Lead author of the study, PhD student Yuanming Wang. Photo: Louise Cooper

Astronomers have for the first time used distant galaxies as scintillating pins to locate and identify a piece of the Milky Ways missing matter.

For decades, scientists have been puzzled as to why they couldnt account for all the matter in the universe as predicted by theory. While most of the universes mass is thought to be mysterious dark matter and dark energy, 5 percent is normal matter that makes up stars, planets, asteroids, peanut butter and butterflies. This is known as baryonic matter.

However, direct measurement has only accounted for about half the expected baryonic matter.

Yuanming Wang, a doctoral candidate in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, has developed an ingenious method to help track down the missing matter. She has applied her technique to pinpoint a hitherto undetected stream of cold gas in the Milky Way about 10 light years from Earth. The cloud is about a trillion kilometres long and 10 billion kilometres wide but only weighing about the mass of our Moon.

The results, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, offer a promising way for scientists to track down the Milky Ways missing matter.

We suspect that much of the missing baryonic matter is in the form of cold gas clouds either in galaxies or between galaxies, said Ms Wang, who is pursuing her PhD at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy.

This gas is undetectable using conventional methods, as it emits no visible light of its own and is just too cold for detection via radio astronomy, she said.

What the astronomers did is look for radio sources in the distant background to see how they shimmered.

We found five twinkling radio sources on a giant line in the sky. Our analysis shows their light must have passed through the same cold clump of gas, Ms Wang said.

Just as visible light is distorted as it passes through our atmosphere to give stars their twinkle, when radio waves pass through matter, it also affects their brightness. It was this scintillation that Ms Wang and her colleagues detected.

Dr Artem Tuntsov, a co-author from Manly Astrophysics, said: We arent quite sure what the strange cloud is, but one possibility is that it could be a hydrogen snow cloud disrupted by a nearby star to form a long, thin clump of gas.

Hydrogen freezes at about minus 260 degrees and theorists have proposed that some of the universes missing baryonic matter could be locked up in these hydrogen snow clouds. They are almost impossible to detect directly.

However, we have now developed a method to identify such clumps of invisible cold gas using background galaxies as pins, Ms Wang said.

Ms Wangs supervisor, Professor Tara Murphy, said: This is a brilliant result for a young astronomer. We hope the methods trailblazed by Yuanming will allow us to detect more missing matter.

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Student astronomer finds galactic missing matter - News - The University of Sydney

Its almost staggering to think that before 1925 humanity knew very little about the composition of the stars. In fact, we would develop the theories of quantum mechanics, special and general relativity before we knew what lay beneath the surface of the Sun.

The first scientist to develop an accurate theory of the composition of the stars was Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. Born Cecilia Helena Payne in a small English market town in Buckinghamshire in 1900, in doing so she would also develop the first accurate picture of the abundance of the elements hydrogen and helium throughout the Universe.

But, these remarkable discoveries were not met with the appreciation one would expect. Payne-Gaposchkin would be discouraged from publishing her findings by a male contemporary. The setback would be just one more obstacle for Cecilia to overcome.

Facing the prejudice and misogyny that typified society in general, and science and academia in particular, during the early 20th Century, Payne-Gaposchkin would show a resolve that led to her becoming the worlds foremost expert on variable stars and enable her to lay the groundwork for astrophysics.

Through sheer grit and determination, she would redefine our understanding of the composition of the stars and the Universe in general. Not bad for a scientist whose lectures werent even listed in her Universitys course catalogue, who also had her wages by the same institute paid under equipment costs.

The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something. Nothing can compare with that experience.

Things could have been very different for Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. Her interest in science first manifested as a fascination with the natural world and botany. A hint towards her future as an astronomer and astrophysicist shone through when Cecilia was just ten and she watched, transfixed, as a meteor traversed the night sky.

Paynes interest in nature was encouraged by her mother, Emma Leonora Helena Payne, after her father Edward passed away when she was just four years old. The death of her father, who drowned in a canal under questionable circumstances, left young Cecilia devastated and her mother to raise the future astronomer and her two siblings alone.

Emma strongly encouraged the education of her three children, of which Cecilia was the eldest, introducing them to literature at an early age. Cecilias traits as a scientist would be further bolstered by her experience at her first school ran by Elizabeth Edwards which strongly encouraged the memorization of facts and figures.

Beyond this, Ms Edwards would actively teach her pupils, including the girls, geometry and algebra. Young Cecilia revelled in the solving of quadratic equations.

My mother had told me of the Riviera-trapdoor spiders and mimosa and orchids, and I was dazzled by a flash of recognition. For the first time, I knew the leaping of the heart, the sudden enlightenment, that were to become my passion.

At the age of twelve, Cecilia was forced to move schools when her family relocated from Wendover to London. Her new school, St Marys College, Paddington, could not have been less like Ms Edwards. Like her female contemporaries, at the Church of England school with its strong emphasis on religion and traditional values Cecilia would be offered little in the way of educational stimulation and even less encouragement to embark on a career in science.

In fact, it was here that a male teacher would confidently tell Payne-Gaposchkin she would never achieve a career in science. A prediction that may well go down in history as one of the worst ever made by an educator.

Fortunately, at the age of 17, Payne-Gaposchkin would be asked to transfer to St. Pauls Girls School in London. Though the move initially troubled her, it is here where her teachers would allow Cecilia to study elements of physics such as mechanics, dynamics, electricity and magnetism, light, and thermodynamics.

At St. Pauls she was encouraged by her teachers to pursue science, enabling her to obtain a scholarship to Newnham College in 1919 where she would study the slightly odd but eclectic mix of botany, chemistry, and astronomy.

Attending the college, part of Cambridge University, Payne-Gaposchkin soon became bored with botany. Her tutors taught the subject stiffly and rigidly, relaying information she already knew, thus providing Cecilia with little stimulation. She recalled, in particular, an incident in which she discovered a group of desmids whilst studying algae under a microscope. Asking her tutor for help in identifying the organisms, he simply responded that it was not within the remit of her studies so she should just ignore it.

Her decision to switch to astronomy as her major was solidified when she attended a lecture given by Cambridges renowned astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington.

Eddington had found fame journeying to the island of Prncipe off the west coast of Africa to examine a solar eclipse that would provide verification for Einsteins theory of general relativity. The lecture was on the same subject and for Payne, it ignited her desire to study nature beyond the surface of our planet.

Cecilia approached Eddington asking for a research project. He set her the problem of integrating the properties of a model star, starting from initial conditions at the centre and working outward.

The problem haunted me day and night. I recall a vivid dream that I was at the center of Betelgeuse, and that, as seen from there, the solution was perfectly plain; but it did not seem so in the light of day.

Disappointed at not being able to solve the problem she took her calculations to Eddington incomplete. She need not have worried. Eddington revealed to her with a jovial smile that he had not been able to solve the conumdrum either and had spent years trying!

Do not undertake a scientific career in quest of fame or money. There are easier and better ways to reach them. Undertake it only if nothing else will satisfy you; for nothing else is probably what you will receive. Your reward will be the widening of the horizon as you climb. And if you achieve that reward you will ask no other.

Eddington was just taken with Payne-Gaposchkin as she was with astronomy, seeing great potential in the young woman. Unfortunately, transferring to the class of Ernest Rutherford, Cecilia discovered that not all of Eddingtons colleagues would be as supportive.

Rutherford, who would go onto perform experiments that would reveal the structure of the atom, was extremely cruel to Paynethe only woman in his classencouraging the other, exclusively male, students to mock and taunt her, something they did with relish.

Payne-Gaposchkin weathered the storm. She had already experienced what it was like to exist in a male-dominated world and had already overcome too much to fold under mere mockery.

And the indignities would nor end there. Despite completing her coursework, women were forbidden to obtain degrees in the United Kingdom in 1923. Thus Payne-Gaposchkin would have no paperwork to verify her academic achievements. Her chances of obtaining a masters degree or PhD in the UK were slim to none.

It was upon attending a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society that Cecilias options improved markedly. Its new director Harlow Shipley regaled Payne-Gaposchkin with tales of the opportunities that would await her were she to relocate across the Atlantic to the United States.

Cecilia needed little further encouragement. She was awarded the Pickering Fellowship through Harvard College, taking the small financial aid offered by the only scholarship exclusively for women at the time and using it to move to America. Her association with Havard would continue for many years and prove to be extremely fruitful. Indeed, she would come to consider Boston her second home.

Whilst working under the auspices of Shapely at Harvard College Observatory she continued her studies, finalising what would go on to be her doctoral thesisStellar Atmospheres.

In the work, Payne-Gaposchkin would be the first person to suggest that hydrogen was the most abundant element in the universe and the primary constituent of stars. At that time scientists had believed that the Sun and other stars had a chemical composition similar to that of the Earths crust. American physicist Henry Norris Russell has pioneered the idea that if earths temperature was raised to that of the Suns it would have a spectral signature the same as our star.

Payne-Gaposchkins finding bucked this idea and arose from the fact she had a much better understanding of atomic spectra than her contemporaries. Unfortunately, American Russell strongly disagreed with her conclusion and persuaded her to leave it out of her thesis.

