The Four Ages Of The Universe

The Four Ages of the Universe -- What's Next? -- Discovery News

The Greek poet Hesiod described the Five Ages of Man in mythology.

They progress from the Golden Age, when people lived among the gods, through the warlike Bronze Age and on to the Heroic Age. His narrative ends with the Iron Age, a period of toil and misery for mankind.

Science has now replaced these mythologies. We are at the point where we look at the entire universe as a grand series of game-changing leaps toward our emergence as an intelligent species. It is an epic story more compelling than anything from creation mythology.

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The Building Blocks Of Future Planets Comes From Dying Stars

Dying Stars Are The Building Blocks Of Future Planets -- Red Orbit

Scientists report in a new study that they have solved a long-standing mystery about how dying stars release their precious matter, compounds that are an important ingredient in the building blocks of future planets.

Their discovery was made after observing the violent ends of three ‘red giants’ having their atmospheres ripped away by super winds containing dusty grains of silica, producing massive sandstorms in space. These grains were unexpectedly large in size for stellar wind particles, measuring nearly a micrometer across, the scientists said.

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My Comment: A zero sum universe.

Origins Of The Universe

Origins Of The Universe Exposed In Dazzling 3D Videos -- Live Science

Some of the greatest mysteries of the universe, such as how the first stars were formed, spring to life in a new series of awe-inspiring 3D videos that will be shown at museums and universities in California and New York.

The full-color, high-definition 3D animations depict a range of compelling cosmic scenes, including swirling veils of gas and dust from exploding stars, colorful galaxy clusters, dynamic star formation and enigmatic dark matter.

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My Comment: Awesome video.

New Clues To Galaxy Evolution

The region around Supernova 1987A as viewed by Herschel and Hubble. (Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/NASA-JPL/Caltech/UCL/STScI and the Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA/ESA)

Stardust in Our Backyard Provides New Clues to Galaxy Evolution -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (July 7, 2011) — New data from the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory have revealed surprisingly large amounts of cold dust in the remnant of the famous supernova SN1987A, which exploded 24 years ago in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy of the Milky Way. With this discovery, astronomers confirm that supernovae are able to produce significant quantities of dust over very short time scales. This may help explain previous observations, by Herschel and other observatories, of abundant dust in the early Universe as seen in high-redshift galaxies.

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Has The Universe's 'Missing Mass' Been Found?

This NASA illustration photo shows stars that are forming in a dwarf starburst galaxy located about 30 million light years from Earth. A 22-year-old Australian university student has solved a problem which has puzzled astrophysicists for decades, discovering part of the so-called "missing mass" of the universe during her summer break. (AFP/NASA/File)

Aussie Student Finds Universe's 'Missing Mass' -- Yahoo News/AFP

SYDNEY (AFP) – A 22-year-old Australian university student has solved a problem which has puzzled astrophysicists for decades, discovering part of the so-called "missing mass" of the universe during her summer break.

Undergraduate Amelia Fraser-McKelvie made the breakthrough during a holiday internship with a team at Monash University's School of Physics, locating the mystery material within vast structures called "filaments of galaxies".

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A Physicist Explains Why Parallel Universes May Exist

From NPR:

Our universe might be really, really big — but finite. Or it might be infinitely big.

Both cases, says physicist Brian Greene, are possibilities, but if the latter is true, so is another posit: There are only so many ways matter can arrange itself within that infinite universe. Eventually, matter has to repeat itself and arrange itself in similar ways. So if the universe is infinitely large, it is also home to infinite parallel universes.

Does that sound confusing? Try this:

Think of the universe like a deck of cards.

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My Comment: Reading articles like this one makes me realize how insignificant I am in this universe.

The Supernova's Secrets Cracked At Last?

