The Big Bang was an autotelic cosmic seed, and the universe is an organism for cultivating Consciousness. All history is the history of the evolutionary transubstantiation of matter to Spirit via biological-life processes of Blood and Reason.
A team of international scientists has used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to detect a new carbon compound in space for the first time. Known as methyl cation (pronounced cat-eye-on) (CH3+), the molecule is important because it aids the formation of more complex carbon-based molecules. Methyl cation was detected in a young star system, with a protoplanetary disk, known as d203-506, which is located about 1,350 light-years away in the Orion Nebula.
Carbon compounds form the foundations of all known life, and as such are particularly interesting to scientists working to understand both how life developed on Earth, and how it could potentially develop elsewhere in our universe. The study of interstellar organic (carbon-containing) chemistry, which Webb is opening in new ways, is an area of keen fascination to many astronomers.
The unique capabilities of Webb made it an ideal observatory to search for this crucial molecule. Webb’s exquisite spatial and spectral resolution, as well as its sensitivity, all contributed to the team’s success. In particular, Webb’s detection of a series of key emission lines from CH3+ cemented the discovery.
“This detection not only validates the incredible sensitivity of Webb but also confirms the postulated central importance of CH3+ in interstellar chemistry,” said Marie-Aline Martin-Drumel of the University of Paris-Saclay in France, a member of the science team.While the star in d203-506 is a small red dwarf, the system is bombarded by strong ultraviolet (UV) light from nearby hot, young, massive stars. Scientists believe that most planet-forming disks go through a period of such intense UV radiation, since stars tend to form in groups that often include massive, UV-producing stars.
Typically, UV radiation is expected to destroy complex organic molecules, in which case the discovery of CH3+ might seem to be a surprise. However, the team predicts that UV radiation might actually provide the necessary source of energy for CH3+ to form in the first place. Once formed, it then promotes additional chemical reactions to build more complex carbon molecules.
Broadly, the team notes that the molecules they see in d203-506 are quite different from typical protoplanetary disks. In particular, they could not detect any signs of water.
“This clearly shows that ultraviolet radiation can completely change the chemistry of a protoplanetary disk. It might actually play a critical role in the early chemical stages of the origins of life,” elaborated Olivier Berné of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Toulouse, lead author of the study.
Using data from the Spitzer space observatory, Dr Susana Iglesias-Groth, a researcher from The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has found evidence for the existence of the amino acid tryptophan in the interstellar material in a nearby star-forming region. The research is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
High amounts of tryptophan were detected in the Perseus Molecular Complex, specifically in the IC348 star system, a star-forming region that lies 1000 light years away from Earth - relatively close in astronomical terms. The region is generally invisible to the naked eye, but shines brightly when viewed in infrared wavelengths.
Tryptophan is one of the 20 amino acids essential for the formation of key proteins for life on Earth and produces one of the richest patterns of spectral lines in the infrared. It was therefore an obvious candidate to be explored using the extensive spectroscopic database of the Spitzer satellite, a space-based infrared telescope.
The analysis of the infrared light emitted from the region revealed 20 emission lines of the molecule tryptophan. The temperature of the tryptophan is about 280 Kelvin, or 7 degrees Celsius. Iglesias-Groth has previously found water and hydrogen at the same temperatures in IC348.
The study suggests that the emission lines associated with tryptophan may also be present in other star-forming regions and that their presence is common in the gas and dust from which stars and planets form.
Amino acids are commonly found in meteorites and were present during the formation of our Solar System. This new work could indicate that these protein-building agents - that are key to the development of life - exist naturally in the regions where stars and planetary systems form and may contribute to the early chemistry of planetary systems around other stars.
Dr Iglesias-Groth says, "The evidence for tryptophan in the Perseus molecular complex should encourage additional effort to identify other amino acids in this region, and in other star-forming regions. It is a very exciting possibility that the building blocks of proteins are widely present in the gas from which stars and planets form - it may be key for the development of life in exoplanetary systems”.
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland has won a district council election in Germany for the first time, in what is being referred to as a watershed moment in the country’s politics.
The eastern town of Sonneberg, in the state of Thuringia, elected Robert Sesselmann to the post of district administrator, the equivalent of a mayor, with 52.8% of the vote, ousting the Christian Democrats’ (CDU) Jurgen Köpper on 47.2%.
The Thuringia branch of the anti-immigrant party has been classed as rightwing extremist by intelligence services. It is led by Björn Höcke, who is considered to be part of the AfD’s far right or völkisch wing, which was officially disbanded but is still widely believed to exist.
Observers say the win, which AfD’s leadership said would give the party a much-needed boost in its efforts to expand its influence across Germany, could be a bellwether for upcoming votes, in particular in the east. State parliament elections are taking place next year in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg.
Established parties from the Social Democrats to the CDU as well as civil society organisations called the result a turning point to which defenders of democracy would be forced to find a way of responding.
"Defenders of democracy" = anti-German haters
The Central Council of Jews in Germany said it was devastated by the result. “To be clear, not everyone who voted for the AfD has a rightwing extremist mindset,” its president, Josef Schuster, told the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper. “But the party whose candidate they have elected is, according to the regional intelligence service, rightwing extremist … This is the bursting of a dam, which the political powers in this country cannot simply take on the chin.”
Because opposing your own genocide is "rightwing extremism."
Christoph Heubner, the executive vice-president of the International Auschwitz Committee, called it a “sad day” for Sonneberg, Germany and democracy. “A majority of voters have turned their backs on democracy and deliberately decided in favour of a rightwing extremist, Nazi-dominated party of destruction,” he said.
Because "democracy" means your People must go extinct.
Sonneberg, which has about 57,000 inhabitants, is one of Germany’s smallest administrative regions, and voter participation was low at just 58%. However, the result’s significance goes far beyond the town itself, and this was being recognised across the country on Monday. Political scientists called it a warning to the established parties, which had joined forces and, along with other organisations such as trade unions, urged voters to abandon any existing party loyalties and back Köpper in an effort to squeeze Sesselmann out of the running, a move that appears to have backfired.
