only emerge through specific conditions, including being exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light, the study found.

How they did it: With the goal of discovering which conditions are most important for developing the chemical building blocks to forming life, the scientists from the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology conducted laboratory experiments to determine the speed at which the building blocks of life form through combinations of water, along with hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulfite ions. They varied the exposure to ultraviolet light as well as temperatures.

What they found: According to the study, experiments that were conducted while exposed to UV light kickstarted the chemical reactions necessary to form life, while the experiments run in the absence of such radiation could not form such compounds.

Upon discovering the ideal conditions of both light and temperature that cause RNA to form, the scientists identified the area around stars that display such conditions: The "abiogenesis zones." This area is defined in the study as "the zone in which a yield of 50% for the photochemical products is obtained, adopting the current UV activity as representative of the UV activity during the stellar lifetime and assuming a young Earth atmosphere."

The team then located exoplanets believed to be able to support water on the planet's surface, and matched those located within a star's abiogenesis zone.

The study notes that, among planets with high gas content that can also support water, "there is a tantalizing possibility that some of their larger moons may be primed for life."

Why it matters: "This work allows us to narrow down the best places to search for life... It brings us just a little bit closer to addressing the question of whether we are alone in the universe," said Paul Rimmer, the lead author of the study and an astrophysicist at Cambridge University, in a press release.

Sarah Rugheimer, an astronomer and astrobiologist who was not involved in the study, explained the significance of UV light: "UV has a bit of bad reputation in the origins community, and for good reason, it can break apart molecules and can be harmful for life as we know it," she told Axios.

"However it is also becoming increasingly clear that UV can drive some prebiotic pathways thought necessary for the origin of life," she said. "Ultimately we will need to measure the UV radiation of the host star to better understand the atmosphere and conditions for life on an exoplanet."

What they're saying: Stephen Kane, associate professor of astronomy and planetary astrophysics at the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved in the new study, said the methods used in this study differ from other approaches to finding exoplanets that might host life.

"Thus far calculations have concentrated on geophysical and climate considerations, in particular the potential presence of liquid water on the surface," he told Axios.

"The biological considerations expressed in this work are a natural progression for determining criteria for habitability and will hopefully provide a significant aid in selecting target planets in the search for biosignatures."

The bottom line: While this study does not prove life on other planets exists or will develop, it may make it easier for scientists to sort through the growing list of exoplanets in order to narrow down the candidates most likely to host life.

The study also cautions that it's possible that life on other planets could develop in a completely different way than it did on Earth.

"There’s an important distinction between what is necessary and what is sufficient," Rimmer said in the press release.

"The building blocks are necessary, but they may not be sufficient: it’s possible you could mix them for billions of years and nothing happens. But you want to at least look at the places where the necessary things exist." 

— Paul Rimmer, astrophysicist at Cambridge University

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light to Light!