Hank Childs / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

From Time Magazine:

Most stars end their lives in a whimper — our own sun will almost certainly be one of them — but the most massive stars go out with an impressive bang. When that happens, creating what's known as a Type II supernova, the associated blast of energy is so brilliant that it can briefly outshine an entire galaxy, give birth to ultra-dense neutron stars or black holes, and forge atoms so heavy that even the Big Bang wasn't powerful enough to create them. If supernovas didn't exist, neither would gold, silver, platinum or uranium. The last time a supernova went off close enough to earth to be visible without a telescope, back in 1987, it made the cover of TIME.

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The End of Time Is Nigh (In A Cosmic Sense, Anyhow)

The End of Time Ticking off the seconds until the end of time, some 3.7 billion years from now. Leo Reynolds via Flickr

From Popular Science:

The universe has only about 3.7 billion years in which to settle its affairs. At least, that’s the new assertion from a group of physicists who say that there is a 50 percent chance that time will end within that time frame. If the laws of physics as we understand them are in fact correct, then time must eventually end – and their math shows that both the sun and the Earth should still be around when that happens.

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Fundamental Constant Might Change Across Space

A team of astronomers have obtained new data by studying quasars, which are very distant galaxies hosting an active black hole in their center. As the light emitted by quasars travels throughout the cosmos, part of it is absorbed by a variety of atoms present in interstellar clouds, providing astronomers with a natural laboratory to test the laws of physics billions of light-years away from the Earth. Credit: Dr. Julian Berengut, UNSW, 2010.

From Space Daily:

New research suggests that the supposedly invariant fine-structure constant, which characterizes the strength of the electromagnetic
force, varies from place to place throughout the Universe. The finding could mean rethinking the fundaments of our current knowledge of physics.

These results will be presented tomorrow during the Joint European and National Astronomy Meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, and the scientific article has been submitted to the Physical Review Letters Journal.

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Weird 'Dark Flow' Seen Deeper Into The Universe Than Ever

From Space.com:

The puzzling migration of matter in deep space – dubbed "dark flow" – has been observed at farther distances than ever before, scientists have announced.

Distant galaxy clusters appear to be zooming through space at phenomenal speeds that surpass 1 million mph. The clusters were tracked to 2.5 billion light-years away – twice as far as earlier measurements.

This motion can't be explained by any known cosmic force, the researchers say. They suspect that whatever's tugging the matter may lie beyond our observable universe.

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Mysterious 'Dark Flow' May Be Tug Of Other Universe

The galaxy cluster 1E 0657-56 (known as the Bullet Cluster) lies 3.8 billion light-years away. It's one of hundreds that appear to be carried along by a mysterious cosmic flow. NASA/STScI/Magellan/U.Arizona/D.Clowe et al.

From Discovery News:

A structure, possibly another universe beyond the horizon of our own, appears to be pulling at our world.

The universe is not only expanding -- it's being swept along in the direction of constellations Centaurus and Hydra at a steady clip of one million miles per hour, pulled, perhaps, by the gravity of another universe.

Scientists have no idea what's tugging at the known world, except to say that whatever it is likely dates back to the fraction of the second between the universe's explosive birth 13.7 billion years ago and its inflation a split second later.

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Fake Dark Matter Could Show What Real Stuff Is Like

Can you see it yet? (Image: NASA, ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA)

From New Scientist:

The key to understanding dark matter is in our grasp – we've got something here on Earth that works just the same way.

Dark matter is hypothetical, invisible stuff that cosmologists invoke to explain why the universe appears to contain much less matter than their calculations say it should, and some think that it is made up of hypothetical particles called axions. Even though we haven't yet found a genuine axion, however, materials called topological insulators can be used to mimic them, say Shoucheng Zhang and colleagues at Stanford University, California. Magnetic fluctuations in the materials produce a field just like an axion field, his team found.

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First of Missing Primitive Stars Found

The newly discovered red giant star S1020549 dominates this artist's conception. The primitive star contains 6,000 times less heavy elements than our Sun, indicating that it formed very early in the Universe's history. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star's presence supports the theory that our galaxy underwent a "cannibal" phase, growing to its current size by swallowing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks. (Credit: David A. Aguilar / CfA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 4, 2010) — Astronomers have discovered a relic from the early universe -- a star that may have been among the second generation of stars to form after the Big Bang. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star has a remarkably similar chemical make-up to the Milky Way's oldest stars. Its presence supports the theory that our galaxy underwent a "cannibal" phase, growing to its current size by swallowing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks.

