Black Holes are one of the most fascinating objects in the universe. It is an object so dense that not even light can escape it’s gravity(hence the “black” part). This may not seem too interesting to someone who isn’t well versed in Physics, but to those who know, the speed of the light is the speed limit of the universe. Nothing can travel faster than light, so once something goes near enough to the black hole, thats the end, no coming back. On top of just being cool over the past 20 years or so we are coming to learn that there is a black hole at the center of almost every galaxy. Not your average stellar mass black hole either. These objects are millions of times more massive than our own sun. Since stars are basically capped at 100 times as massive as the sun, there has long been some debate as to how these massive objects formed. The leading theory is that they simply gobbled up stars around them, and now supercomputers are helping scientists to understand just how such a mighty black hole quenches its thirst. By studying flares of light at the center of distant galaxies, scientists are now starting the understand the processes of which stars that stray too close to the galactic center are destroyed. Because Black Holes by nature produce no light, they are impossible to study unless they interact with something else. Even when they do it, there is so much going on that the calculations would be far too hard for a human to carry our, that’s where supercomputers come in. By using the new computers, scientists are able to consider all the variables in the complicated that is the extreme tidal forces of the Black Hole first ripping apart and then consuming the star. 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140414150848.htm

Scientists have announced that they have spotted the first direct evidence of an exo-mooon, or a moon orbiting a planet outside our own Solar System. The chance came from a chance happening of gravitational lensing, an effect of relativity, which makes things very far away appear to be much closer than they are, like looking through a lens. The lensing won’t happen again, so it will be impossible to confirm this new discovery, only the one data set exists, although scientist think that this type of event isn’t too uncommon so we will be able to observe events just like it. This certainly points to the fact that exo-moons exist, which is exciting but also should be obvious. We constantly like to think of our Solar System as being special, but the more we learn about the heavens the more this hubris betrays us. It wasn’t all that long ago that people actually thought that exoplanets would be incredibly rare if they existed at all, but this has recently been show to be quite ridiculous. There are planets rotating around trillions and trillons of stars and through our humble efforts so far we have managed to spot thousands, all in the span of 20 years. Our Solar System has hundreds of moons, so why should other Solar Systems be any different. Discoveries like this are the beginning of the end of the special-Solar System worldview, and it is quite entertaining to see it be torn apart, because it allows for so much diversity to exist throughout the universe. 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140412094104.htm

Scientists have long speculated about how are own moon formed. The current theory is the Impact Theory. It goes like this. When the Earth was still molten, a Mars sized orbit crashed into the moon, shooting out molten material into orbit around the earth. This coalesced into what is now our Moon. Now, it seems, we are witnessing the formation of a new Moon in our Solar System. At the edge of Saturn’s brilliant ring system, the Cassini Spacecraft has spotted what appears to be an icy object, about a kilometer in diameter, drifting into an orbit of its own. This motion is consistent with the current theory of how Saturn’s icy moons formed. (Remember Enceladus, just much smaller). While the process of moon formation around Saturn, with it’s huge gravity and immense ring system, is far different from that on Earth, this development is no less fascinating. The Cassini spacecraft has given us some treats during its study of Saturn, from the hexagonal storm at its pole, to this unbelievably cool photo of earth shown below. Now it seems, we are in for another one. A first in human history, the formation of a moon.

In Greek mythology Europa was a Phoenician woman who was abducted by a bull who was actually Zeus. Europe is also named after her. Enceladus was one of the Gigante, the children of the Gaia, a Titan. So what do these two mythological figures have to do with anything. Well they are both the names of moons in our solar system. Enceladus is a moon of Saturn, and Europe is one of the Galilean Moons of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo. But these moons are not your average floating rock in space, they are the locations of large oceans. Enceladus’ ocean was only recently confirmed using gravitational data from Cassini’s most recent pass-by of the moon. The oceans are caused by a phenomenon called tidal flexing. Much like the moon moving our oceans back and forth, the gravity of Jupiter and Saturn pulls hard, back and forth on the moons that rotate around it. However, since the mass of these two gas giants is so immense compared to the moons, the pull is able to keep the rocky cores of the moon molten, and melt ice on the planet. To the naked eye, each moon looks like a giant snowball with cracks in it, but below is a ocean of liquid water. Both moons are now considered to be the prime candidates for the life in our solar system, and the race is now on to see which one travel to first. Europa was first, and naturally would be hit quite hard by the news of any perceived dismissal of interest towards it, but Enceladus has a distinct advantage. The icy crust on Enceladus is much thinner. Thinner ice means less drilling, and an easier mission, less cost. Whichever one wins out, scientist and space enthusiasts alike are awaiting which of these water worlds( don’t read the Kevin Costner movie) we will travel to first. Either should provide us with a good chance of confirming that we are not alone in this universe, and that’s pretty cool. 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140403142019.htm

