It's Full of Stars

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Universe expansion is slowing down, new study says

A new research, published at the Classical and Quantum Gravity journal, says the universe’s expansion is apparently decelarating - in opposition to what present theories on Dark Energy say.

The study was developed by Brazilian astronomer Antônio Cândido de Camargo Guimarães, at Universidade de São Paulo, in Brazil.

Guimarães says that the still accelarating expansion of the universe has been a consensus  for ten years, after the observation os supernovas 1a explosions. To understand the expansion, scientists established the Lambda-CDM model - which is based on the existence of Dark Energy: a mysterious force that occupies 70% of the universe (the rest would be 26% Dark Matter and 4% matter).

The astronomer used a cosmographic approach to study the expansion, avoiding any model that takes Dark Energy as a certainty: a method based on supernovas speed of withdrawal.

Thus, Guimarães concluded that the expansion still happening, but in a slower pace than present theories preach. This conclusion brings new light over universe expansion and what we used to know about it may not be 100% right.

The research is available here.

Source.

From the Big Bang to life: international workshop debates universe evolution in Rio

From August 15 to 19, scientists from the U.S, South America and Europe gather in Rio de Janeiro to discuss the latests findings on astronomy and universe evolution.

Called The Evolving Universe, the workshop will present  a debate between José Funes, from the Vatican City Obsevatory, and mathematician Paul Schweitzer, to discuss about the relationship between religion and science. Recent researches on astronomy, black holes, birth of galaxies and supernovas are also subjetcs of the workshop.

The Evolving Universe, a partnership among Brazilian universities and Goddard Space Center, is supposed to be an itinerant event. Future editions will take place in Chile and U.S.

Learn more about it here.

Source: Terra.

Weird! Our Universe May Be a ‘Multiverse,’ Scientists Say

Is our universe just one of many? While the concept is bizarre, it’s a real possibility, according to scientists who have devised the first test to investigate the idea.

The potential that we live in a multiverse arises from a theory called eternal inflation, which posits thatshortly after the Big Bang that formed the universe, space-time expanded at different rates in different places, giving rise to bubble universes that may function with their own separate laws of physics.

Keep reading.

Clumps of Cold Stuff Across the Sky

This map illustrates the numerous star-forming clouds, called cold cores, that Planck observed throughout our Milky Way galaxy. Planck, a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation, detected around 10,000 of these cores, thousands of which had never been seen before. Cold cores are chilly chambers of gas and dust where stellar embryos are just beginning to take shape. Some of the cold cores found by Planck are the coldest ever observed, as cold as just seven degrees above absolute zero, or minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit.

Keep reading.

What’s Better Than Finding Aliens? Finding Other Universes

A team of astronomers at London’s University College think they’ve done just that: found evidence of other universes, whole other realms that might have radically different physical laws and where dogs meow and cats front mysterious-cat hardcore bands.

Remember those weird circles Roger Penrose and co. found last month (or announced last month, anyhow) in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation? It’s a pretty remarkable find: possibly “fossils” of a pre-this universe universe in the form of imprints in the CMB. (Though, other teams have since disputed the Penrose findings.)

In any case, the University College team has determined another possibility for that weirdness in the CMB: bruises.

Meaning, we may have detected impact zones between our universe and four others. It has to do with a different perspective of how the universe—and beyond—behaves. Penrose and co. are thinking that it bangs and shrinks and bangs and shrinks an infinite number of times. It’s not among the more accepted theories.

This London group, as detailed in a new paper, is going from the perspective of the eternal, or inflationary, universe, which starts from a bang and just keeps going and everything dies and goes dark, and we live for eternity in a universe of absolute nothing. There is still stuff in that universe forever, but without energy, it’s pretty null; eternal, but a rather cold and dark sort of eternal. (There’s also a theory that in this universe, time just eventually stops altogether.)

So in this universe that expands forever and eventually burns out there’s a period right after the Big Bang of really intense inflation where everything is expanding and cooling at different rates (dictated by quantum fluctuations maybe, but that’s for another time). Those differences translate into basically small bubbles in the expansion of the universe that break off into their own universe. We’re one of these bubbles in a near-endless supply.

And, apparently, we bumped into four others.

So, what now? Who’s right? No one really. Until we get better data from the Plank spacecraft, which is taking better pictures of the CMB as we speak, all of this is just speculation. Which doesn’t make it less juicy.

Source: motherboard.tv.

You can read more about it here, as sent from our follower missingsun!

Einstein’s ‘Biggest Blunder’ Turns Out to Be Right

What Einstein called his worst mistake, scientists are now depending on to help explain the universe.

In 1917, Albert Einstein inserted a term called the cosmological constant into his theory of general relativity to force the equations to predict a stationary universe in keeping with physicists’ thinking at the time. When it became clear that the universe wasn’t actually static, but was expanding instead, Einstein abandoned the constant, calling it the ‘“biggest blunder” of his life.

But…

Read more.

Was the Big Bang Preceded by Another Universe (Which Was Preceded by Another Universe)?

13.7 billion years to get to where we are isn’t enough for renowned physicist Sir Roger Penrose, and now he thinks he can prove that things aren’t/weren’t quite so simple. Drawing on evidence he found in the cosmic microwave background, Penrose says the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning, but one in a series of cyclical Big Bangs, each of which spawned its own universe.

Mind blowing! Read more.

On image above, the Cosmic Microwave Background.

fuckyeahspace:

Astronomers can predict—with what’s thought to be great accuracy—the large-scale structure of the universe. The prediction, shown above, is made using the observable universe as a model and by factoring in things like expansion, chaos and dark forces. The purple in this picture is dark matter; the yellow is ‘normal’ matter (i.e., stars/galaxies/planets, etc.).

Source: Virgo Consortium [1,2], George Smoot via TED.

To add a bit of clarity to George Smoot’s talk:

1. The Earth is not at the center of the universe and neither is the Milky Way. He is unclear here, but he’s speaking of the observable universe.
2. His talk is not about the shape of the universe and the universe is not spherical. He is, again, speaking of the observable universe. The shape of the universe is an unanswered question in theoretical cosmology that I will never discuss here because it’s way too complicated to be understood by anyone, really, including theoretical cosmologists.