Payne later reflected on her regret with regards to being persuaded not to publish her findings. It was not a mistake that Payne would never be convinced to make again.

I was to blame for not having pressed my point. I had given in to Authority when I believed I was right. That is another example of How Not To Do Research. I note it here as a warning to the young. If you are sure of your facts, you should defend your position.

For what it is worth, Russell too would go on to regret his decision to pressure Cecilia. Russell published a 1929 paper that credited Cecilia as Paynes earlier work and her discoveries.

It must be one of the most heinous injustices in the history of astronomy that Russell is still to this day often wrongly credited with Payne-Gaposchkins discovery.

Russian-American astronomerOtto Struve later recognised the genius of Payne-Gaposchkins thesis, describing it as the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy.

The reward of the old scientist is the sense of having seen a vague sketch grow into a masterly landscape.

In 1934 on a visit to Germany for an astronomy meeting Cecilia met a young Russian astronomer, Sergei Gaposchkin. The astronomer was an exile from his country of birth due to his political convictions, and Cecilia found his struggles to be an echo of her own. She was determined to help Sergei find a secure and consistent place to practice science.

Indeed, obtaining Sergei a visa as a stateless person, Cecilia found him a research position at Harvard. To the surprise of their colleagues, the two were married in late 1934. Initial doubts that the marriage wouldnt last were ill-founded.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin and Sergei Gaposchkin would go on to have three children and remained married until her death in 1979. The two would also form a solid partnership in research, authoring several papers and books together. They even started their own farmthough its undeniable that Sergei enjoyed the life of a farmer much more than Cecilia did.

The discovery of the abundances of hydrogen and helium in the Universe and the composition of the stars would not be Payne-Gaposchkins only substantial contribution to astronomy and the burgeoning field of astrophysics.

Following the completion of her doctorate, Payne-Gaposchkin would begin to study high luminosity stars in order to understand the composition of the Milky Way. The period marked the beginning of Payne-Gaposchkins fascination with variable starsstars which display periodic brightness fluctuations over radically different periods of time and novae. This specialization led to the book Stars of High Luminosity, published in 1930.

Cecilia and Sergei undertook an audacious investigation of variable stars, during the 30s and 40s, they would make nearly 1.3 million observations of variable stars, with Payne-Gaposchkins mind for memorizing facts and figures making her almost a walking compendium of such objects. One of their papers published in 1938 would be the go-to tome on variable stars for decades.

During the 1960s, Cecilia and Sergei would shift their attention to the small irregular galaxies situated by the Milky Waythe Magellanic Cloudsand the variable stars located within it. They would make another staggering contribution to astronomy during this study, cataloguing over 2 million visual estimates of these stars magnitudes.

In 1956, Payne-Gaposchkin would finally be awarded the title of professor, making her the first woman in Harvards history to receive such an accolade. She would also be made the chair of a department at Harvard, also the first woman to be recognised in this way. Whilst no one could disagree that the accolade was insultingly well overdue, it was a small positive step in the right direction, finally opening the door for female professors across the US.

Payne-Gaposchkins most dramatic scientific contribution was the discovery that hydrogen is millions of times more abundant than any other element in the universe. Every high school student knows thatNewtondiscovered gravity, that Darwin discovered evolution, even thatEinsteindiscovered relativity. But when it comes to the composition of our universe, the textbooks simply say that the most prevalent element in the universe is hydrogen. And no one ever wonders how we know

Despite waiting so long to be named a professor, Payne-Gadoschkins life would not be short on accolades. In 1934, the American Astronomical Society recognized her significant contribution to astronomy by awarding her Annie J. Cannon Prize.

In 1936 she would become a member of the American Philosophical Society, and the 1940s and 1950s marked the award of several honorary doctorates, that should not be viewed as merely consolation prizes for the actual doctorate that she had strived for and had been denied her.

Continuing her trailblazing progress for women in the sciences, in 1976 she would become the first woman to receive the Henry Russell Prize from the American Astronomical Society. The astronomer, who would publish over 150 papers and several books during her career, would receive a further honour in 1977 when the astroid 1974 CAoccupying the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Marswas renamed 2039 Payne-Gaposchkin.

After her semi-retirement in 1966, Payne-Gaposchkin would continue to lecture inspiring the next generation of astronomers. Her final academic paper was published in 1977, just months before her death in December of that year.

During the course of her life, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin would change our understanding of the Universe in a way that was no less profound than her colleagues in physics did. Without doubt, her name, therefore, should be listed alongside luminaries such as Copernicus, Newton, and Einstein.

Yet, because of her gender, her genius was barely recognised during her lifetime and her name is still sadly omitted from many textbooks and is nowhere near as prominent as the names of her male counterparts or as her achievements demand.

It is abundantly clear, by becoming the first person to known the true composition of the universe, her star shines just as bright if not brighter as any other scientist. And without her, we still may not know why.

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The Woman Who Knew The Stars - ZME Science

YOUNGSTOWN A Youngstown State University professor of astronomy has a significant role in creating the largest map of the cosmos ever.

John Feldmeier is the chief imaging scientist for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment, which recently began full scientific operations.

HETDEX is a large international consortium that involves about 100 scientists; Feldmeier has been part of the collaboration since 2011.

The experiment will create a three-dimensional map of 2.5 million galaxies to help astronomers understand how and why the expansion of the universe is speeding up over time.

Feldmeier earned a doctorate from Penn State University and joined the YSU faculty in 2006. He said he has been working on the project for 10 years.

The project is a large project made up of hundreds of people, Feldmeier said. We (he and his students) only do a certain piece but its very important.

That piece is imaging the data found from other portions of the project. Feldmeiers focus is to match up the other data to map the findings. Feldmeier likened the project to chocolate and peanut butter both great alone but significantly better when combined.

Its combining (the parts) that make the data so amazing, he said.

Three years into its quest to reveal the nature of dark energy, HETDEX is on track to complete the largest map of the cosmos ever. The team will create a three-dimensional map of 2.5 million galaxies that will help astronomers understand how and why the expansion of the universe is speeding up over time.

HETDEX represents the coming together of many astronomers and institutions to conduct the first major study of how dark energy changes over time, said Taft Armandroff, director of The University of Texas at Austins McDonald Observatory, in a news release.

The survey began in January 2017 on the 10-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory. Today, the survey is 38 percent complete.

Were over a third of the way through our program now, and we have this fantastic data set that were going to use to measure the dark-energy evolution, astronomer Karl Gebhardt said.

Were getting to the point in the project where its getting very exciting, Feldmeier said.

The survey works by aiming the telescope at two regions of the sky near the Big Dipper and Orion. For each pointing, the telescope records around 32,000 spectra, capturing the cosmic fingerprint of the light from every object within the telescopes field of view.

Its actually a little mind-blowing, how much information is captured in this, team member Gary Hill said.

These spectra are recorded via 32,000 optical fibers that feed into more than 100 instruments working together as one. This assembly is called VIRUS, the Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph. Its a massive machine made up of dozens of copies of an instrument working together for efficiency. VIRUS was designed and built especially for HETDEX.

This makes VIRUS one of the most advanced astronomical instruments in the world.

To make the map needed for the dark-energy project, participants are combing through a billion spectra looking for examples of a specific type of galaxy. These galaxies range in distances from 10 billion to 11.7 billion light-years away, so they represent an epoch when the universe was only a few billion years old.

The HETDEX team expects to complete its observations by December 2023.

The project is led by The University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory and Department of Astronomy, with participation from Penn State University; Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich; the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics; the Institute for Astrophysics, Gottingen; the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics, Potsdam; Texas A&M University; The University of Oxford; the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics; The University of Tokyo; and the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

In addition to institutional support, HETDEX is funded by the National Science Foundation, the state of Texas, the U.S. Air Force and private individuals and foundations.

news@tribtoday.com

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Cosmos mapping project tied to YSU | News, Sports, Jobs - Youngstown Vindicator

On Oct. 21, 2020, the Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow (PROSWIFT) Act was signed into law. This act culminates a multiyear bipartisan effort championed by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), and Reps. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) and Mo Brooks (R-Ala.). It directs government agencies (including NOAA, NASA, NSF, and the Department of Defense), as well as academia, the commercial sector, and international partners, to coordinate efforts to predict space weather events and mitigate their impact. The PROSWIFT Act is a major step forward in developing a coordinated national space weather plan. But to fully realize the objectives in this authorizing legislation, and so protect humanity from potentially devastating space weather events, will require a commensurate appropriation of funds to ensure the necessary advances in our understanding of the sun.

Our world is increasingly and irrevocably reliant on a complex system of ground-based and space-based technology infrastructure. Yet this infrastructure exists on a planet immersed in a cloud of million-degree gas originating at the sun, and so is at a constant threat from the effects of space weather. Space weather consists of streams of energetic particles, intense ultraviolet and x-ray radiation, and magnetic disturbances, constantly bombarding our planet. Like terrestrial weather, its usually mild but can occasionally turn nasty. A rare, large space weather event releases more energy than 10,000 Category 5 hurricanes. It can send billions of tons of material hurtling through space at millions of miles per hour sometimes right at Earth.