Scientist have used the Hubble Space Telescope(the one that gives you all those cool pictures of distant Nebulas and Galaxies) to extend our ability to accurately measure the heavens by 10 times.  The new technique, called spatial scanning, is combined with Astronomical Parallax, the long used technique, to increase our ability to measure astronomical objects astronomically.[ sorry 🙂 ] Astronomical parallax is a technique similar to the parallax used by land surveyors on Earth. It involves taking pictures of a distant at 2 different locations, and using their apparent position and some trigonometry to calculate distances. Since Astronomical distances are so vast, we have to take pictures on the other side of the Sun instead of just a couple of miles away. By combing this technique with the new technique of Spatial Spanning, scientist are improving our ability to measure, and thus our understanding, of the the Universe. What is so amazing is that its the Hubble Space Telescope at it again. It was initially launched in 1990, and the last servicing of the telescope came in 2009, yet it still continues to provide us with invaluable scientific data. Talking heads like to complain about space expenses, but clearly, we are getting our moneys worth with this one. It has long served as a public resource, and anyone can apply for Hubble time. There are also still major missions planned with the telescope, and it is expected to continue to operate until about its 30th birthday.

On April 14th, Space X’s Dragon spacecraft launches towards the International Space Station. If you remember from last year maybe, Space X became famous for being the first private space company to be contracted by NASA to deliver cargo to the ISS. This comes as a relief to space enthusiast and normal people who were sad, and distressed, as Congress continually cut funding from NASA on a yearly basis. Now that the private sector has jumped in on space exploration, the stalling of humans discovery of the natural world has come to an end. The experiment for which Space X has been called upon this time is both very interesting and vital to the future of manned exploration. See, the thing is, space travel isn’t all that healthy. Our bodies simply made to not feel the relentless tug or gravity, and the constant free fall of orbit does some weird things to Astronauts. Coupled with the much larger amounts of radiation received by our zero G scientist flying above us, perfectly healthy astronauts can return to Earth a bit out of whack. But this shouldn’t worry you, overall they’re fine. However these effects provide us with data to study the way humans are affected by space travel, and this knowledge will help us out in the long term when the human race turns its attention to the outer reaches of space. Dragon is also bringing some plantlife up to the station, that the astronauts will be growing in order to further study plant growth in space. Both of these studies could ultimately be vital if you believe like me that our long term survival might be contingent on our ability to blast of this, our most precious of rocks and land on a new one, however far away.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140414103310.htm  

Ever heard of Nicolaus Copernicus. Of course you have, he’s the 16th century mathematician and astronomer who proposed the Heliocentric model. In fact, Copernicus wasn’t the first to propose the Heliocentric( or Sun at the center) model of the solar system. Astro-hipsters will recollect all the way back in the 3rd Century BC, before their was even the pope to rebel against, Aristarchus of Samos was telling folks that the Earth rotated around the Sun and not the other way around. So why are we talking about long dead people who proposed very obvious theories. Well, despite the new Geocentric movie that is coming out (check it out if you haven’t already, pretty classic), the National Science Foundation also did a study that included a question about whether the Sun rotated around the Earth or the Earth around the Sun. And guess what happened. 1/4 Americans are apparently under the impression that the Sun orbits around the Earth. At first, this might make you laugh, it did for me at least, but the longer you think about it the more disturbing this is. For god’s sake, its the 21st century folks. Maybe Copernicus didn’t put the debate to bed, in truth his predictions for the orbits were actually less accurate than Geocentric models, because he thought the planets orbited in circles and not ellipses. But Galileo, and then Kepler, and then Newton, did put this to bed. And that was all before America was even a country. America, and the world, currently face a crisis with regards to climate change, caused by a scientifically illiterate populous and congress who have yet to heed the warnings of the scientific community as we are constantly warned of our unsustainable track. But maybe the problem is more basic. Global Climate Change is a lot harder to understand than gravity, at least the basics of both, maybe what Americans need is a focus on basic science education in order to deal with the larger problems of our society. At the very least, Obama should have a big announcement tomorrow that the Earth, and all the other planets, rotate around the Sun. Actually, maybe that wouldn’t help, that would probably lead to half of Americans thinking the Sun rotated around the Earth and their was just a big conspiracy to convince us otherwise. 