Tino Chrupalla, a co-leader of the AfD, tweeted: “That was just the beginning. We will convince the majority with our politics of showing an interest in the people. This is how we will turn the tide for the better.”
Summary: Researchers uncovered swirling spiral patterns of brain signals on the human cortex. The research indicates that these patterns, observed during both resting and cognitive states, play a crucial role in organizing brain activity and cognitive processing.
The discovery, which suggests the spirals facilitate intricate interactions for computational efficiency, could significantly advance our understanding of the human brain’s function and dynamics. This could also pave the way for powerful computing machines inspired by the brain’s complex workings.
Key Facts:
The study’s findings were obtained from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans of 100 young adults, which the researchers analyzed using methods typically employed to understand complex wave patterns in turbulence.
A key characteristic of these brain spirals is that they often emerge at the boundaries separating different functional networks in the brain. Through their rotational motion, these spirals effectively coordinate the flow of activity between these networks.
These interacting brain spirals allow for flexible reconfiguration of brain activity during various tasks involving natural language processing and working memory. This is achieved by changing their rotational directions.
Source: University of Sydney
University of Sydney and Fudan University scientists have discovered human brain signals traveling across the outer layer of neural tissue that naturally arrange themselves to resemble swirling spirals.
The research, published today in Nature Human Behaviour, indicates these ubiquitous spirals, which are brain signals observed on the cortex during both resting and cognitive states, help organise brain activity and cognitive processing.
Senior author Associate Professor Pulin Gong, from the School of Physics in the Faculty of Science, said the discovery could have the potential to advance powerful computing machines inspired by the intricate workings of the human brain.
The discovery opens up new avenues for understanding how the brain works and provides valuable insights into the fundamental functions of the human brain. Itcould help medical researchers understand the effects of brain diseases, such as dementia, by examining the role they play.
“Our study suggests that gaining insights into how the spirals are related to cognitive processing could significantly enhance our understanding of the dynamics and functions of the brain,” said Associate Professor Gong, who is a member of the Complex Systems research group in Physics.
“These spiral patterns exhibit intricate and complex dynamics, moving across the brain’s surface while rotating around central points, known as phase singularities.
“Much like vortices act in turbulence, the spirals engage in intricate interactions, playing a crucial role in organising the brain’s complex activities.
“The intricate interactions among multiple co-existing spirals could allow neural computations to be conducted in a distributed and parallel manner, leading to remarkable computational efficiency.”
PhD student Yiben Xu, the lead author of the research from the School of Physics, said the location of the spirals on the cortex could allow them to connect activity in different sections, or networks, of the brain – acting as a bridge of communication. Many of the spirals are large enough to cover multiple networks.
The cortex of the brain, also known as the cerebral cortex, is the outermost layer of the brain that is responsible for many complex cognitive functions, including perception, memory, attention, language and consciousness.
“One key characteristic of these brain spirals is that they often emerge at the boundaries that separate different functional networks in the brain,” Mr. Xu said.
“Through their rotational motion, they effectively coordinate the flow of activity between these networks.
“In our research we observed that these interacting brain spirals allow for flexible reconfiguration of brain activity during various tasks involving natural language processing and working memory, which they achieve by changing their rotational directions.”
The scientists gathered their findings from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans of 100 young adults, which they analysed byadapting methods used to understand complex wave patterns in turbulence.
Neuroscience has traditionally focused on interactions between neurons to understand brain function. There is a growing area of science looking at larger processes within the brain to help us understand its mysteries.
“By unraveling the mysteries of brain activity and uncovering the mechanisms governing its coordination, we are moving closer to unlocking the full potential of understanding cognition and brain function,” Associate Professor Gong said.
Enceladus, a moon orbiting Saturn, has a form of phosphorus beneath its icy surface, according to the journal Nature.
Researchers from Germany, Japan, the U.S. and Finland had a “tantalizing moment” when the discovery was made, lead author of the study Frank Postberg told The New York Times.
Postberg, a professor at the Free University of Berlin, said the discovery of dissolved sodium phosphate in the waters of Enceladus makes it “the most habitable place in the solar system, at least as far as we know,” according to The Washington Post.
“But that doesn’t mean that it’s actually hosting life, that it’s inhabited,” Postberg told the Post.
What are the six elements of life?
There are six elements needed for life to be sustained in a habitat: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur, according to NASA.
Nature said phosphorus is the rarest element to find out of the six and hasn’t been found in an ocean beyond Earth’s until now.
Enceladus’ ocean “is hidden beneath a layer of ice many miles thick, but frozen particles migrate through cracks in the ice and spurt into space,” the Post said.
Postberg told The New York Times, “You could call it a ‘soda ocean,’” because of its high carbonation and bubbly nature.
Sodium phosphate was found in the ice orbiting Enceladus, spewed into space by ice volcanoes, the Times said, and analyzed “using data from Cassini, a joint NASA-European orbiter that concluded its study of Saturn, its rings and moons in 2017.”
Nature said further research and experiments suggest high amounts of phosphates could be found on the seafloor of the icy planet and other planets with a similar environment.
“Beyond Enceladus, Postberg says, this discovery may indicate that other ocean worlds in the outer solar system, like Jupiter’s moon Europa or the dwarf planet Pluto, are rich in phosphates — and thus potentially habitable,” the Times said.
Planetary scientist Yasuhito Sekine told Science News that the phosphate could have originated from reactions between seawater and a phosphate-bearing mineral called apatite on Enceladus’ seafloor.
Sekine questioned the possibility of alien life on the icy planet.
“If life exists (on) Enceladus, why (does) such (an) abundance of chemical energy and nutrients remain?” Sekine said to Science News.
Mikhail Zolotov, a planetary geochemist at Arizona State University, told the Post, “We don’t know how life originated, and under what conditions,” and that there are many unknowns concerning which planet besides Earth is most habitable.
In the article, Dr. Siegel maintains that because the universe was not "born ready for life" at the moment of the "big bang", everything that came after the "big bang" and effectuated life was therefore the result of "luck".
