Lifeboat Foundation

“Neutron stars apparently behave a bit like chocolate pralines”.

Neutron stars were first discovered more than 60 years ago, but very little is known about the interior of neutron stars, the incredibly compact cores of dead stars.

According to their findings, a press statement reveals, they bear a surprising resemblance to chocolate pralines.

Continue reading “Mathematical models shed new light on the interior of neutron stars” »

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Never email yourself a file again!

Their experiment could help to create a unified theory of quantum gravity.

A team of physicists from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands simulated the event horizon of a black hole in a lab and observed the equivalent of an elusive form of radiation first theorized by Stephen Hawking, a report from Science Alert.

The new discovery could help the scientific community develop a whole new theory that marries the general theory of relativity with the principles of quantum mechanics. John/iStock.

Are we soon going to be traveling enormous distances via wormholes?

A team of scientists from the University of Sofia in Bulgaria believes they have discovered a new method for detecting wormholes — though they still only exist in theory.

Wormholes are theorized shortcuts through space and time. Sci-fi depictions traditionally show a spacecraft traveling through a wormhole, or creating one, to traverse immense distances to far-off regions of the universe in a short amount of time.

Continue reading “Sci-fi or reality? Scientists may know how to pinpoint wormholes in space” »

Visit our sponsor, Brilliant: https://brilliant.org/IsaacArthur/
According to modern cosmology, one day all the stars will burn out and the Universe will be full of dead planets, black holes, and other stellar remnants, slowing decaying till entropy brings the Heat Death of the Universe. But could this fate be postponed or even reversed?

Visit our Website: http://www.isaacarthur.net.
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IsaacArthur.
SFIA Merchandise available: https://www.signil.com/sfia/

Continue reading “Postponing the Heat Death of the Universe” »

The cosmic explosion happened 11.5 billion years ago, when the universe was fairly young, and could shed light on the evolution of stars and galaxies.

A new kind of black hole analog could tell us a thing or two about an elusive radiation theoretically emitted by the real thing.

Using a chain of atoms in single-file to simulate the event horizon of a black hole, a team of physicists has observed the equivalent of what we call Hawking radiation – particles born from disturbances in the quantum fluctuations caused by the black hole’s break in spacetime.

This, they say, could help resolve the tension between two currently irreconcilable frameworks for describing the Universe: the general theory of relativity, which describes the behavior of gravity as a continuous field known as spacetime; and quantum mechanics, which describes the behavior of discrete particles using the mathematics of probability.

Hypothetical bridges connecting distant regions of space (and time) could more or less look like garden variety black holes, meaning it’s possible these mythical beasts of physics have already been seen.

Thankfully however, if a new model proposed by a small team of physicists from Sofia University in Bulgaria is accurate, there could still be a way to tell them apart.

Play around with Einstein’s general theory of relativity long enough, it’s possible to show how the spacetime background of the Universe can form not only deep gravitational pits where nothing escapes – it can form impossible mountain peaks which can’t be climbed.

In the beginning, there was … well, maybe there was no beginning. Perhaps our universe has always existed — and a new theory of quantum gravity reveals how that could work.

“Reality has so many things that most people would associate with sci-fi or even fantasy,” said Bruno Bento, a physicist who studies the nature of time at the University of Liverpool in the U.K.

In his work, he employed a new theory of quantum gravity, called causal set theory, in which space and time are broken down into discrete chunks of space-time. At some level, there’s a fundamental unit of space-time, according to this theory.