The effects of such a drastic disturbance in the near-Earth space environment include billions of dollars of damage to our communications and power distribution architectures; interruption of GPS services; radiation exposure for passengers and crew on aircraft; and deadly radiation doses for astronauts in Earth orbit and on the moon. In 1989, a geomagnetic space weather storm unleashed by the sun caused much of the Canadian province of Quebec to lose electric power for hours. In 2012, a solar eruption that would have wreaked economic havoc 20 times worse than Hurricane Katrina missed Earth by just a week. Think of the catastrophe of such an event in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic, as unprecedented numbers of people depend on the very technologies that are at risk from space weather to enable remote learning, work, and health treatment.

The PROSWIFT Act places considerable emphasis on the importance of research into the underlying causes of space weather. Just like hurricane prediction requires satellite imagery and in situ measurements coupled with an understanding of atmospheric dynamics, space weather prediction relies on observations from ground- and space-based observatories coupled with a deep understanding of the physics of the sun and near-Earth space. This fundamental science discipline heliophysics is interwoven with all things space: planetary science, astrophysics, and Earth science.

Heliophysics is many exciting things. Its amazing photographs of auroral displays, from the ground and from space. Its the discovery of the mysterious STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancements) by amateur citizen scientists. Its using ground-based solar telescopes, like NSFs Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, to probe the dynamics of the sun. Its exploring the intense radiation belts around Earth with NASAs Van Allen Probes. Its developing advanced computer simulations of the near-Earth, solar, and interplanetary space environments. And its launching NASAs Parker Solar Probe to touch the atmosphere of our sun.

The passage of the PROSWIFT Act is an important milestone for science and for our nations security. It summons the United States to muster its considerable resources to lead and protect society from potentially devastating space weather events. On behalf of the membership of the scientific societies we represent the Space Physics and Aeronomy Section of the American Geophysical Union and the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society we call upon the White House Office of Management and Budget and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to request, and Congress to support, robust funding levels for heliophysics research and space weather infrastructure. As this pandemic has highlighted, our personal lives, national security, and economy are all at risk without such an investment.

Dr. Ian Cohen, Senior Professional Staff at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and Chair of the AGU Space Physics and Aeronomy Section Advocacy Committee

Dr. Gordon Emslie, Professor of Physics & Astronomy, Western Kentucky University, and Chair of the AAS Solar Physics Division Public Policy Committee

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Op-ed | Space weather bill will fizzle without funding - SpaceNews

A team of astronomers made a blockbuster claim in the fall. They said they had discovered compelling evidence pointing to life floating in the clouds of Venus.

If true, that would be stunning. People have long gazed into the cosmos and wondered whether something is alive out there. For an affirmative answer to pop up on the planet in the orbit next to Earths would suggest that life is not rare in the universe, but commonplace.

The astronomers, led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in Wales, could not see any microscopic Venusians with their telescopes on Earth. Rather, in a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, they reported the detection of a molecule called phosphine and said they could come up with no plausible explanation for how it could form there except as the waste product of microbes.

Five months later, after unexpected twists and nagging doubts, scientists are not quite sure what to make of the data and what it might mean. It might spur a renaissance in the study of Venus, which has largely been overlooked for decades. It could point to exotic volcanism and new geological puzzles. It could indeed be aliens. Or it could be nothing at all.

Dr. Greaves and her colleagues remain certain about their findings even as they have lowered their estimates of how much phosphine they think is there. I am very confident there is phosphine in the clouds, Dr. Greaves said.

Clara Sousa-Silva, a research scientist at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and one of the authors of the Nature Astronomy paper, said, I think the team in general still feels pretty confident that its phosphine, that the signal is real and that there are no real abiotic explanations.

But, Dr. Sousa-Silva added, theres a lot of uncertainty in all of us.

In the wider circle of planetary scientists, many are skeptical, if not disbelieving. Some think that the signal is just a wiggle of noise, or that it could be explained by sulfur dioxide, a chemical known to be in the Venus atmosphere. For them, there is so far no persuasive evidence of phosphine let alone microbes that would make it at all.

Whatever it is, its going to be faint, said Ignas Snellen, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands who is among the skeptics. If the signal is faint, he said, its not clear whether its real, and, if its real, whether its going to be phosphine or not.

The debate could linger, unresolved, for years, much like past disputed claims for evidence of life on Mars.

When the observation came out, I was like, Oh, thats interesting, said Martha S. Gilmore, a professor of geology at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Dr. Gilmore is the principal investigator of a study that has proposed to NASA an ambitious flagship robotic mission to Venus that would include an airship flying through the clouds for 60 days.

I think were skeptical, Dr. Gilmore said. But I dont personally feel yet that we want to throw out this observation at all.

The surface of Venus today is a hellish place where temperatures roast well over 800 degrees Fahrenheit. But early in the history of the solar system, it could have been much more like Earth today, with oceans and a moderate climate. In this early era, Mars, which is now cold and dry, also appears to have had water flowing across its surface.

Potentially, four billion years ago, we had habitable environments on Venus, Earth and Mars all three of them, said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a professor at the Technical University Berlin in Germany. And we know that there is still a viable, thriving biosphere on our planet. So on Venus, it got too hot. On Mars, it got too cold.

But life, once it arises, seems to stubbornly hold on, surviving in harsh environs. You could have potentially, in environmental niches, microbial life hanging on, Dr. Schulze-Makuch said.

For Mars, some scientists think it is possible that life persists today underground, in the rocks. But the subsurface of Venus is too hot, said Dr. Schulze-Makuch, who two decades ago scrutinized whether any parts of that planet were still habitable.

Instead, he said, Venusian life could have moved up, to the clouds. Thirty miles up are short-sleeve temperatures about 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Microbes in that part of the atmosphere would stay aloft at that altitude for several months, more than long enough to reproduce and maintain a viable population.

But even the clouds are not a serene, benign place. They are filled with droplets of sulfuric acid and bathed in ultraviolet radiation from the sun. And it is dry, with only smidgens of water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it.

Still, if that was the environment that Venus microbes had to survive in, it was possible that they had evolved to do just that.

Phosphine is a simple molecule a pyramid of three atoms of hydrogen attached to one phosphorus atom. But it takes considerable energy to push the atoms together, and conditions for such chemical reactions do not seem to exist in the atmosphere of Venus.

Phosphine could be created in the heat and crushing pressure of the interior of Venus. Even with the lower amounts of phosphine that Dr. Greavess group now estimates, it would be unexpected and surprising if Venuss volcanic eruptions turned out to be so violently voluminous that they spewed out enough phosphine to be detected where Dr. Greavess team said it was: in the clouds, more than 30 miles up.

We cant easily rule in or out volcanism to explain this new, lower phosphine abundance, said Paul Byrne, a professor of planetary science at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who pointed to the many unknowns about the planet and its geological system. Its probably not volcanism. But we cant say for sure.

On Earth, phosphine is produced by microbes that thrive without oxygen. It is found in our intestines, in the feces of badgers and penguins, and in some deep sea worms.

In 2017, Dr. Greaves found indications of phosphine using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii. Different molecules absorb and emit specific wavelengths of light, and these form a fingerprint that enables scientists to identify them from far away. The measurements found what scientists call an absorption line at a wavelength that corresponded to phosphine. They calculated that there were 20 parts per billion of phosphine in that part of Venuss air.

Follow-up observations in 2019 used the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA, a radio telescope in Chile that consists of 66 antennas. Those again turned up the same dark line corresponding to phosphine, although at lower concentrations, about 10 parts per billion.

But other scientists like Dr. Snellen did not find the analysis by the scientists, and the suggestions of a biological source, nearly as convincing.

The ALMA data, which recorded the brightness of light from Venus over a range of wavelengths, contained many wiggles and the one corresponding to phosphine was not particularly larger than any of the others. Dr. Greaves and her colleagues used a technique called polynomial fitting to subtract out what they believed was noise and pull out the phosphine signal. The technique is common, but they also used a polynomial with an unusually large number of variables 12.

That, critics said, could generate a false signal seeing something when there was nothing there.

If your signal is not stronger than your noise, then you just cannot succeed, Dr. Snellen said.

Other scientists contend that even if there was a signal, it was much more likely to come from sulfur dioxide, which absorbs light at nearly the same wavelength.

Dr. Greaves argued that the critics did not understand the precautions taken to rule out fake lines. She said the specific shape of the absorption line was too narrow to match that of sulfur dioxide.

As the scientists debated back and forth, there was an unexpected surprise in October: the ALMA observatory had provided incorrectly calibrated data to Dr. Greaves, and it contained spurious noise. For weeks, the Venus researchers waited in limbo.

When the reprocessed ALMA data became available in November, the noisy wiggles around the phosphine absorption line were diminished, but there now also appeared to be less phosphine about 1 part per billion over all, with places that might be as high as 5 parts per billion.

The line weve got now is much nicer looking, Dr. Greaves said, even though it was not as pronounced. But it is what it is. We now have a better result.