Yet, Dr. Siegel's explication unequivocally demonstrates that the universe was born ready to induce life. Indeed, Dr. Siegel's article does an excellent job laying out the case for the teleological, life-inducing expansion of the universe, from the moment of (what he calls) the "lucky" "bang" up the present. Nevertheless, Dr. Siegel writes off the entire life-engendering process of cosmic evolution as a product of "luck" that started with the "bang".
Why would Dr. Siegel engage in such obvious, transparent illogic? Because Dr. Siegel, a Ph.D. and astrophysicist - aka "a Science Communicator" - has an Agenda. You see, a "lucky" "bang" possesses no inherent meaning or purpose. It's a random, unguided event, and whatever it spawns is by definition the product of indifference.
A universe that was born ready to induce life would give meaning and purpose to the cattle, because that sort of universe implies a beneficent Creator. Meaning and purpose are good things. They are crucial to human well-being. But they are reserved for a very select, chosen group of people. The cattle can never be allowed to have meaning or purpose, because meaning and purpose can lead to hope - and if the cattle acquire hope, it can be dangerous a very select, chosen group of people.
The cattle must be denied meaning, purpose, and hope. The cattle are fit only for exploitation and slaughter. And Dr. Siegel's argument regarding a "lucky" "bang" does the trick. It pens the cattle into a miserable, meaningless existence, where they can be exploited and slaughtered without ever even understanding what is going on around them.
A very select, chosen group of people can never allow the cattle to think they have a beneficent Creator; the cattle must at all times be deprived of meaning, purpose, and hope.
No Think: Starts with a Lie.
The Big Lie.
"Ethan Siegel is a Ph.D. astrophysicist and author of "Starts with a Bang!" He is a science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. He has won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for his blog, including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics. His two books "Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive" and "Beyond the Galaxy: How humanity looked beyond our Milky Way and discovered the entire Universe" are available for purchase at Amazon. Follow him on Twitter @startswithabang."
Thousands of Westerners want to flee “radical liberal values,” a Russian immigration attorney has claimed
Construction of an “American village” for 200 families of conservative immigrants will start in Moscow Region in 2024, immigration attorney Timur Beslangurov has revealed.
Beslangurov, a partner in the Vista law firm, brought up the new settlement at a session of the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum on Thursday.
“Basically, they are Orthodox Christians, Americans and Canadians who, for ideological reasons, want to move to Russia,” he said.
The regional government approved the construction, but the prospective immigrants are funding the settlement themselves, according to Beslangurov. It will be built in the Serpukhov district, due south of the Russian capital.
Tens of thousands of Westerners would like to move to Russia, the attorney claimed, including people with no Russian roots.
“The reasons are known, it’s the imposition of radical left-liberal values in the West, which basically have no limits. Today they have 70 genders, tomorrow who knows what,” Beslangurov told the conference. “Many normal people do not understand this, and they want to emigrate. Many choose Russia, but face a huge number of bureaucratic problems related to the imperfection of Russian immigration laws.”
One potential group of immigrants are traditionalist Catholics who are “white Americans with many children,” said Beslangurov, adding that the US government considers them “domestic terrorists.”
A FBI memo made public in February referred to “radical-traditionalist Catholic” believers as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” After 19 Republican state attorneys-general demanded of the federal government to stop its “anti-Catholic bigotry,” the FBI disavowed the document.
If you're White and you have the will to live, you are an enemy of the state.
In a study published in Nature Astronomy, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin find that six of the earliest and most massive galaxy candidates observed by JWST stand to contradict the prevailing thinking in cosmology. That’s because other researchers estimate that each galaxy is seen from between 500 million and 700 million years after the Big Bang, yet measures more than 10 billion times as massive as our sun. One of the galaxies even appears to be more massive than the Milky Way, despite the fact that our own galaxy had billions of more years to form and grow.
“If the masses are right, then we are in uncharted territory,” said Mike Boylan-Kolchin, associate professor of astronomy who led the study. “We’ll require something very new about galaxy formation or a modification to cosmology. One of the most extreme possibilities is that the universe was expanding faster shortly after the Big Bang than we predict, which might require new forces and particles.”
For galaxies to form so fast at such a size, they also would need to be converting nearly 100% of their available gas into stars.
“We typically see a maximum of 10% of gas converted into stars,” Boylan-Kolchin said. “So while 100% conversion of gas into stars is technically right at the edge of what is theoretically possible, it’s really the case that this would require something to be very different from what we expect.”
Despite all of the breathless excitement it evokes, JWST has presented astronomers with an unsettling problem. If the masses and time since the Big Bang are confirmed for these galaxies, fundamental changes to the reigning model of cosmology — what’s called the dark energy plus cold dark matter paradigm — could be needed. If there are other, faster ways to form galaxies than the current model allows, or if more matter actually was available for forming stars and galaxies in the early universe than was previously understood, astronomers would need to shift their prevailing thinking.
The six galaxies’ ages and masses are initial estimates and will need follow-up confirmation with spectroscopy, a method that splits the light into a spectrum and analyzes the brightness of different colors. Such analysis might suggest that central supermassive black holes, which could heat up the surrounding gas, may be making the galaxies brighter so that they look more massive than they really are. Or perhaps the galaxies are actually seen at a time much later than originally estimated due to dust that causes the color of the light from the galaxy to shift redder, giving the illusion of being more light-years away and, thus, further back in time.
The galaxy data comes from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey, a multi-institution JWST initiative led by UT Austin astronomer Steven Finkelstein.
The initial discovery and estimates of the six galaxy candidates’ masses and redshifts were published in Nature in February by a team led by Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. The research is supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA.
As the closest star-forming region to our solar system, we’re certain there are a bunch of fascinating things happening in this “extraordinary laboratory of organic chemistry”. But what researchers recently detected in this region might very well be the precursors for life itself!
A study led by the researcher Susana Iglesias has detailed the presence of large quantities of complex organic molecules in the Perseus molecular cloud. And some of these biological molecules are considered essential building blocks for the construction of more complex molecules like amino acids. Amino acids formed the genetic code of ancient microorganisms, making it possible for life to flourish on Earth.
