Latest Universe Stories
UK astronomers have produced the most sensitive infrared map of the distant Universe ever undertaken. Combining data over a period of three years, they have produced an image containing over 100,000 galaxies over an area four times the size of the full Moon. Some of the first results from this project will be presented by Dr Sebastien Foucaud from the University of Nottingham on Friday 4th April at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast. Due to the finite speed of light, these...
Using the most sensitive images ever obtained with the United Kingdom Infra-Red Telescope (UKIRT), astronomers have found convincing evidence that galaxies which look old early in the history of the Universe reside in enormous clouds of invisible dark matter and will eventually evolve into the most massive galaxies that exist in the present day.University of Nottingham PhD student Will Hartley, who led the study, will speak at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast on Tuesday 1...
The universe as we currently know it is made up of three dimensions of space and one of time, but researchers in the Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech are exploring the possibility of an extra dimension. Sounds like an episode from the "Twilight Zone." Almost, but not quite; according to John Simonetti, associate professor of physics in the College of Science and Michael Kavic, graduate student and one of the investigators on the...
Blacksburg, Va. -- The universe as we currently know it is made up of three dimensions of space and one of time, but researchers in the Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech are exploring the possibility of an extra dimension. Sound like an episode from the "Twilight Zone"" Almost, but not quite; according to John Simonetti, associate professor of physics in the College of Science and Michael Kavic, graduate student and one of...
The two biggest mysteries in cosmology may be one. A new theory says that dark matter and dark energy could arise from a single dark fluid that permeates the whole universe. And this could mean Earth-based dark matter searches will come up empty. Dark matter, as originally hypothesized, is extra hidden mass that astrophysicists calculate is necessary for holding together fast-turning galaxies. The most popular notion is that this matter is made of some yet-to-be-identified particle that has...
Astronomers have used ESO's Very Large Telescope to measure the distribution and motions of thousands of galaxies in the distant Universe. This opens fascinating perspectives to better understand what drives the acceleration of the cosmic expansion and sheds new light on the mysterious dark energy that is thought to permeate the Universe."Explaining why the expansion of the Universe is currently accelerating is certainly the most fascinating question in modern cosmology," says Luigi Guzzo,...
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Ancient light absorbed by neutral hydrogen atoms could be used to test certain predictions of string theory, say cosmologists at the University of Illinois. Making the measurements, however, would require a gigantic array of radio telescopes to be built on Earth, in space or on the moon.String theory "“ a theory whose fundamental building blocks are tiny one-dimensional filaments called strings "“ is the leading contender for a "theory of everything." Such a theory...
Our universe is a mess — a colossal "cosmic web" of galaxies strung into filaments and tendrils that are millions or billions of light-years long. Although this web's basic structure is resolved, astronomers say understanding it in more detail requires new observatories, better computing and a lot of luck. "When you look into a large telescope, the reality of the cosmic web hits you in the face because you can see how galaxies are organized," said...
With its powerful detectors, Integral has performed the most-sensitive all-sky survey ever, finding expected clumpy areas at large scales in our local universe. Scientists working with ground-based telescopes have found the same local clumps, while looking for sources of cosmic showers.Integral performed the survey in the hard X-ray band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Although it wasn't the first such survey, Integral's strength lies in the fact that it is unbiased towards sources that are...
Cosmologists are always complaining about their inability to find the dark matter in the universe, invisible stuff that's supposedly more prevalent than regular matter. They don't even know what it is, so of course they can't see it. Meantime, a whole bunch of normal matter is missing, too. A new computer model at least suggests where some of that missing normal matter might be. Regular vs. dark Regular matter—the "visible" atoms and molecules of dirt, people, stars, gas and...
Latest Universe Reference Libraries
Image Caption: The Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF) was completed in September 2012 and shows the farthest galaxies ever photographed by humans. Each speck of light in the photo is an individual galaxy, some of them as old as 13.2 billion years; the observable universe is estimated to contain more than 200 billion galaxies. Credit: NASA/Wikipedia What is Cosmology? I once commented to an acquaintance that I was fascinated by the field of Cosmology, and mused that if I had more time, I...
Physics is a natural science involving the study of matter and its motion through space-time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. On a broader scale, it also involves the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy. Physics was part of natural philosophy until the Scientific Revolution in the 16th century, when the natural...
Centaurus Constellation -- Centaurus (the centaur) was one of the 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy, and counts also among the 88 modern constellations. A constellation of the southern hemisphere, mentioned by Eudoxus (4th century B.C.) and Aratus (3rd century B.C.), Ptolemy catalogued thirty-seven stars in it. It contains Proxima Centauri, the red dwarf that is the nearest known star (other than the Sun) to Earth, as well as Alpha Centauri, which is a double star to which Proxima...
Large-Scale Structure of the Cosmos -- Stars are organised into galaxies which in turn appear to form clusters and superclusters, separated by voids. Prior to 1989 it was commonly assumed that the superclusters were the largest structures in existence, and that they were distributed more-or-less uniformly throughout the universe in every direction. However, in 1989, Margaret Geller and John Huchra discovered the "Great Wall", a sheet of galaxies more than 500 million light years long...
Cosmology -- area of science that aims at a comprehensive theory of the structure and evolution of the entire physical universe. Modern Cosmological Theories Present models of the universe hold two fundamental premises: the cosmological principle and the dominant role of gravitation. Derived by Hubble, the cosmological principle holds that if a large enough sample of galaxies is considered, the universe looks the same from all positions and in all directions in space. The second point...