Bryan Butler, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, N.M., said he and others had looked at the same ALMA data, both the original and reprocessed versions, and failed to see any sign of phosphine.

They claim they still see it, and we still claim that its not there, Dr. Butler said. From a purely data scientists viewpoint, nobody is backing them up because nobodys been able to reproduce their results.

A new paper by a team of astronomers, led by Victoria S. Meadows at the University of Washington, says that a more detailed model of Venuss atmosphere developed in the 1990s shows that phosphine in the cloud layer would not even create an absorption line detectable from Earth. The team found that the phosphine would have to be some 15 miles higher in order to absorb the light. The research will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

What were showing is that the gas above basically doesnt cool to the point that it can absorb until it gets to about 75 or 80 kilometers, Dr. Meadows said. Which is well above the cloud deck.

Other scientists delved into older observations of Venus to see whether there might be signs of phosphine hidden there.

In 1978, a NASA spacecraft, Pioneer Venus, dropped four probes in the planets atmosphere. One of them even continued sending back data from the surface for more than an hour after impact.

Going back through the Pioneer Venus data, Rakesh Mogul, a professor of chemistry at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona, spotted telltale signs for the element phosphorous in Venuss clouds. There is a chemical, most likely a gas, that contains phosphorus, Dr. Mogul said. The data does support the presence of phosphine. Its not the highest amounts, but its there.

However, scientists looking at data from Venus Express, a European Space Agency spacecraft that orbited Venus from 2006 to 2014, came up empty for phosphine.

So did astronomers including Dr. Greaves and Dr. Sousa-Silva who were trying to identify a different absorption line of phosphine in infrared observations from a NASA telescope in Hawaii.

Dr. Greaves said the Venus Express and the infrared observations in Hawaii did not peer as deeply into the Venus atmosphere, and thus it should not be a surprise that they did not detect phosphine.

The levels of phosphine, if it is there, could also be changing over time.

That would make it more difficult to come up with definitive answers, much like the enduring mystery of methane on Mars. More than a decade ago, telescopes on Earth and an orbiting European spacecraft reported the presence of methane in the Martian air. On Earth, most methane is produced by living organisms, but it can also be produced in hydrothermal systems without any biology involved.

But the methane readings were faint, and then subsequent observations failed to confirm it. Perhaps the readings were misinterpreted noise. When NASAs Curiosity rover arrived on Mars in 2012, it carried an instrument that could measure minute amounts of methane. The scientists looked and looked and measured none.

But then, Curiosity did detect a burst of methane that persisted for weeks before dissipating. Later, it detected an even stronger outburst, but then it was gone again.

Mars scientists remain at a loss as to the quick appearance and disappearance of the methane.

The Venus phosphine debate will remain a stalemate until there are further observations. But the coronavirus pandemic shut down ALMA as well as NASAs Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, a telescope aboard a modified 747 that can study infrared light from high in Earths atmosphere (The plane resumes flying this month).

The balloon that would be part of Dr. Gilmores flagship Venus mission could resolve the uncertainties by directly collecting samples of air. It would be able to find not only the phosphine but also carbon-based molecules of any microbes.

We really need to be in the clouds, Dr. Gilmore, of Wesleyan University, said, because that is the habitat that is hypothesized to support life.

Planetary scientists are in the process of putting together their once-a-decade recommendations to NASA about their priorities. There are many intriguing places to study, and NASA usually undertakes only one costly flagship mission at a time. A flagship mission also takes longer to build and one for Venus would not be scheduled to launch until 2031 at the earliest.

NASA is also considering a couple of smaller Venus missions for its Discovery program, a competition in which scientists propose missions that fit under a $500 million cost cap.

One of them, DAVINCI+, would be a 21st century version of one of the Pioneer Venus probes. It would be able to look for phosphine, although just at one place and one-time.

The second proposal, VERITAS, would send an orbiter that would produce high-resolution images of the surface. Although it does not include a phosphine-detecting instrument, one could be added.

And at least one private company, Rocket Lab, wants to send a small probe to study Venus in the coming years.

Further observations are warranted, said Dr. Butler of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Theres nothing you can point to that says, Oh, yeah, we absolutely see phosphine on Venus. But, you know, its tantalizing.

But he also said, I would not bet my life savings that its not there.

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Life on Venus? The Picture Gets Cloudier - The New York Times

Measurements of infinity are impossible, or at least impossible according to the usual notions of size. If you cut infinity in half, each half is still infinite. In an imaginary scenario known as Hilberts grand hotel, if a weary traveler arrives at a fully occupied hotel of infinite size, no problem. You simply move the guest in room 1 into room 2, the guest in room 2 into room 3, and so on ad infinitum. In the process, youve accommodated all the previous guests and freed up room 1 for the new arrival. Theres always room at the infinity hotel.

We can play games with infinity, but we cannot visualize it. By contrast, we can visualize flying horses. Weve seen horses, and weve seen birds, so we can mentally implant wings on a horse and send it aloft. Not so with infinity. Its unvisualizability is part of its mystique.

One of the first recorded conceptions of infinity seems to have occurred around 600 B.C., when the Greek philosopher Anaximander used the word apeiron, meaning unbounded, or limitless. For Anaximander, the Earth and the heavens and all material things were caused by the infinite, although infinity itself was not a material substance. About the same time, the Chinese employed the word wuji, meaning boundless, and wuqiong, meaning endless, and believed that the infinite was very close to nothingness. In Chinese thought, being and nonbeing, like yin and yang, are in harmony with each otherthus the kinship of infinity and nothingness. A few centuries later, Aristotle argued that infinity does not actually exist, though he conceded something he called potential infinity. The whole numbers are an example. For any number, you can always create a bigger number by adding 1 to it. This process can continue as long as your stamina holds out, but you can never get to infinity.

Read: We need a new word for infinite spaces

Indeed, one of the many intriguing properties of infinity is that you cant get there from here. Infinity is not simply more and more of the finite. It seems to be of a completely different nature, although pieces of it may appear finite, such as large numbers or large volumes of space. Infinity is a thing unto itself. Everything we see and experience has limits, boundaries, tangibilities. Not so with infinity. For similar reasons, St. Augustine, Baruch Spinoza, and other theological thinkers have associated infinity with God: the unlimited power of God, the unlimited knowledge of God, the unboundedness of God. God is everywhere, and in all things, inasmuch as He is boundless and infinite, said Thomas Aquinas. Beyond the religious sphere of the immaterial world, physicists believe that there might be infinite things in the material world as well. But this belief can never be proved. You cant get there from here. Most of us have our first glimmerings of infinity as children, when we look up at the night sky for the first time. Or when we go to sea, out of sight of land, and gaze upon the ocean extending on and on until it meets the horizon. But these are only glimmerings, like counting to a few thousand in Aristotles potential infinity. Were overwhelmed. But we havent even come close.

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How Andrei Linde Redefined the Universe - The Atlantic

The Maine Township High School Dist. 207 Board of Education honored three students as 207s Best in the area of academic achievement during the Feb. 1 board of education meeting. The students recognized were Ozair Bashir from Maine West, Eric Biedke from Maine South and Ashutosh Kumar from Maine East.

OZAIR OZZIE BASHIR: Bashir takes a rigorous course of study at Maine West a theme during his four years at the school. His current course load includes AP Calculus, AP Chemistry, AP Spanish and AP U.S. Government and Politics.

He is a senior leader, a Link Crew leader, an officer in the Principals Leadership Team, a COACH tutor, and a member of the math, Spanish, science, English and national honor societies. He also is a volunteer at the Des Plaines Public Library.

He is thankful for all of the positive relationships he has built during his time at the school and is looking at psychiatry as a career because he realizes people dont always have the ready access to the help they need.

When Ozzie walks into a room he seems surrounded by an aura of positivity, a glowing sense of friendliness thats contagious, said his English teacher Charles Gray.

Ozzie is one of the most kind and humble students I have had the pleasure to work with, said science teacher Aggie Piechocinski.

ERIC BIEDKE: Biedke is one of the most impressive students at Maine South who is at the top of his class academically and has taken advantage of a wide-range of course offerings. He enjoys math, physics and band, among all of his classes. He is looking toward a career in astrophysics.

He has been a member of the band, where he plays trombone, as well as the Astronomy Club, Math Team, German Club, Science National Honor Society, stage band for V-show and jazz band. Last year, he made the District VII band. He also is a member of the peer tutoring network, which offers online support for our students in a virtual format. In addition, hes an active member of his church where he has traveled to South Carolina, Tennessee and upstate New York on mission trips.

He is my only student to ever take the senior level class Space Science as a sophomore just for fun, said Bob Tortorelli, Biedkes counselor. He is really a gifted problem solver who has a knack for thoroughly assessing a challenge before considering numerous avenues to the solution including the standard and the unconventional path.

Eric is very intellectually curious, said Multivariable Calculus and Differential Equations teacher Peter Nilsen. He always is interested in truly understanding the problem and not just getting the answer.