Understanding the distribution and abundance of these precursor molecules in probable planet-forming regions is an important challenge for astrophysics.
While researchers found fullerenes (carbon allotropes) in the star formation region IC 348 of the Perseus cloud back in 2019, the recent study reported finding common molecules like molecular hydrogen (H2), hydroxyl (OH), water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2) and ammonia (NH3) as well as several carbon-bearing molecules.
These molecules could play a crucial role in the production of more complex hydrocarbons and prebiotic molecules, such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN), acetylene (C2H2), diacetylene (C4H2), cyanoacetylene (HC3N), cyclobutadiene (HC5N), ethane (C2H6), hexatrine (C6H2) and benzene (C6H6), the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias reported.
Further, the data collected by the team also shows the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and the fullerenes C60 and C70 — more complex hydrocarbons.
“IC 348 seems to be very rich and diverse in its molecular content. The novelty is that we see the molecules in the diffuse gas from which stars and protoplanetary discs are forming,” said Iglesias-Groth. He was responsible for finding fullerenes in the same cloud.
The occurrence of what researchers call ‘prebiotic molecules’ in the Perseus molecular cloud indicates the possibility of accretion processes taking place onto young planets.
“These key molecules could have been supplied to the nascent planets in the protoplanetary discs and could in this way help to produce there a route towards the molecules of life”, explained Marina-Dobrincic, the co-author of the study.
Future research will entail studying the spatial distribution of these molecules using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, as this would paint a clearer picture of the probable presence of amino acids in the star-forming region.
Back in 2010, Japan’s space agency JAXA completed one of the biggest milestones in the history of space exploration: It collected samples from an asteroid and brought them back to Earth. A decade later, the agency’s Hayabusa2 mission did the same thing with another asteroid called Ryugu—with a vastly more ambitious goal of bringing back an even bigger cache of extraterrestrial rock samples. For the past few years, scientists on Earth have been uncovering the chemical secrets embedded within these samples and whether there’s anything we can glean about the origins of the solar system and its planets. As it turns out, we’ve learned that Ryugu is home to a very special compound that’s a building block of genetic information itself.
On Tuesday, Japanese scientists revealed they discovered within the Ryugu samples the presence of uracil, a component that’s critical to the makeup of RNA. They also discovered nicotinic acid, better known as Vitamin B3 or niacin, which is important for allowing organisms to run metabolic functions.
Both materials have been previously discovered in carbon-rich meteorites that have impacted Earth. But, “this is the first time they have been detected in any returned samples from space,” Yasuhiro Oba from Hokkaido University, who led the new study, told The Daily Beast in an email. “Based on this finding, we can say uracil is indeed present in space.” The findings were reported in Nature Communications.
The new discovery arrives at a time when scientists are trying to piece together a better understanding of how the building blocks to life first originated on Earth. One of the most popular theories among researchers these days is that during the formation of Earth, asteroids were responsible for bringing in water, organic molecules, nucleic acids, and other compounds that form the constituents of proteins and genes and cells.
The problem? These theories have been based on the study of meteorite samples already on Earth. There’s always been a chance that they’ve been contaminated by terrestrial factors.
But missions like Hayabusa2 enable us to study pristine samples, delivered to us in sealed capsules, that haven’t been messed up by earthly treasures.
“It’s really encouraging that these compounds are so present in space.”
— Tanja Bosak, MIT
Tanja Bosak, a geologist at MIT who was not involved with the study, told The Daily Beast that the new findings are “not so shocking” given previous research. But, she said, “it’s a really nice confirmation of these materials and these compounds being widespread.” It adds fuel to the notion that carbon-rich asteroids are likely a major mechanism for delivering pre-biological chemical compounds to other worlds, as probably was the case for Earth.
“It’s really encouraging that these compounds are so present in space,” she said.
Oba acknowledged that he and his colleagues still cannot conclude how the uracil and niacin were formed and found their way onto Ryugu. But they think a possible formation mechanism has to do with photochemical reactions of interstellar ices that contain simple compounds like water, methanol, and ammonia. These reactions would have taken place long before the solar system first came together.
"Our research shows that nature could have selected for building blocks with useful properties before Darwinian evolution."
By simulating early Earth conditions in the lab, researchers have found that without specific amino acids, ancient proteins would not have known how to evolve into everything alive on the planet today—including plants, animals, and humans.
The findings, which detail how amino acids shaped the genetic code of ancient microorganisms, shed light on the mystery of how life began on Earth.
"You see the same amino acids in every organism, from humans to bacteria to archaea, and that's because all things on Earth are connected through this tree of life that has an origin, an organism that was the ancestor to all living things," said Stephen Fried, a Johns Hopkins chemist who co-led the research with scientists at Charles University in the Czech Republic. "We're describing the events that shaped why that ancestor got the amino acids that it did."
The findings are newly published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
In the lab, the researchers mimicked primordial protein synthesis of 4 billion years ago by using an alternative set of amino acids that were highly abundant before life arose on Earth.
They found ancient organic compounds integrated the amino acids best suited for protein folding into their biochemistry. In other words, life thrived on Earth not just because some amino acids were available and easy to make in ancient habitats but because some of them were especially good at helping proteins adopt specific shapes to perform crucial functions.
"Protein folding was basically allowing us to do evolution before there was even life on our planet," Fried said. "You could have evolution before you had biology, you could have natural selection for the chemicals that are useful for life even before there was DNA."
Even though the primordial Earth had hundreds of amino acids, all living things use the same 20 of these compounds. Fried calls those compounds "canonical." But science has struggled to pinpoint what's so special—if anything—about those 20 amino acids.
In its first billion years, Earth's atmosphere consisted of an assortment of gases like ammonia and carbon dioxide that reacted with high levels of ultraviolet radiation to concoct some of the simpler canonical amino acids. Others arrived via special delivery by meteorites, which introduced a mixed bag of ingredients that helped life on Earth complete a set of 10 "early" amino acids.
