Today’s stories include The Startling Implications of the CFrom the osmic Graviton Background to The Missing Plan For Alien First Contact and many other things,
Astronomers Discover Earth’s Nearest Black HoleAccording to Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics “Astronomers have discovered the closest black hole to Earth, which the researchers have dubbed Gaia BH1. The dormant black hole weighs about 10 times the mass of the Sun and is located about 1600 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, making it three times closer to Earth than the previous record holder, an X-ray binary in the constellation of Monoceros.”
Is cosmic inflation possible to rule out?The University of Cambridge asks. “The astrophysicists, from the University of Cambridge, the University of Trento, and Harvard University, say that there is a clear, unambiguous signal in the cosmos which could eliminate inflation as a possibility. Their paper, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, argues that this signal – known as the cosmic graviton background (CGB) – can feasibly be detected, although it will be a massive technical and scientific challenge.”
Researchers reveal a galaxy sparkling with the universe’s oldest star clusters,JosslynJohnstone reports, University of Toronto. “A team of Canadian astronomers, including experts from the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts & Science, have used the James Webb Telescope (JWST) to identify the most distant globular clusters ever discovered—dense groups of millions of stars that may be relics containing the first and oldest stars in the universe.”
Astronomers Discover a New and Very Infuriating Solution to The Fermi ParadoxIFL Science reports. “Given that our galaxy is around 13.6 billion years old, it’s puzzling that there is no evidence that we have found of extraterrestrial civilizations. In fact, the paper argues, the absence of aliens on Earth could be seen as evidence that there is no alien life out there.”
Unidentified Zone of the Universe: Extragalactic Structure DetectedFuturism. Due to stars and dust around the supermassive blackhole in the center of our galaxy, the famous zone obscures 10-20 percent of the sky.
The missing plan for alien contact. BBC Future reports. “”Finding life or making contact is always going to be highly unlikely until the day we do [it],” says John Zarnecki, emeritus professor of space sciences at the Open University in the UK. “It reminds me of exoplanets: as a young researcher, it was a topic we talked about, and we all suspected exoplanets were out there, but there was no way that we’d ever find one because it was technically far too difficult.”
The New Hope of a Dream of Finding Alien LifeQuanta.com reports that decades of planning by Lisa Kaltenegger, her generation of exoplanet-astronomers, have created the conditions for an epochal detection. “In simulating ersatz Earths and more speculative visions of living planets, Kaltenegger leverages the bizarre life and geology found on Earth to develop a more systematic set of expectations about what might be possible elsewhere.”
An Antarctic neutrino telescope detected a signal coming from the heart of an active galaxy--In results published today in Science, the IceCube collaboration reports the detection of neutrinos from an “active galaxy” called NGC 1068, which lies some 47 million light-years from Earth.lescope has detected a signal from the heart of a nearby active galaxy, reports The Conversation.
Four theories that could lead faster than light travel–-Since 1994, when Mexican mathematician Miguel Alcubierre proposed a mathematically viable solution for building a real-world faster-than-light warp drive, numerous scientists and engineers have taken a swing at their own version of a viable, real-world warp drive, including an attempt to patent one of these “out there” ideas.
How planets can be used as an anti-aging solution for starsAccording to Phys.org. “Planets can force their host stars to act younger than their age, according to a new study of multiple systems using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This may be the best evidence to date that some planets apparently slow down the aging process for their host stars.”
Scientists discover largest gas cloud in space that’s 20 times bigger than the Milky Way, reports Elizabeth Rayne for Space.com–Glowing in the Pegasus constellation are five apparently closely packed galaxies known as Stephan’s Quintet, whispering the secrets of galactic evolution to scientists.
Sensors Deep Under Antarctic Ice Located a Source of ‘Ghost Particles’ from Space–Scientists used data from sensors under one mile of ice in the South Pole to to track down one of the biggest mysteries in the universe, reports Vice Science.
The Daily Galaxy Editorial Staff curated this article
Your free daily fix of stories of space and science –a random journey from Planet Earth through the Cosmos– that has the capacity to provide clues to our existence and add a much needed cosmic perspective in our Anthropocene epoch.
Yes, Sign Me Up for “The Galaxy Report” Newsletter