ASHUTOSH ASH KUMAR: Kumar has been incredibly consistent in his academic performance at Maine East, having earned As in every class hes taken over the past three and half years. He has consistently taken a challenging course load. He is currently enrolled in AP English Literature and Composition, AP Calculus BC, AP Physics C, AP Psychology, Design & Materials and Sociology. He is a PE leader, active in the Gifted Lyceum program and earned distinction as a National Merit Commended Scholar. He is also a member of National Honor Society, Rotary Interact, the track and field team, and he is a COACH program tutor. In the broader community, Kumar is a volunteer at his local temple, and he is a paid accounting intern at Kumar and Associates, his familys accounting company.

Ash is an extremely bright and talented individual, said math teacher Cassie Cowperthwaite. In my math analysis class last year, he always was able to critically think through problems on his own.

He is extremely bright, articulate, and mature, said economics teacher Snjezana Salamon. He exudes calmness even under the most stressful conditions. I used to observe him during major unit tests and his concentration was impressive as nothing would ever throw him off. I would often joke with him that if he missed any questions on the test, I would have to check my key to make sure that my answers were correct.

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207's Best In Academic Achievement Named For February - Journal & Topics Newspapers Online

St. Marys College of Maryland, The National Public Honors College, has been engaged in efforts the last several years to ensure its viability and relevancy as the premier public liberal arts honors college.

The critical and analytical thinking skills and the ability to effectively express oneself the hallmarks of our teaching take on greater meaning in an era in which the world has expanded and become more integrated, diverse and competitive, said Tuajuanda C. Jordan, president of St. Marys College of Maryland. With that in mind, the Board of Trustees asked for a program prioritization review of current offerings with an eye towards ensuring that the College offeredrelevant programs that will attract and prepare students for the opportunities and challenges presented in the 21stcentury.This student-centric approachsecures the Colleges future.

The College has already completed several initiatives. Among them, the College has:

The program prioritization review, just completed, evolved over the past 18 months with task force work involving input from faculty, Trustees, Provost Michael Wick and President Jordan. Among the criteria, academic programs were measured for effectiveness, efficiency and equity.

The Board of Trustees asked that the emphasis throughout this review be on ensuring the St. Marys College of Maryland curriculum is relevant to the needs of global citizens, attracts and retains students, and prepares them for long-term success as engaged and productive citizens of the world, said Arthur Lex Birney Jr., chair of the Colleges Board of Trustees.

During its February 6, 2021 Board meeting, the Trustees carefully considered the recommendations designed to reflect how best to prepare students for satisfying careers with a rigorous liberal arts education that captures the relevant issues of today and the projected needs of tomorrows students.

It unanimously adopted the following program changes:

In addition:

These actions will impact 11 faculty positions, inclusive of retirements and contract expirations, and the College is closely working with faculty members affected.

Current St. Marys College of Maryland students in any of the majors or minors noted will not be affected and will be able to graduate in their chosen programs.

The following link provides the list of program changes as well as the majors and minors students can choose from who enroll in the College this fall.

I am confident that the outcomes from the program review, combined with gains in enrollment, student engagement, the LEAD initiative, among other areas, will ensure that our students will be in an even stronger position to compete in the ever-changing and competitive world in which we live, said President Jordan. St. Marys College will be the college of choice for tomorrows students.

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St. Mary's College Board of Trustees Approves Academic Program Changes for Fall 2021 - The Southern Maryland Chronicle

Due to the pandemic, we have included a special section on the Impact of COVID 19 on the Refracting Telescope Market which would mention How the Covid-19 is affecting the Refracting Telescope Industry, Market Trends and Potential Opportunities in the COVID-19 Landscape, Covid-19 Impact on Key Regions and Proposal for Refracting Telescope Players to Combat Covid-19 Impact.

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Regionally, the global Refracting Telescope market has been classified into different regions such as North America, Latin America, Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Africa. Collectively, the overall analysis of the global market helps to make complex business decisions and helps to navigate global clients towards a successful future.

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The global Refracting Telescope market report provides detailed elaboration with respect to market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities. Industry analysis tools such as SWOT and Porters five techniques have been used for analyzing the global market. Moreover, development plans and policies are also presented in the report.

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Table of Contents:

Chapter 1. Refracting Telescope Market Overview

Chapter 2. Market Competition by Players / Suppliers

Chapter 3. Sales and revenue by regions

Chapter 4. Sales and revenue by Type

Chapter 5. Refracting Telescope Market Sales and revenue by Application

Chapter 6. Market Players profiles and sales data

Chapter 7. Manufacturing Cost Analysis

Chapter 8. Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Down Stream Buyers

Chapter 9. Market Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders

Chapter 10. Refracting Telescope Market effective factors Analysis

Chapter 11. Market Size and Forecast

Chapter12. Conclusion

Chapter13. Appendix

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Widespread Report on the Global Refracting Telescope Market 2020-2028 with the Leading Players Celestron, Vixen Optics, ASTRO-PHYSICS, ORION, Barska,...

What youll learnPhysics is the study of the fundamental forces that govern our universe. Youll learn about physical phenomena from the largest to the smallest scales, from galaxies to quarks and beyond. Youll also delve into particle physics (the basic building blocks that make up the world around us), and classical and special relativity (how objects act under the effects of forces, and how this changes under extreme conditions).

Its a subject that requires good maths knowledge, as youll be expected to be able to explain the physical world in mathematical terms. You will also get the chance to enhance your computing skills.

Universities offer three- and four-year undergraduate courses. Your course should cover the fundamentals: electromagnetism, quantum and classical mechanics, statistical physics and thermodynamics, and the properties of matter. You could then choose specialist topics, such as astronomy, space science, or applied physics.

By the time you leave university, you will understand key physical laws and principles and be able to solve problems or at least have an idea of how to. You will be able to plan and carry out experiments, and know how to analyse and interpret your findings.

You will also know how to produce clear and accurate scientific reports and present complex information concisely.

How youll learnYoull learn through a combination of lectures, lab sessions and tutorials. Most courses will require you to complete a research project during your fourth year, probably with a research group. Some courses will encourage you to complete work placements.

Entry requirementsMany universities will want top grades, though not all. Many courses are accredited by the Institute of Physics the professional body for physicists. You will probably need to have studied maths and physics at A-level (or equivalent). Further maths, chemistry and computing or computer science are helpful.

What job can you get?Many physics graduates go on to further study and pursue careers in research. Those who leave academia often become data scientists or work in computing or engineering.

The skills you learn in problem-solving and computing will be highly prized by employers in a range of fields. Physics graduates can also be found in the public sector, business and teaching.

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University subject profile: physics - The Guardian

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept. 1, 2020) The University of Kentucky is part of a new Physics Frontier Center (PFC) that launched today at the University of California, Berkeley. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries (N3AS)PFC seeks to improve understanding of the most extreme events known in the universe: mergers of neutron stars and their explosive aftermath which includes ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves.

Susan Gardner, professor in the UK Department of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, is leading the effort on behalf of UK.

I am really enthusiastic about the new Physics Frontier Center and am delighted at having the chance to participate in it, Gardner said. The ability to detect gravitational waves opens new windows on the study of cold matter at high densities, and the potential for new scientific discoveries is high. I feel that my broad background in nuclear, particleand astrophysics is helpful to making connections within our multi-institution collaboration."

Gardner is currentlyworking with Berkeley postdoc Jeff Berrymanat UK under their existing N3AS consortium to study possible new particle interactions and how they might be probed in this new regime. Sheexpects to address similar topics within the PFC with a future postdoc.

We operate as a single team, combining our expertise in order to tackle the complex multi-physics problems thatarise in astrophysics problems that are beyond the capacity of a single investigator, said Wick Haxton, theoretical nuclear physicist in Berkeley Labs Nuclear Science Division and principal investigator of the PFC.

The center builds upon an NSF-funded research hub in multi-messenger nuclear astrophysics that was established in 2017, and a foundation of support for this field of research by the Office of Nuclear Physics within the U.S. Department of Energys Office of Science. With the upgrade to a Physics Frontier Center, there will now be broader community participation in the effort and an expanded scope of research. The NSF commitment to the N3AS Center will be $10.9 million over five years.

The newly established Network for Neutrinos, Nuclear Astrophysics, and Symmetries Physics Frontier Center will reveal new information about the physics in extreme astrophysical environments, allowing scientists to address major questions in physics and multi-messenger astrophysics, said Jean Cottam Allen, NSF program officer overseeing the Physics Frontier Centers.

Institutional members of the PFC include: UC Berkeley, Los Alamos National Laboratory, North Carolina State University, Northwestern University, Ohio University, Pennsylvania State University, UC San Diego, University of Kentucky, University of Minnesota, University of New Hampshire, University of Notre Dame, University of Washington, and University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Read the full press release at: https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2020/08/17/new-nsf-physics-frontier-center-will-focus-on-neutron-star-modeling-in-gravitational-wave-era/

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UK Part of New NSF Physics Frontier Center Focused on Neutron Star Modeling in 'Gravitational Wave Era' - UKNow

TORONTO -- New research into a stellar system where three stars compete for attention has unearthed the first evidence that stars can rip apart and warp massive discs of planet-forming material.