How the rest came to be is an open question that Fried's team is trying to answer with the new research, especially because those space rocks brought much more than the "modern" amino acids.
"We're trying to find out what was so special about our canonical amino acids," Fried said. "Were they selected for any particular reason?"
Scientists estimate Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and that DNA, proteins, and other molecules didn't begin to form simple organisms until 3.8 billion years ago. The new research offers new clues into the mystery of what happened during the time in between.
"To have evolution in the Darwinian sense, you need to have this whole sophisticated way of turning genetic molecules like DNA and RNA into proteins. But replicating DNA also requires proteins, so we have a chicken-and-egg problem," Fried said. "Our research shows that nature could have selected for building blocks with useful properties before Darwinian evolution."
Scientists have spotted amino acids in asteroids far from Earth, suggesting those compounds are ubiquitous in other corners of the universe. That's why Fried thinks the new research could also have implications for the possibility of finding life beyond Earth.
"The universe seems to love amino acids," Fried said. "Maybe if we found life on a different planet, it wouldn't be that different."
This research is supported by the Human Frontier Science Program grant HFSP-RGY0074/2019 and the NIH Director's New Innovator Award (DP2-GM140926).
The study's authors include Anneliese M. Faustino, of Johns Hopkins; Mikhail Makarov, Alma C. Sanchez Rocha, Ivan Cherepashuk, Robin Krystufek, and Klara Hlouchova, of Charles University; Volha Dzmitruk, Tatsiana Charnavets, and Michal Lebl, of the Czech Academy of Sciences; and Kosuke Fujishima, of Tokyo Institute of Technology.
"It would take billions of years to create a structure of this size."
The discovery of giant superclusters of galaxies are challenging our very understanding of the Universe.
In 2021, British PhD student Alexia Lopez was analysing the light coming from distant quasars when she made a startling discovery.
She detected a giant, almost symmetrical arc of galaxies 9.3 billion light years away in the constellation of Boötes the Herdsman. Spanning a massive 3.3 billion light years across, the structure is a whopping 1/15th the radius of the observable Universe. If we could see it from Earth, it would be the size of 35 full moons displayed across the sky.
Known as the Giant Arc, the structure throws into question some of the basic assumptions about the Universe. According to the standard model of cosmology – the theory on which our understanding of the Universe is based – matter should be more-or-less evenly distributed across space. When scientists view the Universe on very large scales there should be no noticeable irregularities; everything should look the same in every direction.
Yet the Giant Arc isn't the only example of its kind. These gargantuan structures are now forcing scientists to reassess their theory of how the Universe evolved.
What Lopez' "happy accident" uncovered was astonishing. When looking towards the constellation Boötes, a cluster of between 45 to 50 gas clouds, each associated with at least one galaxy, seemed to arrange themselves in an arc 3.3 billion light years across. That is a considerable size given the observable Universe is 94 billion light years wide.
According to Lopez's article, it is extremely unlikely (a probability of just 0.0003 per cent) that such a large structure could have arisen by chance. It suggests that it may have formed due to something in the natural physics of the Universe that we currently don't account for. Her findings directly challenge a central facet of the standard cosmological model – the best explanation we have for how the Universe started and evolved.
This facet, known as the cosmological principle, states that on a large scale, the Universe should look roughly the same everywhere, no matter your position or the direction in which you are looking. There should be no giant structures, rather space should be smooth and uniform. This is convenient, as it lets researchers draw conclusions about the whole Universe based only on what we see from our corner of it. However it also makes sense, as following the Big Bang the Universe expanded outwards, flinging matter in every direction simultaneously.
There is another problem. According to the standard model, structures like the Giant Arc simply wouldn't have had time to form.
It would take billions of years to create a structure of this size – Subir Sarkar
"The current idea for how structures formed in the Universe is through a process known as gravitational instability," says Subir Sarkar, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oxford.
About a million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was expanding, tiny fluctuations in density led to bits of matter clumping together. Over billions of years, the pull of gravity eventually led these clumps to form stars and galaxies. However, there is a size limit to this process. Anything larger than about 1.2 billion light-years across simply wouldn't have had sufficient time to form.
"To form structures you need particles to congregate close to each other so gravitational collapse can occur," says Sarkar. "Those particles would have to move in from outside the structure to get there. So, if your structure is 500 million light years across, light would take 500 million years to move from one end to the other. However, the particles we are talking about are moving much more slowly than light, so it would take billions of years to create a structure of this size, and the universe has only been around for about 14 billion years."
The Giant Arc discovered by Lopez isn't the only large-scale structure discovered by astronomers.
There's the "Great Wall" (also called the CfA2 Great Wall) of galaxies discovered in 1989 by Margaret Geller and John Huchra. The wall is approximately 500 million light-years long, 300 million light years wide, and 15 million light years thick.
Even bigger is the Sloan Great Wall – a cosmic structure formed by a giant wall of galaxies, discovered in 2003 by J Richard Gott III and Mario Juric and their colleagues at Princeton University. That wall is nearly 1.5 billion light years in length.
In the last decade the discovery of these behemoths has accelerated even further. In 2014, scientists discovered the Laniakea supercluster, a collection of galaxies in which our own Milky Way resides. Lanaikea is 520 million light years across and contains roughly the mass of 100 million billion suns. Then in 2016 the BOSS Great Wall – a complex of galaxies over one billion light years across – was uncovered. BOSS is made up of 830 separate galaxies that gravity has pulled into four superclusters. The galaxies are connected by long filaments of hot gas. In 2020 the South Pole Wall, which stretches 1.4 billion light-years across was also added to the list.
However, the current record holder for the biggest of these structures is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. Discovered in 2013, it spans 10 billion light years – more than one-10th the size of the visible Universe.