http://time.com/7809/1-in-4-americans-thinks-sun-orbits-earth/

Scientists studying the atmosphere’s of White Dwarfs made an interesting announcement recently. After studying the spectra of hot young white dwarfs, scientists from the University of Leicester and the University of Arizona can now speak  more closely to the atmospheres of these objects. For those who are not aware, White Dwarfs are the remnants of Sun like stars. The are comprised of a core of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, the byproducts of hydrogen and helium fusion during their lifetime on the main sequence. The core then collapses, to about the size of the Earth, and what is left is a dense core of metals(and astronomical term for anything thats not hydrogen or helium) and a think atmosphere still comprised of hydrogen and helium. But the spectra of these exotic stars atmospheres had led to something strange. Higher contents of metals were observed in the atmosphere than what was expected. Was this due to some convective force bringing up material from the White Dwarf’s core, or was there some other source for the metals being observed in the atmosphere. 

According to the new research. It turns out that the source of these metals seem to be rocky planets. The levels of Carbon, Silicon, and Iron detected is exactly what you would expect if the star was absorbing earth like planets, and it seems that is indeed what they are doing. This discovery not only leaves us with an interesting end game for earth, but also provides us with a new tool for the fate of the earth. According to most calculations anyway, the earth will be destroyed by the Sun long before the Sun becomes a White Dwarf, but whether our precious metals stick around in the Sun’s atmosphere is a topic of debate. This discovery however, allows us to study the composition of extrasolar rocky planets like we have never before. Rocky planets as we now know are very common in the universe, but they are so small that it is hard to confirm their existence in faraway galaxies. Even after detecting them, knowing their composition is an entirely different matter. Stars compositions have long been studied using their spectra, or certain wavelengths of light that are absorbed and emitted from elements switching through energy states, but for rocky planets, this is impossible. First, no one has directly imaged a terrestrial exoplanet, and even if you could, you probably wouldn’t see much besides atmospheric spectra. Now by studying the atmosphere of white dwarfs, fairly common in the Galaxy, we can now tell the internal compositions of faraway terrestrial planets, which in turn allows us to compare with our own terrestrial planets and further our understanding of Solar Systems and the planets inside them.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140326092240.htm 

Actually, they probably don’t either. Or, more accurately, if they do know they probably can’t get to us.

Ever since humankind has figured out what the heavens are,  there have been those who have looked up at the sky and wondered if we are alone. The truth is, not too long ago the idea that our Solar System was inhabited not only by life, but by intelligent civilizations. was not ridiculous fantasy, but the object of speculation. This idea was perpetuated by science fiction, most notably H.G. Wells and his famous book turned radio play War of the Worlds. Through little advertising and a convincing, news cast approach to the story, H.G. Wells was able to, accidentally, convince thousands of people that the earth was under attack from a hyper-intelligent martians, leading to a considerable amount of panic. Since the 1970’s however, specifically the Viking missions, we have known that Mars is actually quite lifeless and barren. This of course, did not quench our thirst for knowledge, did it damage the egos of those who continued to look for life.

According the Kepler Space telescope, the premier planet telescope, 1 in 5 stars in the universe are orbited by a potentially habitable, earth size planet. What does this mean for chances of life outside our precious solar system. It means that it’s not only very likely, but would be almost impossible to have not occurred  already. It is estimated that amount of stars in the universe are on the order of 10^24, which is a 1 with 24 zeros following. If 1 and 5 of these has a potentially habitable planet, the idea that we are the only planet similar to ours that could harbor self replicating matter is not only ridiculous, but frankly insulting to someones intelligence. We cannot say with certain, of course, what the probability of life existing around a habitable planet is, because we have never found it, but most would agree that this fact is a limitation of current technology, and does not speak to the abundance of life in the universe.

The first exoplanet was discovered in 1994, which means that I am older than the simple fact that planets exist outside of our solar system. Since then, many milestones in exoplanet research have been achieved. Initially, we could only detect planets much larger Jupiter, which is over 300 more times as massive then the earth. It wasn’t until 2010 that we were able to directly image an exoplanet, and these are still the kind of planets that make Jupiter look like a shrimp. Couple this with the fact that the Kepler Space Telescope looks at only a tiny portion of the sky and you realize how incredibly hard it is to detect life.

Finally, we can only look up at the observable universe. This may seem initially quite obvious, but think of this: We see only the light from stars, planets and gas that are close enough to us that light has reached us since the beginning of the universe. The further we look away, the further back in time we peer, and the less like the current universe that part of the universe appears. The truth is, there is another universe out there, unobservable or much more evolved than we see it, each galaxy containing billions of stars, approximately 1/5 of which has a planet similar to ours. Chances are, there are millions, if not billions of alien civilizations looking up at their own sky, with their unique constellations and their owns moons and suns, wondering where we are. But the truth is, they are quite far away, and even if they could find us, they probably won’t be able to get to us.