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Astronomers Discover Secret Of The Supernova

Supernovas are often used by astronomers as 'cosmic mile markers' to measure the expansion of the universe Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

From The Telegraph:

Nasa astronomers may have finally discovered what initially sparks a cosmic explosion, according to new research.

Scientists used Nasa's Chandra X-Ray laboratory to study supernovas in five nearby elliptical galaxies and the central region of the Andromeda galaxy, a spiral galaxy closest to our own, the Milky Way.

Marat Gilfanov of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany said: "It was a major embarrassment that we did not know how they worked. Now we are beginning to understand what lights the fuse of these explosions."

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Origin Of Cosmic Explosions Discovered

This is from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and shows evidence from Nasa's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Magellan telescopes suggesting a star has been torn apart by an intermediate mass black hole in a globular cluster. Photo: AFP/Getty

From The Telegraph:

Astronomers who have long used supernovas as cosmic markers to help measure the expansion of the universe now have an answer to the nagging question of what causes the massive stellar explosions.

"These are such critical objects in understanding the universe," said Marat Gilfanov of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, describing his team's study.

"It was a major embarrassment that we did not know how they worked. Now we are beginning to understand what lights the fuse of these explosions."

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Study Hints At Dark Matter Action

Image: Some scientists believe dark matter (in pink) is everywhere in the universe

From The BBC:

Researchers in the US say they have detected two signals which could possibly indicate the presence of particles of dark matter.

But the study in Science journal reports the statistical likelihood of a detection of dark matter as 23%.

Deep underground in a lab in Minnesota experiments to detect WIMPS, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particles have been going on since 2003.

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Universe Has Less Time Left Than Thought

Supermassive black holes are increasing the overall amount of entropy in the universe - and lessening the amount of time the universe has left. Credit: Wikimedia

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: The amount of entropy, or disorder, in the observable universe is 30 times higher than previous estimates, report Australian astronomers, suggesting the universe may not have as much time left as previously thought.

Supermassive black holes, dark matter and stars are some of the contributors to the overall entropy of the universe, which is a measure of the irreversible processes occurring throughout.

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Mysterious Band Of Particles Holds Clues To Solar System's Future

IBEX spacecraft's all-sky map reveals a bright ribbon of particles. Credit: NASA

From Cosmos:

HUNTSVILLE, USA: The ribbon of particles at the edge of the Solar System "shocked" NASA researchers when it was discovered last year. Now they say it is a reflection off a strong galactic magnetic field, and holds the clues to the future of the Solar System.

In October last year, NASA's IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft made the first all-sky maps of the heliosphere - the bubble of magnetism that springs from the Sun and surrounds our Solar System.

The result was a map bisected by a bright, winding ribbon of unknown origin. At the time, NASA researchers called it a "shocking result" and puzzled over its origin.

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Exotic Stars May Mimic big Bang

'Electroweak' stars may recreate the conditions of the big bang in an apple-sized region in their cores (Illustration: Casey Reed, courtesy of Penn State)

From New Scientist:

A new class of star may recreate the conditions of the big bang in its incredibly dense core.

Pack matter tightly enough and gravity will cause it to implode into a black hole. Neutron stars were once thought to be the densest form of matter that could resist such a collapse. More recently, physicists have argued that some supernovae may leave behind even denser quark stars, in which neutrons dissolve into their constituent quarks.

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Dark Matter 'Beach Ball' Unveiled

Image: The trail of matter left by an orbiting galaxy hints at the dark matter's shape

From The BBC:

The giant halo of dark matter that surrounds our galaxy is shaped like a flattened beach ball, researchers say.

It is the first definitive measure of the scope of the dark matter that makes up the majority of galaxies' masses.

The shape of this "dark matter halo" was inferred from the path of debris left behind as the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy slowly orbits the Milky Way.

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