An international team of scientists led by the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics (IGFAE) and the University of Aveiro shows that the heaviest black hole collision ever observed, produced by the gravitational-wave GW190521, might actually be something even more mysterious: the merger of two boson stars. This would be the first evidence of the existence of these hypothetical objects, which…
Tag: high energy
Could Earth’s Reversing Magnetic Poles Accelerate Climate Change?
A team of researchers from Sydney’s University of New South Wales and the South Australian Museum have investigated how the reversal of Earth’s magnetic pole about 42,000 years could have changed earth’s atmosphere. CNN reports: “Using the ancient trees we could measure, and date, the spike in atmospheric radiocarbon levels caused by the collapse of Earth’s magnetic field,” Chris Turney, a…
US Navy Has Patents on Tech It Says Will ‘Engineer the Fabric of Reality’
The U.S. Navy has patents on weird and little understood technology. According to patents filed by the Navy, it is working on a compact fusion reactor that could power cities, an engine that works using “inertial mass reduction,” and a “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft.” From a report: Dubbed the “UFO patents,” The War Zone has reported that the Navy had to build…
Suzaku observations find X-ray intraday variability of the blazar PKS 2155−304
Using the Suzaku satellite, astronomers have examined a very high energy (VHE) blazar known as PKS 2155−304. They found that the source exhibits an X-ray intraday variability, which could improve the understanding of its nature. The finding is reported in a paper published January 15 on arXiv.org. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-suzaku-x-ray-intraday-variability-blazar.html…
Is a solar flare the same thing as a CME?
Solar Cycle 25 is here, and that means – in the years ahead – more solar flares and more coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. People sometimes use the words interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. Here’s the difference. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/is-a-solar-flare-the-same-thing-as-a-cme…
Hubble telescope reveals asteroid Psyche’s rusty surface
Scientists already had Psyche classified as a metallic asteroid, but new observations with the Hubble telescope reveal its rusty surface and provide scientists with a unique view into what Earth-like planets are like during their formation. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/hubble-asteroid-psyche-iron-nickel-rust-protoplanet…
How the world came to understand black holes
Earlier this month, Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez split the 2020 physics Nobel Prize for decades of work on black holes. Click here to learn more about their monumental achievement and about the history of our understanding of these exotic objects in space. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/nobel-prize-3-astrophysicists-black-holess-penrose-genzel-ghez…
On the trail of causes of radiation events during space flight
Scientists have made significant progress in understanding the sources of radiation events that could impact human space-flight operations. Relativistic electron precipitation (REP) events are instances when high energy electrons move through areas of space at significant fractions of the speed of light. These REP events may pose challenges to human spaceflight, specifically during extravehicular activity (EVA). Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-10-trail-events-space-flight.html…
Nearby red dwarf star not so quiet and life-friendly after all
Astronomers say the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 887 appears to have more dangerous flare activity than first believed. This could make life tough – but maybe not impossible – on its family of super-Earth planets. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/red-dwarf-gliese-887-flares-in-ultraviolet-light…
Strongest magnetic field in universe directly detected by X-ray space observatory
The Insight-HXMT team has performed extensive observations of the accreting X-ray pulsar GRO J1008-57 and has discovered a magnetic field of ~1 billion Tesla on the surface of the neutron star. This is the strongest magnetic field conclusively detected in the universe. This work, published in the Astrophysical Journal, was primarily conducted by scientists from the Institute of High Energy Physics…