Does this mean that we should stop looking? Absolutely not. The thing about human curiosity is that it has no bounds. And the search for earth-like planets, like many other searches, yields results other than its primary objective. From combing the data of Kepler we know have thousands of confirmed planets, and even more planet candidates. Each of these has it’s own data regarding its mass, orbit, potential composition and its stars mass. All of this data means we are now able to say things about planets that we were never to be able to say before, and ultimately that’s what its all about. The whole point of this thing called life, wherever it resides in the universe, is the pursuit of the knowledge. So the next time someone asks you what we are spending all this money on, tell them knowledge, and walk away.

Links: http://www.space.com/8680-direct-photo-alien-planet-finally-confirmed.html

http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/page/history

http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2014/04/cern-switch-comic-sans

The universe is oddly uniform. This may seem unimportant to the casual observer, but to Physicists this fact is very odd. The universe is (almost) the same temperature throughout, despite being larger in diameter in light years than the universe is old in years. What does this mean? It means that there is no way that one side of the universe could have interacted with the other. There is simply not enough time for the universe to cool as evenly as it has, which creates a bit of a problem, as Dennis Overbye states in his New York Times Article, it is as if you were to look one mile in every direction and see a cup of coffee that has cooled to the exact temperature. Of course, Physicists haven’t just been been sitting waiting for the solution to drop out the sky(although in some ways that’s how most discoveries in Cosmology take place). The leading theory for this was “inflation” a mysterious force that caused the universe to violently (or less violently depending on which flavor of inflation you prefer) expand at “speeds” faster than the speed of light, giving us the giant, uniform, expanding universe we have today. This model produced telltale signs of its truth in the form of gravitational waves, ripples in space time produced from the chaotic expansion that would still conceivably be lapping on the shores of distant galaxies to this day. There was only one problem, most people thought that the waves would be far too faint to ever be detected. That was all until about a week ago, when scientists operating the the BICEP2 telescope located near the South Pole announced that they had detected what they believed to be those pesky gravitational waves. It is important to note that nothing is every truly confirmed in science, and this is very far from being effectively confirmed. The data has not undergone peer review, that process that separates real science from any Joe writing whatever he wanted on a blog and calling it truth, but if confirmed this discovery will be monumental. According to inflationary theory, Gravitational Waves are the telltale signs of Gravitons, the much doubted and sought after particle that relates Einsteins eloquent theory of Gravitation with Quantum Theory. What does all of this mean for Physics and the future of Physics? Well until now, scientist were pretty good at explaining the nature of 3 out 4 of the Forces in Nature. According to Quantum theory, each force has a particle attached to it that serves as it’s actor. To those who don’t know the 4 fundamental forces are the 2 Nuclear forces, the Strong and the Weak, Electromagnetism, and Gravity. To the layman, Gravity would seem the most familiar. We know that it is what keeps us on the Earth, what keeps the Earth(and all the other Planets) in orbit with the Sun, and what holds Galaxies together. However to the Physicist, gravity has long been the misunderstood. The Standard Model explained the other forces marvelously, but when it came it was a bit stuck. Gravitons were thought to exist but there was no experimental evidence, and what more this theory of Gravity contradicted with Einsteins Theory of General Relativity. According to Einstein gravity was not a force but was a curvature of spacetime. This troubled Physicists, since their is loads of experimental evidence that supports Einstein. However, with the detection of Gravitational Waves there is renewed hope that the two seemingly far apart models may be married. It would seem with this discovery that their is evidence that Gravity may be based off the roll of dice just as everything else in the universe has proved to be. Einstein might be rolling in his grave but this announcement also sets the framework for a New Look Physics that introduces the possibility of discovering some of the nagging questions that have dogged Physicists for sometime, including Dark Matter and Energy, as well as the ultimate fate of our giant, uniform, expanding home that is the Universe.

Links:  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/science/space/ripples-from-the-big-bang.html?ref=science&_r=0

http://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-wave-finding-causes-spring-cleaning-in-physics-1.14910

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/science/space/detection-of-waves-in-space-buttresses-landmark-theory-of-big-bang.html?action=click&module=Search&region=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DSectionFront%26module%3DSearchSubmit%26contentCollection%3Dscience%26t%3Dqry425%23%2FSouth%2BPole%2Fsince1851%2Fallresults%2F1%2Fallauthors%2Fnewest%2F