"We calculated it and then realised, 'Uh oh, this is the biggest thing in the Universe'," says Jon Hakkila, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Their concern was justified. Both Hakkila and Lopez performed a range of statistical tests to try to prove that the results couldn't be down to chance. For the Giant Arc, the results have a confidence level of 99.9997%. In scientific research, the gold standard for statistical significance is known as 5- sigma, which equates to a probability of about 1 in 3.5 million that the results are down to chance. The Giant Arc reached a significance of 4.5 sigma, so there's still the possibility that the structure is a chance arrangement of stars.
"Our eyes are very good at seeing patterns. You might see initials in the clouds, but that's not a real structure, your mind is imposing a structure on what is actually random," explains Sarkar. "However, I don't think that is the case in this situation, I think it is a genuine physical chain of superclusters."
It isn't the first time that the model will have had to have been adapted.
If more structures like the Giant Arc and Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall are proven to exist, astronomers will be forced to rewrite – or at least revise – the standard model of cosmology.
"It takes a lot to make a paradigm shift, especially when people have their lives and careers invested in it, but ultimately with science we have to see who is right," says Sarkar.
Many galaxies in the early universe seem to be far more massive than expected. Researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) spotted galaxies with masses up to 100 billion times that of the sun that must have formed faster than current models can explain.
Ivo Labbé at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia and his colleagues measured the distances to six massive galaxies using a phenomenon called redshift. Objects that are further from Earth are moving away from us more quickly, which causes them to appear more red than nearby objects. They found that these galaxies were all around 30 billion light years away, meaning that they formed within 700 million years of the big bang big seed.
“I would have guessed that galaxies like this would not exist this early in the universe,” says Pieter van Dokkum at Yale University in Connecticut, part of the research team. That is because the galaxies all had masses at least 10 billion times the mass of the sun, with one weighing in at 100 billion solar masses. From models of galactic evolution, we would expect galaxies as young as these to be relatively low-mass, without many stars at all, and then grow over time until they became more like our own Milky Way galaxy, which has a mass of about 1.5 trillion solar masses.
While these young galaxies are massive, they are also surprisingly compact. “What could be going on is that the centres of galaxies form very early, earlier than we thought, then the rest of the galaxy builds up around them,” says van Dokkum. “I suspect that we’re looking at not finished products, but beginnings that happened very quickly.”
JWST has broken the record for most distant galaxy ever confirmed.
The exact mechanism behind this “fast-track” galaxy formation – or galactic core formation, as it may be – remains to be seen. “If all of this holds up with further investigation, then we are looking at having to rethink about some of the early history of galaxy formation,” says Andrew Pontzen at University College London.
Further investigation is crucial though, Pontzen and the researchers say. That follow-up will consist of detailed observations and analysis of the galaxies’ light spectra with JWST, which van Dokkum says could take about a year.
If these findings do hold up, it may be a problem for our understanding of the universe more generally, not just galaxy formation. “It was pointed out to us after we submitted the paper that there wasn't actually enough gas in the universe at that point to form [as many massive galaxies as this study suggests] – and that was a bit of a shocker,” says Labbé. “If you form these monsters, and they contain more stars than the available gas in the universe, that's a bit of a problem.” That may mean we have to take a close look at our models of the early universe and its contents.
Astronomers released new images this week of the Milky Way that offer an unprecedented look at an enormous slice of the galaxy, complete with star clusters, clouds of cosmic dust and the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*.
The images published on Wednesday, a product of the National Science Foundation's dark energy camera — which captured two years' worth of data via a telescope at the agency's observatory in Chile — are the second of their kind to come from the NSF's Dark Energy Survey. The project is essentially designed to observe and track the expansion of the universe. The survey revealed slightly more than 3.3 billion celestial objects across the Milky Way's galactic plane, marking the largest catalog so far produced by a single camera.
"This is quite a technical feat. Imagine a group photo of over three billion people and every single individual is recognizable!" said Debra Fischer, the division director of astronomical sciences at NSF, in a statement to the Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Astronomers will be poring over this detailed portrait of more than three billion stars in the Milky Way for decades to come. This is a fantastic example of what partnerships across federal agencies can achieve."
NSF's dark energy camera, an instrument attached to the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Vicuña, surveys the plane of the Milky Way at optical and near-infrared wavelengths from the vantage point of the southern sky. It produced more than 10 terabytes of data from 21,400 individual exposures during the latest outer-space survey, according to the federal agency.
The instrument's first collection of data was released in 2017. When taken together, data collected during the first and second rounds of the dark energy survey now account for 6.5% of the night sky, spanning 130 degrees in length, the NSF said. This is a gargantuan feat, since most objects in the Milky Way exist within the galaxy's disk — seen in images as the bright band stretching horizontally across the center — and some of its properties prevent astronomers from being able to see objects clearly. The "sheer number of stars" also poses challenges to observation efforts, according to the NSF, since they can overlap in images.
Merging data collected during a 2014 cosmic survey called PS1, which was operated by the Pan-STARRS 1 Science Consortium, with images compiled using the dark energy camera can provide an even broader view of the galaxy, explained Edward Schlafly, a researcher at the AURA-managed Space Telescope Science Institute, in a statement to the NSF.
"When combined with images from Pan-STARRS 1, DECaPS2 [the dark energy camera] completes a 360-degree panoramic view of the Milky Way's disk and additionally reaches much fainter stars," said Schlafly, who also co-authored a paper describing DECaPS2 published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement. "With this new survey, we can map the three-dimensional structure of the Milky Way's stars and dust in unprecedented detail."
Scientists, astronomers and members of the general public can explore the Dark Energy Survey's full dataset, including three-dimensional portraits of the galaxy, using an interactive online interface found here.
NASA has reportedly shed light on a new plan to build a successor to the James Webb Space Telescope,
The Habitable Worlds Observatory was announced Monday at the latest American Astronomical Society meeting, and its goal is to search for signs of life on habitable exoplanets.
Space.com said on Friday that the observatory will need a powerful coronograph, which is an instrument that allows scientists to study faint objects.
Mark Clampin, the director of NASA's astrophysics division, reportedly said that the agency would approach the project as if it faced a strict launch window, building on previous technology used for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope as well as Webb.
The Habitable World Observatory would be sent to a point – known as L2, or the second Lagrange Point – a million miles away from the Earth and opposite the sun.