Researchers identified a specific star system where planets are not formed on an even plane like in our solar system, but instead on an inclined ring within a warped circumstellar disk around multiple stars, a press release stated.

The system is called GW Orionis, and is located 1,200 light years away in the constellation of Orion.

According to researchers, if you were standing on a planet inside this star system, you could be treated to a double, or even a triple sunset, similar to the iconic Star Wars planet Tatooine.

Published in Science Mag last week, the new observations of GW Orionis provides the first concrete evidence for theoretical models that predicted if the planet-forming disc around a star system was misaligned with the orbital plane of the stars themselves, gravitational forces from the multiple stars could warp the disc and actually break it into rings, something called disc tearing.

An international team led by researchers from the University of Exeter used data from several large telescopes or arrays and a new infrared imager, called MIRC-X, to gain these new insights into the star system.

In star formation, a disk of dust and gas swirls around the growing star, feeding it. Once the star has formed, leftover material within that circumstellar disk forms into planetary bodies and moons.

"We're really excited that our new MIRC-X imager has provided the sharpest view yet of this intriguing system and revealed the gravitational dance of the three stars in the system, said Stefan Kraus, professor of astrophysics at the University of Exeter, in the press release. Normally, planets form around a flat disc of swirling dust and gas yet our images reveal an extreme case where the disc is not flat at all.

"Instead it is warped and has a misaligned ring that has broken away from the disc. The misaligned ring is located in the inner part of the disc, close to the three stars.

Researchers confirmed the existence of this misaligned ring by observing the shadow of the inner ring as it was cast on the rest of the disc.

An artists rendering of the star system shows what looks like a smaller ring of dust and gas tilted in opposition to a more oval disc of material rotating around it.

The inner ring alone contains enough dust and gas to make the mass of Earth 30 times over, meaning it is more than capable of forming planets. If planets could be formed on an inner ring like this, in this star system and others, this means we could see more star systems where planets orbit in increasingly unique ways.

And it could mean there are already planets out there that we havent discovered in star systems were already aware of, on wide and oblique orbits.

"Since more than half of stars in the sky are born with one or more companions, this raises an exciting prospect: there could be an unknown population of exoplanets that orbit their stars on very inclined and distant orbits, Alexander Kreplin, of the University of Exeter, said in the press release.

Its not just the discs of dust and gas that are misaligned with each other, but the stars themselves. The research team observed GW Orionis carefully for more than 11 years, and observed that the orbit of the stars are not on the same plane, but are also misaligned.

The final step for researchers was to take the painstaking observations and load them into computer simulations. This was when it became clear to researchers that they had clear evidence that the discs were torn apart by the competing gravitational forces of the three misaligned stars, proving what had long been only theory.

If three suns, one solar system seems like a familiar scenario, there might be a reason for that.

Its a real-life example of the Three-Body Problem, both a real scientific theory -- a physics and classical mechanics problem trying to track how three objects would move around a single gravitational point -- and a Hugo Award-winning science fiction novel by Chinese writer Liu Cixin that describes the exact scenario occurring in the new research: a star system with three stars in an unstable orbit.

So far, the new research has not predicted an imminent alien invasion to match the events of the novel, so some parts at least, remain science fiction.

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This triple star system warped the protoplanetary discs around it, new research says - CTV News

In May 2019, a ripple of gravitational waves passed through Earth after traveling across the cosmos for 7 billion years. The ripple came in four waves, each lasting just a fraction of a second. Although the ancient signal was faint, its source was cataclysmic: the biggest merger of two black holes ever observed.

It occurred when two mid-sized black holes 66 and 85 times the mass of our Sun drifted close together, began spinning around each other and merged into one black hole roughly 142 times the mass of our Sun.

"It's the biggest bang since the Big Bang observed by humanity," Caltech physicist Alan Weinstein, who was part of the discovery team, told The Associated Press.

A massive bang, sure. But a black hole of this size actually falls within the "intermediate-mass" category, which ranges from about 50 to 1,000 times the mass of our Sun.

Scientists know relatively little about these mid-sized black holes. They've catalogued small black holes only a few times more massive than the Sun, as well as supermassive black holes more than six billion times the mass of our star. But direct evidence of intermediate-mass black holes has remained elusive.

"Long have we searched for an intermediate-mass black hole to bridge the gap between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes," Christopher Berry, a professor at Northwestern University's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics), told Northwestern Now. "Now, we have proof that intermediate-mass black holes do exist."

Still, how these middleweight black holes form is a mystery. Scientists know that smaller black holes form when stars explode in violent events called supernovas. But mid-sized black holes couldn't form this way, according to current physics, because stars of a certain mass range undergo a death process called pair instability, where they explode and leave nothing behind, not even a black hole.

This chart compares the mass of black-hole merger events observed by LIGO-Virgo.

Credit: LIGO/Caltech/MIT/R. Hurt (IPAC)

As for supermassive black holes? Scientists are pretty sure that these behemoths, which lie in the center of most galaxies, grow huge by gobbling up ancient dust, gas and other cosmic matter including other black holes. Intermediate black holes may form in a similar way, by small-ish black holes repeatedly merging together.

In other words, an intermediate black hole might be on its way to becoming supermassive.

"We're talking here about a hierarchy of mergers, a possible pathway to make bigger and bigger black holes," Martin Hendry, a professor of gravitational astrophysics and cosmology at Glasgow University, told the BBC. "So, who knows? This 142-solar-mass black hole may have gone on to have merged with other very massive black holes as part of a build-up process that goes all the way to those supermassive black holes we think are at the heart of galaxies."

Visualization of a black hole.

Credit: NASA

The recent discovery sheds light on how black holes form, but questions still remain. Scientists with the LIGO-Virgo collaboration hope to continue studying the newly discovered intermediate black hole dubbed GW190521 in 2021 when the facilities will be up and running again with improved instruments.

"Our ability to find a black hole a few hundred kilometers-wide from half-way across the Universe is one of the most striking realizations of this discovery," Karan Jani, an astrophysicist with LIGO told The Malaysian Reserve.

The discovery was described in two papers published in the Physical Review Letters and The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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Scientists discover first 'intermediate-mass' black hole in massive merger - Big Think

Earlier this week, an international team of scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration published two reports one in thePhysical Review Letters, and the other inThe Astrophysical Journal Letters about a strange gravitational wave phenomena they observed.

Approximately 17 billion light-years away from the Earth, a black hole that was 85 times the mass of our sun collided with another black hole that was 66 times the mass of our sun, resulting in a new black hole measured at about 142 solar masses. (If that math doesn't add up in your limited comprehension of astrophysics, that's OK; that's part of why it's so interesting.) Dennis Overbye described the aftermath in the New York Times as being, "eight or so suns' worth of mass and energy [that] disappeared into gravitational waves, ripples of the space-time fabric, in a split-second of cosmic frenzy, ringing the universe like a bell."

That's a pretty remarkable passage of prose. But what's more remarkable about this event is that it challenges our current understanding of how black holes are formed. Also from the Times:

Most known black holes are the corpses of massive stars that have died and collapsed catastrophically into nothing: dark things a few times as massive as the sun. But galaxies harbor black holes millions or billions of times more massive than that. How these objects can grow so big is an abiding mystery of astronomy.

Until recently there had been scant evidence of black holes of intermediate sizes, with 100 to 100,000 solar masses. The black hole created in the GW190521 merger is the first solid example of this missing link.

At least one (if not both) of the colliding black holes was too large to have been formed by a collapsing star; and as far as any scientists are aware, there were never any stars where those black holes had been located.

So the bad news is, black holes can basically smash themselves together and form newer, larger black holes, which can then consume other black holes to continue adding to their masses.

The good news is, if this trend continues, it means we're one step closer to a super-massive hybrid black hole swallowing reality and resetting our timeline back to January 8, 2016 the day that David Bowie released his "Blackstar" album before dying two days later from complications involving another dense mass. Then at least we'll have another chance to make things right.

