Physicists think the insides of black holes may be complex mazes of tangled strings in higher dimensions
Category: physics – Page 4
Charge-parity violation is thought to explain why there’s more matter than antimatter in the universe. Scientists just spotted it in a new place.
In a groundbreaking study, scientists at Brookhaven National Lab uncovered a new phase of matter dubbed “half ice, half fire” — a bizarre mix of cold, orderly electron spins and hot, chaotic ones. This discovery flips the script on previously accepted limits in physics and could spark advances in
NASA’s new space telescope, just opened its eyes to the universe and delivered its very first images from space. Though not yet fully calibrated, the images already showcase a sweeping view filled with stars and galaxies — over 100,000 sources in each frame.
SPHEREx detects invisible infrared light and splits it into 102 hues to reveal secrets about the origins of water, galaxy distances, and even the physics of the early universe. With all systems working and its ultra-chilled detectors focused and functional, the mission promises to revolutionize cosmic surveys by mapping the entire sky multiple times and complementing more focused telescopes like Hubble and Webb.
Nietzsche’s intuition about time’s nature likely emerged from his engagement with contemporary scientific thought, particularly the work of Johann Friedrich Herbart and Roger Joseph Boscovich, whose atomistic theories influenced Nietzsche’s conception of force and matter (Small, 2001). Additionally, Nietzsche’s reading of Heinrich Czolbe and Otto Caspari exposed him to cyclical cosmological theories that were precursors to modern conceptions of cosmological cycles.
More compelling than these historical influences, however, is the philosophical insight Nietzsche demonstrated in recognizing that a truly eternal cosmos with finite configurations must contain repetition. This insight, while not formulated in the mathematical language of relativity, nevertheless grasped a fundamental consequence of infinite time and finite states — one that would later be encoded in physical theory.
The convergence between Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence and modern physics becomes even more significant when we recognize similar conceptions in numerous cultural and religious traditions. This suggests a perennial human intuition about time’s nature that transcends historical and cultural boundaries.
A long-simmering disagreement over the universe’s present-day expansion rate shows no signs of resolution, leaving experts increasing ly vexed.
By Anil Ananthaswamy edited by Lee Billings
Over the past decade, two very different ways of calculating the rate at which the universe is expanding have come to be at odds, a disagreement dubbed the Hubble tension, after 20th-century astronomer Edwin Hubble. Experts have speculated that this dispute might be temporary, stemming from subtle shortcomings in observations or analyses that will eventually be corrected rather than from some flawed understanding of the physics of the cosmos. Now, however, a new study that relies on an independent measure of the properties of galaxies has strengthened the case for the tension. Quite possibly, it’s here to stay.
“I give you God’s view,” said Toby Cubitt, a physicist turned computer scientist at University College London and part of the vanguard of the current charge into the unknowable, and “you still can’t predict what it’s going to do.”
Eva Miranda, a mathematician at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Spain, calls undecidability a “next-level chaotic thing.”
Undecidability means that certain questions simply cannot be answered. It’s an unfamiliar message for physicists, but it’s one that mathematicians and computer scientists know well. More than a century ago, they rigorously established that there are mathematical questions that can never be answered, true statements that can never be proved. Now physicists are connecting those unknowable mathematical systems with an increasing number of physical ones and thereby beginning to map out the hard boundary of knowability in their field as well.
Don’t judge space junk’s potential for destruction using your Earthly instincts: Traveling at tens of thousands of miles per hour in space, even a small object has the potential to inflict major damage. In one incident that demonstrates that fact of physics, a 2mm piece of space once junk put a 5cm-wide dent in a climate satellite. A modest move up the scale brings much more power: “A one-centimeter piece of debris has the energy of a hand grenade,” ESA’s Tiago Soares told DW.
In an ominous 2009 incident, a Russian Cosmos satellite collided with an Iridium satellite, creating a cloud of about 2,000 pieces of junk measuring 10cm or more. That’s brings us to the nightmare scenario that should fill you with dread: The Kessler Effect. Imagine an initial major impact that creates hundreds of shards, which then start colliding with more orbiting objects, setting off a chain reaction. Actually, you don’t need your imagination. While some scientists say it wasn’t fully accurate in depicting the physics, Hollywood ventured to depict the Kessler Effect in the 2013 movie, Gravity:
A team of physicists has made groundbreaking observations in a semiconductor-based time crystal by periodically driving it with light. As the frequency was altered, the system transitioned from perfect synchronization to complex chaos, forming structures known as the Farey tree and the devil’s st
UNSW researchers interrogated the ‘sounds’ of a cluster of stars within the Milky Way, uncovering a new technique for astrophysicists to probe the universe and learn more about its evolution.