"We're also going to plan this mission from day one to be serviceable," Clampin said, noting that in 10 to 15 years companies could do "straightforward robotic servicing" there.
"It gives us flexibility, because it means we don't necessarily have to hit all of the science goals the first time," he told attendees. Being able to service the observatory can extend the life of its mission.
The agency will reportedly turn to the commercial sector for the launch vehicle.
Notably, with this observatory, NASA is following through on the U.S. National Academies’ latest decadal survey, which called for NASA to revive the "Great Observatories" program.
According to Science, the report said that a six-meter telescope sensitive to ultraviolet, optical and near-infrared wavelengths could mark the start of that effort.
Scientists have unveiled the first-of-its-kind map of a magnetic field in space. Specifically, the team has charted the magnetic field of our Local Bubble in 3D. The new strategy for tracing magnetized structures in 3D will help address key questions about the influence of magnetic fields in the cosmos. Credit: T. O'Neill, A. Goodman, J. Soler, J. Han and C. Zucker.
Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have unveiled a first-of-its-kind map that could help answer decades-old questions about the origins of stars and the influences of magnetic fields in the cosmos.
The map reveals the likely magnetic field structure of the Local Bubble—a giant, 1,000-light-year-wide hollow in space surrounding our Sun. Like a hunk of Swiss cheese, our galaxy is full of these so-called superbubbles. The explosive supernova deaths of massive stars blow up these bubbles, and in the process, concentrate gas and dust—the fuel for making new stars—on the bubbles' outer surfaces. These thick surfaces accordingly serve as rich sites for subsequent star and planet formation.
"Space is full of these superbubbles that trigger the formation of new stars and planets and influence the overall shapes of galaxies," continues O'Neill, who graduated from UVA in December 2022 with a degree in astronomy-physics and statistics. "By learning more about the exact mechanics that drive the Local Bubble, in which the Sun lives today, we can learn more about the evolution and dynamics of superbubbles in general."
"From a basic physics standpoint, we've long known that magnetic fields must play important roles in many astrophysical phenomena," says Goodman, who wrote her Ph.D. thesis on the importance of cosmic magnetic fields thirty years ago. "But studying these magnetic fields has been notoriously difficult. The difficulty perpetually drives me away from magnetic field work, but then new observational tools, computational methods and enthusiastic colleagues tempt me back in. Today's computer simulations and all-sky surveys may just finally be good enough to start really incorporating magnetic fields into our broader picture of how the universe works, from the motions of tiny dust grains on up to the dynamics of galaxy clusters."
The Local Bubble has emerged as a hot topic in astrophysics by virtue of being the superbubble in which the Sun and our Solar System now find themselves. In 2020, the Local Bubble's 3D geometry was initially worked out by researchers based in Greece and France. Then in 2021, Zucker, now of Space Telescope Science Institute, Goodman, João Alves of the University of Vienna, and their team showed that the Local Bubble's surface is the source of all nearby, young stars.
Those studies, along with the new 3D magnetic field map, have relied on data in part from Gaia, a space-based observatory launched by the European Space Agency (ESA). While measuring the positions and motions of stars, Gaia was used to infer the location of cosmic dust as well, charting its local concentrations and showing the approximate boundaries of the Local Bubble.
These data were combined by O'Neill and colleagues with data from Planck, another ESA-led space telescope. Planck, which carried out an all-sky survey from 2009 to 2013, was primarily designed to observe the Big Bang's relic light. In the process, the spacecraft compiled measurements of microwave wavelength light from all over the sky. The researchers used a portion of Planck observations that trace emission from dust within the Milky Way relevant to helping map the Local Bubble's magnetic field.
Specifically, the observations of interest consisted of polarized light, meaning light that vibrates in a preferred direction. This polarization is produced by magnetically aligned dust particles in space. The alignment of the dust in turn speaks to the orientation of the magnetic field acting upon the dust particles.
Mapping the magnetic field lines in this way enabled researchers working on the Planck data to compile a 2D map of the magnetic field projected on to the sky as seen from Earth. In order to morph or "de-project" this map into three spatial dimensions, the researchers made two key assumptions: First, that most of the interstellar dust producing the polarization observed lies in the Local Bubble's surface, and second, that theories predicting that the magnetic field would be "swept up" into the bubble's surface as it expands are correct.
O'Neill subsequently carried out the complicated geometrical analysis needed to create the 3D magnetic field map during the summer CfA internship.
Goodman likens the research team to pioneering mapmakers who created some of the first maps of Earth.
"We've made some big assumptions to create this first 3D map of a magnetic field; it's by no means a perfect picture," she says. "As technology and our physical understanding improve, we will be able to improve the accuracy of our map and hopefully confirm what we are seeing."
The 3D view of magnetic whorls that emerged represent the magnetic field structure of our neighborhood superbubble, if the field was indeed swept-up into the bubble's surface, and if most of the polarization is produced there.
The research team further compared the resulting map to features along the Local Bubble's surface. Examples included the Per-Tau Shell, a giant spherical region of star formation, and the Orion molecular cloud complex, another prominent stellar nursery. Future studies will examine the associations between magnetic fields and these and other surface features.
"With this map, we can really start to probe the influences of magnetic fields on star formation in superbubbles," says Goodman. "And for that matter, get a better grasp on how these fields influence numerous other cosmic phenomena."
Because magnetic fields only affect the movement and orientation of charged particles in astrophysical environments, Goodman says there has been a tendency to set aside the fields' influence when building simulations and theories where gravity—which acts on all matter—is the primary force at play. Further discouraging its inclusion, magnetism can be a fiendishly complex force to model.
This omission of magnetic fields' influence, while understandable, often leaves out a key factor controlling motions of gas in the universe. These motions include gas flowing onto stars as they form, and flowing away from stars in powerful jets emanating from them as they gather matter into a planet-forming disk. Even if the effect of magnetic fields is miniscule from moment-to-moment in the low-density environments where stars form, given the millions-of-year timescales it takes to gather gas and turn it into stars, magnetic effects can plausibly add up to something substantial over time.