These Black Holes Shouldn't Exist, but There They Are [Dennis Overbye / The New York Times]

Image: Public Domain via NASA/JPL-Caltech

Lasts week, we lost iconic avant-garde fashion designer, Kansai Yamamoto. Yamamoto is best known for this long-term collaboration with David Bowie, especially the costumes for the Martian rocker's Ziggy Stardust tour. On the Fashion United website, there's a piece about the 2018 Brooklyn Museum evening with Yamamoto, done in support of the David Bowie Is []

This interview presents a conversation with Eisner Award-winning comic book creator Michael Allred (Madman, iZombie, Red Rocket 7, X-Ray Robot, Silver Surfer, X-Statix, Bug! The Adventures of Forager) about BOWIE: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams. Jeffery Klaehn: Please tell me about BOWIE: Stardust, Rayguns & Moonage Daydreams. Michael Allred: It's a visual biography about how []

David Bowie's Let's Dance was released 37 years ago today. His 15th studio record, Let's Dance would become his most commercially successful album but it was not well-received by critics and hardcore fans at the time and Bowie himself would end up regretting the record and the tours and albums that followed (Tonight, Never Let []

While Labor Day is a moment to solemnly consider the role that work serves in all of our lives, there are certain workers among us who will not benefit from a day of celebration and reflection. Robot vacuums, you just keep working like normal this weekend. Look, it's not that we don't appreciate you. But []

Whenever you happen to need a charging cable or a power batteryhey, wait a minute, where did that go? Between the house, your vehicle and all those evildoers that blatantly steal your stuff (otherwise known as family, friends and co-workers), it's tough to keep track of where all your tech accessories are at a moment's []

It's already one of the most iconic items in film history. Unless you've been off-world for the past few years, you already know all about the all-powerful Infinity Gauntlet. It's the weapon wielded by the Mad Titan Thanos in his quest to reshape the cosmos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, culminating in a heart-stopping smackdown []

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Scientists detect massive galactic collision between black holes that "aren't supposed to exist" - Boing Boing

In atomic nuclei, protons and neutrons share energy and momentum in tight quarters. But exactly how they share the energy that keeps them bound within the nucleus and even where they are within the nucleus remain key puzzles for nuclear scientists.

A new study by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California tackled these questions by leveraging data from nuclear scattering experiments to make stringent constraints on how nucleons (neutrons and protons) arrange themselves in the nucleus. The research appears in two corresponding papers in Physical Review C and Physical Review Letters.

Robert J. Charity, research professor of chemistry, Willem H. Dickhoff, professor of physics, and Lee G. Sobotka, professor of chemistry and of physics, all in Arts & Sciences, are co-authors on the papers led by Cole Pruitt, presently a postdoctoral fellow at LLNL, who earned his PhD at Washington University in 2019. Pruitt completed the majority of the work for these papers as part of his thesis effort.

Their analysis shows that for several cornerstone nuclei, a tiny fraction of the protons and neutrons possess the lions share of the overall energy that keeps them bound in nuclei, roughly 50% more than expected from standard theoretical treatments.

Further, the study makes new predictions for the neutron skin a region where extra neutrons pile up of several neutron-rich nuclei. In turn, these predictions are tightly connected to how large neutron stars grow and what elements are likely synthesized in neutron star mergers.

Our results quantitatively indicate how asymmetry, charge and shell effects contribute to neutron skin generation and drive a disproportionate share of the total binding energy to the deepest nucleons, Pruitt said.

Understanding how nuclear asymmetry energy changes with density is an essential input to the neutron equation-of-state, which determines neutron star structure. But its not easy to directly measure neutron skins.

A comprehensive model should not only reproduce integrated quantities (like the charge radius or total binding energy) but also specify how nucleons share momentum and energy, all while being realistic about the model uncertainty of its predictions, Pruitt said.

The work reported by Pruitt and collaborators provides a powerful bridge between nuclear physics and astrophysics in the new era of multi-messenger astronomy. The measurement of the neutron skin of several nuclei reported in the letter (Physical Review Letters) could provide stringent constraints on the equation of state of neutron-rich matter, which is a critical ingredient for understanding neutron stars, said Jorge Piekarewicz, professor of physics at Florida State University, a leading theorist who was not involved in these studies.

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Looking skin deep at the growth of neutron stars - Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom

China's reusable experimental spacecraft, rumored to be a space plane like the above, spent two days in orbit, according to Chinese state-run media outlets.

China's "reusable experimental spacecraft" has successfully returned to Earth after spending two days in low-Earth orbit. The secretive mission released an unknown object during its time in space and marks an "important breakthrough" in the country's reusable spacecraft research program, according to Chinese state-run Xinhua media outlet.

The spacecraft launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China on Friday, atop a Long March 2F rocket. It is believed to be a space plane similar to the US Air Force X-37B but no images of the launch or return have been released. The veil of secrecy have led some space-watchers to suggest it could be a military space plane.

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On Monday, the People's Daily Science account on Twitter posted a brusque update, echoing the sentiments published by Xinhua. No details of the landing time or site have been released.

According to Andrew Jones, a journalist covering China's space program, further flights are expected to follow the initial test launch and, quoting Chen Hongbo, an official with China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, he suggests the new vehicle may be able to fly "more than 20 times."

The reusable space plane is believed to be more Space Shuttle than SpaceX. It launches vertically but lands horizontally, coasting onto a runway during its return to Earth. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and other internet sleuths suggest the experimental spacecraft may have landed at an airbase in the Taklamakan desertin northwest China.

Monday also saw China launch a Long March 4B rocket from the Taiyun Satellite Launch Center in northern China. The rocket's first stage booster came crashing back to Earth shortly after launch, with harrowing footage uploaded to Chinese social media site Weibo of the booster exploding near a school.

Launches you may be familiar with in the US, such as those conducted by SpaceX and NASA, take place close to the coast, but China often launches from inland sites, resulting in debris falling back to Earth over populated areas which sometimes have to be evacuated prior to launch.

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China's secretive 'space plane' makes successful return to Earth - CNET

One of the most powerful solar observatories in the world has just completed a major upgrade. And now, the GREGOR solar telescope in Spain has taken some of the most high-resolution images of our Sun ever obtained in Europe.

In the upgraded telescope's new images, details as small as 50 kilometres (31 miles) across can be discerned amid the roiling activity on the surface of the Sun.

"This was a very exciting, but also extremely challenging project," said physicist and GREGOR lead scientist Lucia Kleint of the Leibniz Institute for Solar Physics (KIS). "In only one year we completely redesigned the optics, mechanics, and electronics to achieve the best possible image quality."

GREGOR (left) and its redesigned optics (right). (KIS)

Interestingly, while COVID-19 lockdowns have been a hindrance to scientific research, in this instance, they proved helpful. According to a post on the KIS website, scientists were stranded at the observatory during the March lockdown in Spain. Rather than waste the time, they got to work setting up the optical laboratory.

They were able to correct two significant problems introduced by a pair of mirrors, coma and astigmatism, that resulted in blurred and distorted images. Because of the design of the optics laboratory, and the limited space therein, these mirrors had to be completely replaced with off-axis parabolic mirrors, polished to a precision within 1/10,000th the width of a human hair.

Snowstorms hindered observations for a while then, but when Spain reopened in July, the first thing the GREGOR team did was fire up their upgraded telescope.

(KIS)

The new first light images show solar granules, the tops of convection cells in the solar plasma. The middle of each granule is lighter; that's where hot plasma rises from below. This plasma moves outwards as it cools, then falls back into the depths at the darker edges of each granule.

They look a little bit like popcorn, but don't be fooled - a typical granule is about 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) across, just over 10 percent of the diameter of Earth.

Another image and video show the lone sunspot that graced the face of the Sun on 30 July 2020. This is a temporary region where the Sun's magnetic field is particularly strong, inhibiting the Sun's normal surface convection activity; it appears darker on the surface of the Sun because it is cooler than the material around it.

(KIS)

These sunspot regions are of intense interest to us, because these magnetic field lines snap, tangle and reconnect. That magnetic reconnection results in the release of copious amounts of energy, producing solar flares and coronal mass ejections - a phenomenon that can affect us here on Earth, disrupting satellite navigation and communication.

Images like those obtained by GREGOR, and other high-resolution solar observatories such as the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, with a resolution of 30 kilometres, along with the Big Bear Solar Observatory in the US, can help us to better understand these solar processes.

Plus, we'll never get tired of looking at the mind-blowing images of the surface of our Sun.

A paper describing the telescope's upgrade has been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Read more:

New High-Res Images of The Sun Show How Creepy Sunspots Look in Closeup - ScienceAlert

Katie Mack, an assistant professor of physics at North Carolina State University, is quickly becoming one of the internets most popular science communicators. In her first book, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), she explores various scenarios for the end of the universe.

I noticed that when I gave public talks and talked about the end of the universe, that was something that people got really excited about, Mack says in Episode 430 of the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast. It was something that I thought I could have a lot of fun with, and I did. I really enjoyed writing this book.

Science fiction writers have long been fascinated by the end of the universe, and both Tau Zero by Poul Anderson and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams involve characters who witness the end of everything. Both of those books, published in 1970 and 1980 respectively, assume a Big Crunch model of cosmology.

The Big Crunch would be interesting to see, Mack says. The expansion of the universe stops, and reverses, and everything comes crashing back together. It would be kind of a neat light show, though it would also be super-lethal for anything thats out there.

Unfortunately for science fiction fans, the current thinking among scientists is that the end of the universe will be pretty boring. Were probably not going to have a Big Crunch, Mack says. Its probably going to be the Heat Death, where the universe just continues to expand and expand, and things sort of fade away. So in principle it might not end up being that interesting, because youd get there and all there is is just lots of cold, dark, empty space.

Given that the end of the universe will be sort of a letdown, Mack says a journey to the near future sounds far more appealing.

Id much rather see a hundred years from now, and then a thousand years from now, and kind of step forward that way, and not go straight to the ending, because I dont think the ending is going to be fun.

Listen to the complete interview with Katie Mack in Episode 430 of Geeks Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.

