Astrophysics

What do black holes have to do with the Big Bang? Astrophysics
Aug 11 2022

What do black holes have to do with the Big Bang?

A few milliseconds after the Big Bang, there was apparent chaos in the universe. While particles merged and broke apart again, incredibly strong pressure waves ran through the early cosmos. They pressed the particles so tightly against each other that black holes were formed, today called primordial black holes by astrophysicists. What impact did these black holes have on the formation of the first stars, about a hundred million years later? The Standard Model assumes that black holes at that time favored the formation of halo-like structures through their gravitational pull as condensation nuclei, similar to how clouds are formed…
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How heavy are the stars? Astrophysics
May 29 2022

How heavy are the stars?

R136a1 is currently the heaviest known star. It weighs as much as 265 suns. Most stars, however, are much smaller and lighter - down to about one tenth of the mass of the sun. Celestial bodies that have accumulated too little gas cannot ignite nuclear fusion and remain brown dwarfs. Supergiants like R136a1, on the other hand, glow intensely but die young. How heavy are the stars of the universe on average? This is described by the so-called primordial mass function. It says that heavy stars are much rarer than light ones. So the universe is likely to be…
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Does a hidden mirror universe influence our world? Astrophysics
May 21 2022

Does a hidden mirror universe influence our world?

One of the fundamental parameters of our universe is the Hubble constant H0. It indicates the speed with which distant objects move away from us and thus determines the fate of the entire universe. Today we know that it is not a constant in the strict sense, since H0 changes with time. However, science has a fundamental problem with it. Depending on how it is measured, its value differs. The difference between the measurement methods even grows the more precise the measurements are. If H0 is calculated from the standard model of cosmology (Lambda Cold Dark Matter, ΛCDM), the…
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Topology is everywhere Astrophysics
May 20 2022

Topology is everywhere

Topology is an important branch of mathematics. It deals with such properties of mathematical forms that are preserved under constant deformation (i.e. without tearing or cutting them). Topology is also the basis of the plot in my upcoming Möbius trilogy. The strange artifact in question is a topological construct. As an author, I am naturally delighted when an international team of researchers has now discovered and published in the journal Science that almost all materials in nature have at least one topological state. This contradicts the forty-year-old assumption that topological materials are rare and esoteric. "Topology is everywhere" is…
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Black hole winds are no longer what they used to be Astrophysics
May 12 2022

Black hole winds are no longer what they used to be

In the early times of the universe, black holes in the centers of active galaxies grew much faster than today. Only in this way it can be explained that 500 to thousand million years after the big bang there were already such huge black holes. Today, however, things look different - the black holes at the centers are evolving in parallel with their host galaxies. When and why did this change occur? That's what a study led by three researchers from Italy's National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in Trieste has found, published in the journal Nature. The work is…
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Astronomers discover a new type of stellar explosion: micronovae Astrophysics
Apr 20 2022

Astronomers discover a new type of stellar explosion: micronovae

A team of astronomers has observed a new type of stellar explosion - a micronova - using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). These outbursts occur on the surface of certain stars and consume an amount of stellar material equivalent to the mass of 3.5 billion Cheops pyramids in a few hours. In astronomical terms, this is still small - hence the name. Micronovae are much less energetic than the stellar explosions known as novae. Both types of explosions occur on white dwarfs. "Micronovae challenge our understanding of how thermonuclear explosions occur in stars.…
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Fast growing black hole discovered Astrophysics
Apr 13 2022

Fast growing black hole discovered

Astronomers have known for a while that the centers of most galaxies are home to supermassive black holes. With ever-improving methods of investigation, they have been able to trace these giants far back into the past. They must have existed as early as 750 million years after the Big Bang. This raises one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy today: How could these supermassive black holes, which weigh millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, grow so large so quickly? Current theories hold that supermassive black holes begin their lives in the dust-shrouded cores of galaxies…
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When the universe began to boil Astrophysics
Mar 19 2022

When the universe began to boil

How did the supermassive black holes come into being, which today are gigantic sentinels in the center of many galaxies? Initially, one proceeded from the obvious: The giants grew by accreting other matter or consuming black holes, that is, by merging with them. Step by step, from small to medium to giant. But this concept has a couple of problems. First, we have not yet been able to detect the necessary intermediate stages. They should still exist, but so far we have only found small black holes - or the really big ones. Problem number 2 is that there…
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