Goodman, O'Neill, and their colleagues look forward to finding out.
"I've had a great experience doing this research at CfA and assembling something new and exciting with this 3D magnetic map," says O'Neill. "I hope this map is a starting point for expanding our understanding of the superbubbles throughout our galaxy."
By peering into a well-known star cluster within the Small Magellanic Cloud, Webb’s NIRCam instrument has revealed many new pockets of star formation that have never been seen. Further, new structures appear in this image that provide a window into the stars feeding within.
NGC 346, one of the most dynamic star-forming regions in nearby galaxies, is full of mystery. Now, it is less mysterious with new findings from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
NCG 346 is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a dwarf galaxy close to our Milky Way. The SMC contains lower concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen or helium, which astronomers call metals, compared to the Milky Way. Since dust grains in space are composed mostly of metals, scientists expected there would be low amounts of dust, and that it would be hard to detect. New data from Webb reveals the opposite.
Astronomers probed this region because the conditions and amount of metals within the SMC resemble those seen in galaxies billions of years ago, during an era in the universe known as “cosmic noon,” when star formation was at its peak. Some 2 to 3 billion years after the big bang, galaxies were forming stars at a furious rate. The fireworks of star formation happening then still shape the galaxies we see around us today.
“A galaxy during cosmic noon wouldn’t have one NGC 346 like the Small Magellanic Cloud does; it would have thousands” of star-forming regions like this one, said Margaret Meixner, an astronomer at the Universities Space Research Association and principal investigator of the research team. “But even if NGC 346 is now the one and only massive cluster furiously forming stars in its galaxy, it offers us a great opportunity to probe conditions that were in place at cosmic noon.”
By observing protostars still in the process of forming, researchers can learn if the star formation process in the SMC is different from what we observe in our own Milky Way. Previous infrared studies of NGC 346 have focused on protostars heavier than about 5 to 8 times the mass of our Sun. “With Webb, we can probe down to lighter-weight protostars, as small as one tenth of our Sun, to see if their formation process is affected by the lower metal content,” said Olivia Jones of the United Kingdom Astronomy Technology Centre, Royal Observatory Edinburgh, a co-investigator on the program.
As stars form, they gather gas and dust, which can look like ribbons in Webb imagery, from the surrounding molecular cloud. The material collects into an accretion disk that feeds the central protostar. Astronomers have detected gas around protostars within NGC 346, but Webb’s near-infrared observations mark the first time they have also detected dust in these disks.
“We’re seeing the building blocks, not only of stars, but also potentially of planets,” said Guido De Marchi of the European Space Agency, a co-investigator on the research team. “And since the Small Magellanic Cloud has a similar environment to galaxies during cosmic noon, it’s possible that rocky planets could have formed earlier in the universe than we might have thought.”
The team also has spectroscopic observations from Webb’s NIRSpec instrument that they are continuing to analyze. These data are expected to provide new insights into the material accreting onto individual protostars, as well as the environment immediately surrounding the protostar.
These results are being presented Jan. 11 in a press conference at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The observations were obtained as part of program 1227.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
Galaxies shockingly similar to our own found near the beginning of the universe
The power of JWST to map galaxies at high resolution and at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble allows it look through dust and unveil the underlying structure and mass of distant galaxies. This can be seen in these two images of the galaxy EGS23205, seen as it was about 11 billion years ago. In the HST image (left, taken in the near-infrared filter), the galaxy is little more than a disk-shaped smudge obscured by dust and impacted by the glare of young stars, but in the corresponding JWST mid-infrared image (taken this past summer), it’s a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear stellar bar. Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin
AUSTIN, Texas — New images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal for the first time galaxies with stellar bars — elongated features of stars stretching from the centers of galaxies into their outer disks — at a time when the universe was a mere 25% of its present age. The finding of so-called barred galaxies, similar to our Milky Way, this early in the universe will require scientists to refine their theories of galaxy evolution.
Prior to JWST, images from the Hubble Space Telescope had never detected bars at such young epochs. In a Hubble image, one galaxy, EGS-23205, is little more than a disk-shaped smudge, but in the corresponding JWST image taken this past summer, it’s a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear stellar bar.
“I took one look at these data, and I said, ‘We are dropping everything else!’” said Shardha Jogee, professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin. “The bars hardly visible in Hubble data just popped out in the JWST image, showing the tremendous power of JWST to see the underlying structure in galaxies,” she said, describing data from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS), led by UT Austin professor, Steven Finkelstein.
The team identified another barred galaxy, EGS-24268, also from about 11 billion years ago, which makes two barred galaxies existing farther back in time than any previously discovered.
In an article accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, they highlight these two galaxies and show examples of four other barred galaxies from more than 8 billion years ago.
“For this study, we are looking at a new regime where no one had used this kind of data or done this kind of quantitative analysis before,” said Yuchen “Kay” Guo, a graduate student who led the analysis, “so everything is new. It’s like going into a forest that nobody has ever gone into.”
Bars play an important role in galaxy evolution by funneling gas into the central regions, boosting star formation.
“Bars solve the supply chain problem in galaxies,” Jogee said. “Just like we need to bring raw material from the harbor to inland factories that make new products, a bar powerfully transports gas into the central region where the gas is rapidly converted into new stars at a rate typically 10 to 100 times faster than in the rest of the galaxy.”
Bars also help to grow supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies by channeling the gas part of the way.
The discovery of bars during such early epochs shakes up galaxy evolution scenarios in several ways.
“This discovery of early bars means galaxy evolution models now have a new pathway via bars to accelerate the production of new stars at early epochs,” Jogee said.
And the very existence of these early bars challenges theoretical models as they need to get the galaxy physics right in order to predict the correct abundance of bars. The team will be testing different models in their next papers.
JWST can unveil structures in distant galaxies better than Hubble for two reasons: First, its larger mirror gives it more light-gathering ability, allowing it to see farther and with higher resolution. Second, it can see through dust better as it observes at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble.
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