Dark matter is everywhere. There is way more of it in the universe than the matter we are made of and interact with. Yet for the sheer amount of it, we have no way of determining what exactly it is. It’s as if we didn’t know what air was, and even though we could see it and breathe it, we couldn’t measure it. The most tantalizing part about dark matter is that we can see the gravitational effect it has, and so we can determine how much of it there has to be. Some places in the universe have more dark matter than...
Time is a very slow thing when we talk about the universe. Stars can live for many Billions of years, and over human timescales they seem stagnant and unchanging. So it’s no surprise that when we look at distant galaxies, they don’t appear to change at all over the course of centuries. But appearances can be deceiving. Galaxies do change, more quickly than you would imagine. M87, pictured above, is a monstrous Galaxy of nearly 1 Trillion stars, more than twice as populous as the Milky Way. It looks like a big fuzzy star, and it quite regular in appearance...
A couple of weeks ago, using the Subaru Telescope, astronomers from the Carnegie Institution for Science discovered the newest dwarf planet of our solar system, which may end up claiming the title for most distant dwarf planet. The object, which isn’t even confirmed as a dwarf planet yet, is called V774104. It resides a distance of 2-3 times that of Pluto, around 9 Billion Km. It is expected to be a little less than half of Pluto’s size, and it may have a highly eccentric orbit, bringing it closer to the Sun over it’s multi-century trip around the solar system. “That’s...
New science has come forward from a team of astronomers who, earlier this year, discovered a pair of black holes in a close orbit, heading toward a cataclysmic merger. The new results suggest that this incredibly powerful collision will occur much sooner than previously thought, as little as 100,000 years from now (A blip on the radar of astronomical timescales). By precisely calculating the individual and relative masses of the black holes, the team was able to predict how the merger would take place, giving a time line for the collision. The astronomers, from Columbia University, saw bright flashes of light...
Welcome to a new series of posts that will characterize 1000 amazing facts about the Universe. There is so much out there that we have yet to learn, and every day, astronomers across the globe are using their research to reveal the deepest secrets of the cosmos. This series will look at the strangest, coolest, most exciting facts that we have discovered in hundreds of years of modern science. Fact #3: The Universe is made of a ridiculous amount of nothing. What is everything made of? The answer will change depending on how much education you have. For most of...
I was doing my daily check of some astronomy and space news sites to see what was happening today, as I do every morning before I decide what to write about in my daily blog post. I looked at today’s astronomy picture of the day, a gorgeous work of astrophtographic art showing Mt.Rainier and dozens of meteors, all in front of the sharp filaments of gas of the Milky Way. As a newbie in the world of astrophotography, I look at this picture and try to think about how it was done. Did he take a foreground shot to get...
Welcome to a new series of posts that will characterize 1000 amazing facts about the Universe. There is so much out there that we have yet to learn, and every day, astronomers across the globe are using their research to reveal the deepest secrets of the cosmos. This series will look at the strangest, coolest, most exciting facts that we have discovered in hundreds of years of modern science. Fact #2: There are more Galaxies than you could possibly count. Our night sky is jam-packed with stars. If you’ve ever left the city to go far beyond the reach of...
One of the big questions in astrophysics is about variation of the laws of Physics. The laws we know and are familiar with; angular momentum, gravity, energy, are the same everywhere on Earth. But what about beyond Earth? The universe is so large and so vast, we may be in a local region where the laws of Physics are set, and our laws may be different from a distinct region somewhere else in the universe. The good news is that we can make predictions based on our understanding of physics. And with our powerful telescopes that allow us to view a variety of...
Categorizing objects in the universe can be difficult. The fiasco with Pluto over the last decade is more than proof of that. We generally look to location and then to size as the two main methods for classifying the stuff that permeates the cosmos. Galaxies contain stars, which host orbiting planets, which host orbiting moons; While asteroids fly in between planets and icy comets are wander through the outskirts of star systems. But what about the in-between objects? Often we find strange things in strange places. There are moons in our solar system that are larger than planets. What would...
I just discovered a new YouTube channel that has been running for awhile. It has astronomers from all over the world who talk about their work on the biggest and most intense pieces of telescope technology that we have on this Earth. If you have a bit of time, a bit being about 15 minutes, you’ll want to check it out!
