Lifeboat Foundation

To understand the relationship between the science fiction genre and the Many-Worlds Interpretation, let’s turn to two men – a scientist and a writer. The scientist is Hugh Everett III (1930−1982), a physicist who developed the notion of parallel universes based on an original interpretation of quantum mechanics. He proposed that a pre-formulated theory should be the basis of scientific measurement, quite the opposite of the traditional scientific process in which measurement preceded and determined the theory. But quantum particles do not behave normally, so quantum phenomena and their atomic dynamics cannot be measured by the Newtonian mechanics traditionally applied to the universe.

When Hugh Everett published “Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics” in the Reviews of Modern Physics scientific journal (Volume 29, Issue 3, July — September 1957), his theory that there are many worlds existing in parallel at the same space and time as our own sounded like fantasy fiction to a skeptical scientific world.

While scientists scoffed for more than a decade after Everett published his theory, someone else entered the scene. His name was Philip K. Dick, a scruffy beatnik writer who tramped around Berkeley (California) looking for ways to describe this alternative reality – the one hiding behind our visible reality.

By Curtin University

Curtin University-led research has discovered a rare dust particle trapped in an ancient extra-terrestrial meteorite that was formed by a star other than our sun.

Scientists found a monster black hole that ‘hiccups’ every 8.5 days, and a smaller black hole that keeps punching through its accretion disk may be to blame.

The results suggest a deeper investigation of Sgr A* may uncover hitherto undiscovered features.

The polarization of light and neat and strong magnetic fields of Sgr A*, and the fact that they closely resemble that of M87*, may indicate that our central black hole has been hiding a secret from us until now.

“We expect strong and ordered magnetic fields to be directly linked to the launching of jets as we observed for M87*,” Issaoun explained. “Since Sgr A*, with no observed jet, seems to have a very similar geometry, perhaps there is also a jet lurking in Sgr A* waiting to be observed, which would be super exciting!”

At the heart of a far-off galaxy, a supermassive black hole appears to have had a case of the hiccups. Astronomers from MIT, Italy, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere have found that a previously quiet black hole, which sits at the center of a galaxy about 800 million light years away, has suddenly erupted, giving off plumes of gas every 8.5 days before settling back to its normal, quiet state.

“Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarization structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we’ve learned that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them,” said Dr. Sara Issaoun.

A recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters discusses the most recent image of the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A•, which is located approximately 27,000 light-years from Earth at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. These new images that were obtained by Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration are the first to identify the magnetic field lines of Sgr A* and comes after EHT first obtained images of Sgr A* in 2022. This study, which consists of more than 150 co-authors, holds the potential to help astronomers better understand the compositions of supermassive black holes throughout the universe.

For the study, the collaborative team of researchers used EHT to measure polarized light emitted by Sgr A*, which not only revealed the magnetic field lines for the first time, but also gained valuable insight into the properties and behavior of the magnetic field, as well. This study comes after astronomers previously identified the supergiant elliptical galaxy, M87*, was emitting powerful jets at nearly the speed of light after astronomers had discovered it also had large magnetic field lines. Therefore, researchers hope this recent study could produce the same long-term result.

Continue reading “Insights into Black Hole Feeding: Polarized Light Studies of Sgr A*” »

A new investigation into an obscure class of galaxies known as Compact Symmetric Objects, or CSOs, has revealed that these objects are not entirely what they seem. CSOs are active galaxies that host supermassive black holes at their cores. Out of these monstrous black holes spring two jets traveling in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. But in comparison to other galaxies that boast fierce jets, these jets do not extend out to great distances—they are much more compact.

For many decades, astronomers suspected that CSOs were simply young and that their jets would eventually travel out to greater distances. Now, reporting in three different papers in The Astrophysical Journal, a Caltech-led team of researchers has concluded that CSOs are not young but rather lead relatively short lives.

Continue reading “Sleeping supermassive black holes awakened briefly by shredded stars” »

Astronomer Fred Hoyle supposedly coined the catchy term to ridicule the theory of the Universe’s origins — 75 years on, it’s time to set the record straight.

A UCL-led research team has used artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to infer the influence and properties of dark energy more precisely from a map of dark and visible matter in the universe covering the last 7 billion years.

The study, submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and available on the arXiv preprint server, was carried out by the Dark Energy Survey collaboration. The researchers doubled the precision at which key characteristics of the universe, including the overall density of dark energy, could be inferred from the map.

This increased precision allows researchers to rule out models of the universe that might previously have been conceivable.