The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment — HETDEX, at The University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory will be the first major experiment to probe dark energy. Its observations will narrow the list of possible explanations for dark energy, and may even provide the final answer.HETDEX will be the first major experiment to search for dark energy. It will map the three-dimensional positions of one million galaxies and tell us what makes up almost three-quarters of all the matter and energy in the universe.
A preon star is a proposed type of compact star made of preons, a group of hypothetical subatomic particles that could originate from supernova explosions or the Big Bang. Preons were originally proposed as quark constituents over three decades ago, but in 2005, Fredrik Sandin and Johan Hansson of the Luleå University of Technology in Sweden came up with the concept of preon "stars" or "nuggets" in space. These objects, would be somewhere between the size of a pea and a football, with a mass comparable to the Moon with a density that would be in the range between a neutron star--the densest ordinary form of matter--and a black hole.
Scientists have seen surges in antimatter
particles sweeping through space, and some believe the cause could be
collapsing cosmic strings. As opposed to Ming the Merciless. Note
that cosmic strings are entirely different strings from string theory -
blame any confusion on the fact that there are far more cool things
happening in space than we have words for.
At the end of the nineteenth century
scientists thought they had all the answers. They were spectacularly
wrong, demonstrated by "The Ultraviolet Catasptrophe": a light
experiment which simply couldn't be explained by the science of the
day. This led to quantum mechanics, the particle-wave duality of
light, and an entire new mode of science - which we've just broken
again with a massive laser!
Hundreds of rogue black holes should be traveling the Milky Way's outskirts, each containing the mass of 1,000 to 100,000 suns.
Avi Loeb -Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
New calculations by Ryan O'Leary and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggest that hundreds of massive rogue black holes, left over from the galaxy-building days of the early universe, may wander the Milky Way.
Did dark matter destroy the universe? You might be looking around at the way things "exist" athinking "No", but we're talking about ancient history. Three hundred million years after the start of the universe, things had finally cooled down enough to form hydrogen atoms out of all the protons and electrons that were zipping around - only to have them all ripped up again around the one billion year mark. Why?
Horoscope enthusiasts will be happy to hear that a grand cosmic force does indeed seem to be responsible for controlling the direction of all life on Earth. However, this grand cosmic cycle has more to do with extinction than finding a tall, handsome stranger.
Only four percent of the universe is made of materials we sort of understand. So what about that remaining 96%? For the most part we’ve labeled it under two names, dark matter and dark energy. We have no clear idea what these materials are. But now astronomers at the University of St Andrews are attempting to “simplify the dark side of the universe”. They say the two most mysterious constituents in the universe are actually the same thing.
(Image is the future Supernova Acceleration Probe which may help solve of the dark matter/dark energy mystery).
Dark energy is the deus ex machina of cosmology, able to save even the most inflation-prone calculations from destruction or - worse - being provably wrong. But while we've been busy watching the X-energy apparently accelerating all of creation while hiding in plain sight, some believe it's responsible for much more than that. It didn't just save the universe - no, no, that's far too small scale - it saved INFINITE universes.
There simply isn't a bigger question: wrapping up "Why are we here?", "Why is everything the way it is?" and "What if I don't believe a gigantic invisible skybeard did it?" -it's a Holy Grail of science. The theoreticians want to explain it, the experimenters want to detect it and - unlike 99% of all research - the public will actually care about the answer for a few minutes. We report on five ways scientists have have studied the beginning of everything and, in mockery of all you might think possible, made the question even cooler.
The Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment — HETDEX, at The University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory will be the first major experiment to probe dark energy. Its observations will narrow the list of possible explanations for dark energy, and may even provide the final answer.HETDEX will be the first major experiment to search for dark energy. It will map the three-dimensional positions of one million galaxies and tell us what makes up almost three-quarters of all the matter and energy in the universe.
A preon star is a proposed type of compact star made of preons, a group of hypothetical subatomic particles that could originate from supernova explosions or the Big Bang. Preons were originally proposed as quark constituents over three decades ago, but in 2005, Fredrik Sandin and Johan Hansson of the Luleå University of Technology in Sweden came up with the concept of preon "stars" or "nuggets" in space. These objects, would be somewhere between the size of a pea and a football, with a mass comparable to the Moon with a density that would be in the range between a neutron star--the densest ordinary form of matter--and a black hole.
Scientists have seen surges in antimatter
particles sweeping through space, and some believe the cause could be
collapsing cosmic strings. As opposed to Ming the Merciless. Note
that cosmic strings are entirely different strings from string theory -
blame any confusion on the fact that there are far more cool things
happening in space than we have words for.
At the end of the nineteenth century
scientists thought they had all the answers. They were spectacularly
wrong, demonstrated by "The Ultraviolet Catasptrophe": a light
experiment which simply couldn't be explained by the science of the
day. This led to quantum mechanics, the particle-wave duality of
light, and an entire new mode of science - which we've just broken
again with a massive laser!
Hundreds of rogue black holes should be traveling the Milky Way's outskirts, each containing the mass of 1,000 to 100,000 suns.
Avi Loeb -Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
New calculations by Ryan O'Leary and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggest that hundreds of massive rogue black holes, left over from the galaxy-building days of the early universe, may wander the Milky Way.
Did dark matter destroy the universe? You might be looking around at the way things "exist" athinking "No", but we're talking about ancient history. Three hundred million years after the start of the universe, things had finally cooled down enough to form hydrogen atoms out of all the protons and electrons that were zipping around - only to have them all ripped up again around the one billion year mark. Why?
Horoscope enthusiasts will be happy to hear that a grand cosmic force does indeed seem to be responsible for controlling the direction of all life on Earth. However, this grand cosmic cycle has more to do with extinction than finding a tall, handsome stranger.
Only four percent of the universe is made of materials we sort of understand. So what about that remaining 96%? For the most part we’ve labeled it under two names, dark matter and dark energy. We have no clear idea what these materials are. But now astronomers at the University of St Andrews are attempting to “simplify the dark side of the universe”. They say the two most mysterious constituents in the universe are actually the same thing.
(Image is the future Supernova Acceleration Probe which may help solve of the dark matter/dark energy mystery).
Dark energy is the deus ex machina of cosmology, able to save even the most inflation-prone calculations from destruction or - worse - being provably wrong. But while we've been busy watching the X-energy apparently accelerating all of creation while hiding in plain sight, some believe it's responsible for much more than that. It didn't just save the universe - no, no, that's far too small scale - it saved INFINITE universes.
There simply isn't a bigger question: wrapping up "Why are we here?", "Why is everything the way it is?" and "What if I don't believe a gigantic invisible skybeard did it?" -it's a Holy Grail of science. The theoreticians want to explain it, the experimenters want to detect it and - unlike 99% of all research - the public will actually care about the answer for a few minutes. We report on five ways scientists have have studied the beginning of everything and, in mockery of all you might think possible, made the question even cooler.
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