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BREAKING : Astronomers just discovered an extreme supermassive black hole lurking at the edge of the universe

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Astronomers from the University of Texas and the University of Arizona have discovered a fast-growing black hole in one of the most extreme galaxies known at the edge of the Universe.

The discovery of the galaxy and the black hole at its center provide new clues about the formation of the first supermassive black holes. The new work is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Using observations made with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), a radio observatory located in Chile, the team has determined that the galaxy, named COS-87259, containing this new supermassive black hole is very extreme, forming stars at a rate of 1,000 times more than our Milky Way and containing more than a billion solar masses of interstellar dust. The galaxy shines as much from this intense burst of star formation as from the growing supermassive black hole at its center.

 The black hole is considered to be a new type of primordial black hole, heavily covered in cosmic “dust”, emitting almost all of its light in the mid-infrared of the electromagnetic spectrum. Researchers have also discovered that this growing supermassive black hole (often called the active galactic nucleus) generates a powerful jet of material that travels at close to the speed of light through its host galaxy.

Today, at the center of almost every galaxy are black holes with masses millions to billions of times that of our Sun. How these supermassive black holes formed remains a mystery to scientists, especially since several of these objects have been found when the Universe was very young. Because light from these sources takes so long to reach us, we see them as they existed in the past; in this case, just 750 million years after the Big Bang, which is roughly 5% of the current age of the Universe.

What is most surprising about this new object is that it has been detected in a relatively small area of ​​the sky (less than 10 times the size of the full Moon), suggesting that there could be thousands of similar sources in the early Universe. This is a totally unexpected finding from previous data.

The only other class of supermassive black holes we knew of in the early Universe were quasars, active black holes relatively poorly hidden by cosmic dust. These quasars are extremely rare at distances similar to that of COS-87259, with only a few dozen located across the entire sky. The surprising discovery of COS-87259 and its black hole raises several questions about the abundance of very early supermassive black holes, as well as the types of galaxies in which they typically form.

Ryan Endsley, lead author of the paper and now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas said in a statement: “These results suggest that early supermassive black holes were often heavily obscured by dust, perhaps as a consequence of intense activity. of star formation in their host galaxies. This is something that others have been predicting for some years now, and it’s nice to see the first direct observational evidence supporting this scenario.”

Similar objects have been found in the more local current Universe, such as Arp 299 shown here. In this system, two galaxies collide with each other generating an intense starburst, as well as a strong dimming of the growing supermassive black hole in one of the two galaxies.

Endsley adds: “While no one expected to find this type of object in the early Universe, its discovery is a step towards a much better understanding of how billion-solar-mass black holes could have formed so early in the life of the Universe, as well as how the most massive galaxies first evolved.”

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Former US Air Force fighter pilot: UFOs use Star Trek-style warp drive

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A former US Air Force fighter pilot asserts that he has deciphered
the method behind the extraordinary maneuvers of UFOs, reports dailystar.co.uk.

Over
the past two decades, numerous military encounters with these enigmatic
crafts have been reported, prompting a significant investigation by the
Pentagon.

One of the most renowned sightings occurred during the
USS Nimitz encounter, where fighter pilots witnessed a UFO descending
from 28,000 feet to just above sea level in less than a second.

This
astonishing movement would imply that the craft reached a staggering
speed of 19,000 miles per hour, a velocity that would be fatal to any
human pilot.

According
to Chris Lehto, a former USAF pilot, the craft exhibits two key
characteristics: it moves without inertia, essentially lacking weight,
and it accelerates at an incredibly rapid pace without affecting its
surroundings.

Image: NATO Allied Air Command/Facebook

Chris
believes that the explanation lies within a technology that seems
straight out of science fiction. He proposes that the answer to the UFO
enigma lies in the Alcubierre Drive, a theoretical interstellar engine
conceptualized by Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994.

The
Alcubierre Drive employs a form of “space warp” technology, reminiscent
of what has been depicted in episodes of Star Trek. By bending space, a
craft inside a “warp bubble” could potentially travel at or even
surpass the speed of light without violating the known laws of physics.

While
the Alcubierre Drive remains a hypothetical concept with challenges to
overcome, Chris notes that the required energy is no longer believed to
be unattainably large.

Patents
filed with the US patent office outline the potential workings of the
drive, as well as another groundbreaking technology theorized by
American aerospace engineer Salvatore Pais.

Pais suggests that
high-powered rotating magnets could theoretically eliminate an object’s
inertia, and he has filed a patent for a starship based on this
principle.

However, Chris maintains skepticism regarding Pais’
theory. He explains that while Pais’s patent applications for the US
Navy attracted attention for their potential energy-related
applications, doubts have been raised about their feasibility. There is
speculation that they may be scams, pseudoscience, or disinformation
intended to mislead adversaries of the United States.

Alternatively,
rival theories propose that the “Tic Tac” UFO is a classified Pentagon
project testing similar advanced technologies discussed by Chris.

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A Mysterious Earth-Like Planet Has Just Appeared in Our Solar System, Scientists Say

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Scientists say they have found evidence of a new Earth-like
planet that has suddenly appeared in our Solar System and is orbiting
the Sun.

Physicists, including those from the National Astronomical Observatory
of Japan, said the planet is likely to be the mysterious ‘Planet Nine’
that was hypothesised to exist in the far outer edges of the Solar
System.

Several studies in the past have suggested there is likely an
undiscovered planet beyond the Kuiper Belt – a stellar disk of materials
such as asteroids, space rocks, comets around the Sun in the outer
Solar System past the orbit of Neptune.

Independent.co.uk reports: In the new research, published recently in The Astronomical Journal, scientists
found that some of the objects in the Kuiper Belt behave in a way
indicative of the presence of a small planet among them.

One such object, they said, is about 500 astronomical units (AU) from
the Sun, where 1 AU is the distance between the Sun and the Earth.

In comparison Neptune is at a distance of 30 AUs from the Sun.

Some of these were also found to have “odd” orbits suggesting they
are being pull by the gravity of a cosmic entity larger than those that
typically influence such objects.

Computer simulations run by the scientists indicate that the most
likely explanation for the observations was another hidden planet in the
Kuiper Belt.

“We predict the existence of an Earth-like planet,” researchers wrote in the study.

“It is plausible that a primordial planetary body could survive in
the distant Kuiper Belt as a Kuiper Belt planet (KBP), as many such
bodies existed in the early solar system,” they added.

If such a planet exists, researchers say it would have a mass about
1.5 to 3 times that of Earth with an inclination of about 30 degrees.

They say the theorised planet’s orbit would likely place it between 250 and 500 AU from the Sun.

Researchers say the discovery of such a planet close to the Kuiper
Belt can unravel new constraints on planet formation and evolution.

“In conclusion, the results of the KBP scenario support the existence
of a yet-undiscovered planet in the far outer solar system,” scientists
noted.

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