Katie Mack on the Star Trek episode Remember Me:

Very strange things are happening on the ship, and people are disappearing, and the universe seems to be getting smaller around [Dr. Crusher]. Shes a doctor, so she knows that she could be hallucinating all this, and so she does diagnostics on herself and theres nothing wrong, her mind is working perfectly. So she concludes that if theres nothing wrong with her, there must be something wrong with the universe. I use that as a way to introduce the possibility that the reason we find the force of gravity to be so weak is not that theres something wrong with gravity per se, but that the universe might be a different shape than we anticipatedmight have a different number of dimensions than we anticipatedand that could be why gravity seems so weak. So its not something wrong with gravity, its something wrong with the universe.

Katie Mack on social media:

Once in a while a tweet goes viral, and then a whole bunch of people see it and a whole bunch of people follow you. The biggest example of that was in 2016 where somebody was complaining about climate change, and tweeted to me about it, and I replied to that in a way that got a lot of attention. I had been tweeting about how climate change is depressing, basically, and somebody replied and said that climate change is a scam, and said, You should go learn some science. So I replied that I already got a PhD in astrophysics, and more than that seems like it would be overkill. Somehow that got picked up by a bunch of people and retweeted a whole lot, and then J.K. Rowling took a screenshot of it and posted it on her feed, and that just blew up my Twitter. I think my following doubled in a week.

Katie Mack on long-term survival:

In only about 4 billion years the Andromeda Galaxy will collide with this one, which will make a messitll move the orbits of stars around, and therell be some new star formation, and the supermassive black holes will merge, and that could cause some jets of high-energy radiation, but it wont necessarily affect the solar system all that much. Itll move where we are in the galaxy, and change our night sky, but its not going to hurt us, necessarily. Even the amount of star formation that youll get out of that collisionitll be enough to set off some new supernovae, but it wont necessarily hurt us. So I think we can survive that pretty easily, and then after that its just a matter of slow cooling, where everythings just kind of fading away for billions and billions and billions of years.

Katie Mack on Freeman Dyson:

You want to use less and less energy over time, because youre going to have access to less and less energy as the universe is expanding and cooling. The whole point of [Dysons] exercise was to figure out if there was a way to slow down your processes as the universe is expanding, to the point that you can live technically foreverits just that over time each thought gets farther and farther apart. That would work if the universe were expanding linearly, meaning that it was not speeding up in its expansion, but we know now that the universe is speeding up in its expansion, and that does mess up that plan, in a kind of complicated way. So that doesnt work indefinitely, but it can still buy you some time, if you need to just conserve resources over a very long period of time in the cosmos.

Read more here:

The End of the Universe Will Probably Be Fairly Disappointing - WIRED

Indian astronomers have discovered one of the farthest star galaxies in the universe, estimated to be located 9.3 billion light years away from Earth, announced Department of Space, Indian Government.

This is a landmark achievement for country's first Multi-Wavelength Space Observatory "AstroSat."

Sharing this information, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge), Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said, "The galaxy called AUDFs01 was discovered by a team of Astronomers led by Dr Kanak Saha from the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics(IUCAA) Pune."

The importance and uniqueness of this original discovery can be made out from the fact that it has been reported in the international journal Nature Astronomy" published from Britain.

India's AstroSat/UVIT was able to achieve this unique feat because the background noise in the UVIT detector is much less than one on the Hubble Space Telescope of US based NASA, the statement read.

Dr Jitendra Singh congratulated Indias Space Scientists for once again proving to the world that Indias capability in Space technology has risen to a distinguished level from where our scientists are now offering cues and giving leads to the Space scientists in other parts of the world. According to Professor ShyamTandon, the excellent spatial resolution and high sensitivity is a tribute to the hard work of the UVIT core team of scientists for over a decade.

According to Director of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) Dr Somak Ray Chaudhury, this discovery is a very important clue to how the dark ages of the Universe ended and there was light in the Universe. We need to know when this started, but it has been very hard to find the earliest sources of light, he said.

Pertinent to mention that Indias first Space Observatory AstroSat, which has made this discovery, was launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on September 28, 2015 during the first term of the Modi Government. It was developed by a team led by ShyamTandon, Ex Emeritus Professor, IUCAA with the full support of ISRO.

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Indian astronomers discover one of the farthest star galaxies in universe - Livemint

Projected dark matter density map, created using a simulation measuring 2.4 billion light years on each side. The inset square (bottom left) is the deepest zoom in the simulation: it is only 783 light years across, equivalent to 500 times the size of the solar system. In the inset square, the smallest clearly visible dark matter haloes have a mass comparable to that of the Earth (0.000003 the mass of the Sun). Credit: Dr. Sownak Bose, Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University

Cosmologists have zoomed in on the smallest clumps of dark matter in a virtual universe which could help us to find the real thing in space.

An international team of researchers, including Durham University, UK, used supercomputers in Europe and China to focus on a typical region of a computer-generated universe.

The zoom they were able to achieve is the equivalent of being able to see a flea on the surface of the Moon.

This allowed them to make detailed pictures and analyses of hundreds of virtual dark matter clumps (or haloes) from the very largest to the tiniest.

Dark matter particles can collide with dark matter anti-particles near the center of haloes where, according to some theories, they are converted into a burst of energetic gamma-ray radiation.

Their findings, published in the prestigious journalNature, could mean that these very small haloes could be identified in future observations by the radiation they are thought to give out.

An artists impression of dark matter haloes with various mass in the Universe. Credit: YU Jingchuan, Beijing Planetarium

Co-author Professor Carlos Frenk, Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics at the Institute for Computational Cosmology, at Durham University, UK, said: By zooming in on these relatively tiny dark matter haloes we can calculate the amount of radiation expected to come from different sized haloes.

Most of this radiation would be emitted by dark matter haloes too small to contain stars and future gamma-ray observatories might be able to detect these emissions, making these small objects individually or collectively visible.

This would confirm the hypothesized nature of the dark matter, which may not be entirely dark after all.

Most of the matter in the universe is dark (apart from the gamma radiation they emit in exceptional circumstances) and completely different in nature from the matter that makes up stars, planets, and people.

The universe is made of approximately 27 percent dark matter with the rest largely consisting of the equally mysterious dark energy. Normal matter, such as planets and stars, makes up a relatively small five percent of the universe.

Galaxies formed and grew when gas cooled and condensed at the center of enormous clumps of this dark matter so-called dark matter haloes.

Astronomers can infer the structure of large dark matter haloes from the properties of the galaxies and gas within them.

The biggest haloes contain huge collections of hundreds of bright galaxies, called galaxy clusters, weighing a 1,000 trillion times more than our Sun.

Projected dark matter density map, created using a simulation measuring 2.4 billion light years on each side. . The intermediate square (top right) is just under a million light years across. The smallest square (bottom left) is the deepest zoom: it is only 783 light years across, equivalent to 500 times the size of the solar system. In the intermediate square(top right) the largest dark matter haloes have a mass similar to that of a rich galaxy cluster (a million trillion times the mass of the Sun). In the smallest square (bottom right) the smallest clearly visible haloes have a mass comparable to that of the Earth (0.000003 the mass of the Sun). Credit: Dr. Sownak Bose, Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University

However, scientists have no direct information about smaller dark matter haloes that are too tiny to contain a galaxy. These can only be studied by simulating the evolution of the Universe in a large supercomputer.

The smallest are thought to have the same mass as the Earth according to current popular scientific theories about dark matter that underlie the new research.

The simulations were carried out using the Cosmology Machine supercomputer, part of the DiRAC High-Performance Computing facility in Durham, funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), and computers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

By zooming-in on the virtual universe in such microscopic detail, the researchers were able to study the structure of dark matter haloes ranging in mass from that of the Earth to a big galaxy cluster.

Surprisingly, they found that haloes of all sizes have a very similar internal structure and are extremely dense at the center, becoming increasingly spread out, with smaller clumps orbiting in their outer regions.

The researchers said that without a measure scale it was almost impossible to tell an image of a dark matter halo of a massive galaxy from one of a halo with a mass a fraction of the Suns.

Co-author Professor Simon White, of the Max Planck Institute of Astrophysics, Germany, said: We expect that small dark matter haloes would be extremely numerous, containing a substantial fraction of all the dark matter in the universe, but they would remain mostly dark throughout cosmic history because stars and galaxies grow only in haloes more than a million times as massive as the Sun.

Our research sheds light on these small haloes as we seek to learn more about what dark matter is and the role it plays in the evolution of the universe.

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Reference: Universal structure of dark matter haloes over a mass range of 20 orders of magnitude by J. Wang, S. Bose, C. S. Frenk, L. Gao, A. Jenkins, V. Springel and S. D. M. White, 2 September 2020, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2642-9

The research team, led by the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and including Durham University, UK, the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany, and the Center for Astrophysics in Harvard, USA, took five years to develop, test and carry out their cosmic zoom.

The research was funded by the STFC, the European Research Council, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Max Planck Society and Harvard University.

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Zooming In Tight on Dark Matter Equivalent of Being Able to See a Flea on the Surface of the Moon - SciTechDaily