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...
The only way we can understand the cosmos is to find new and innovative ways to interpret the light we capture from it. Using the largest and most technologically advanced telescopes in the world, we peer deeper into space, further back in time, and see photons that have spent eons travelling to Earth. If we can get rid of all of the other light from closer objects, and zero in on this distant light, we can begin to understand what was present at the beginning. Using data from deep sky surveys conducted by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers from...
Maybe I am a starry-eyed dreamer, or maybe I just treat astronomy like a little kid opening birthday presents, but every time I see a new Hubble image I am blown away by it. Today’s mind-blowing photo is of Messier 63, the Sunflower Galaxy, located in Canes Venatici. It shows the central region of the galaxy and out tot he spiral arms. The arms are clearly visible due to the bright blue clusters of newly formed stars intermixed with dark patched of thick gas and dust. In between the arms lie older, redder stars. Closest to the centre, the yellowish...
Ask an astronomer what the hardest thing to do is in astronomy, and chances are they will say ‘measuring distance accurately.’ It is surprisingly difficult to take the light from stars we see and match them to a correct distance. In the past we have used several different methods depending on how close a star is to us. For the nearest stars we use parallax, which looks at the change in a star’s position as the Earth is on opposite sides of it’s orbit. All other methods rely on what we call the standard candle approach. Let’s say you had...
Remember that amazing high-def photo of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, from Hubble a few months back? It was able to separate the light from the galaxy into the millions of visible stars that populate its spiral arms. This image is used for far more than the wow factor of seeing another galaxy up close. It allows us to study the entire galaxy and gain insights into the lives of spiral galaxies beyond our own, how they formed, how they evolve, and maybe even how they will eventually die. By looking at the spiral arms of M31, where the youngest and...
The concept of Panspermia is a description of all life in the Galaxy having been seeded by other life, all originating at one point. This life can hitch a ride from star to star on comets, meteorites, and rogue planets. It’s true we have never found evidence for life outside of our own home planet, but if panspermia is a viable theory, it could mean that life is everywhere, just waiting for us to find it. In a new study from astronomers as the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, panspermia creates ‘oases’ where pockets of life form. As life is able...
If you ask someone what the craziest, most powerful, energetic, and enigmatic thing in the universe is, chances are they will say a black hole. After all, we know so little about them, we have never directly seen one, and we can see their influence across space and time. But there is apparently another notch on the crazy powerful cosmic object front. Like turning the volume knob to eleven, a binary system of supermassive black holes has been discovered in a nearby quasar. A quasar is an incredibly bright core of a distant galaxy, shining brighter than the entire galaxy...
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...
Type 1a supernova explosions are used by Astronomers as a standard candle for measuring distances in Astronomy. They all explode with the same intrinsic brightness, and so depending on their apparent magnitude, ie how bright they look, we can determine the distance to them. It’s like a 40 watt light bulb. No matter how far away I move it, it’s still 40 watts, even though it looks dimmer if it’s further away. However, a few months ago some research came forward about type 1a supernova explosions, hinting that there may actually be two or more distinct types with slightly different...
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 #1: The Universe is Far Larger than you Can Possibly Imagine Let’s start with the fastest speed ever travelled by a human being, about 11 Km/s (40,000 Km/h). This is incredibly fast...
