Globular clusters are the oldest visible objects in the Universe – each contains hundreds of thousands to occasionally over one million stars, all born at essentially the same time. They are densely packed into a spherical volume with a diameter over a thousand times smaller than the diameter of the Milky Way Galaxy. Globular clusters are thought to have formed soon after the Universe began nearly 13.8 billion years ago, at the same time as, or perhaps even before, the first galaxies formed.
Stephen Hawking once wrote about black holes that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to the universe. On August 14, 2019, scientists with LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) and the Virgo detector in Italy, discovered of a mystery object of 2.6 solar masses as it merged with a black hole of 23 solar masses, placing it in a gap that lies between neutron stars and black holes.
“Our new discoveries represent much more powerful evidence for very high temperatures that could only be associated with a cosmic impact. To help with perspective, such high temperatures would completely melt an automobile in less than a minute,” said James Kennett, a UC Santa Barbara emeritus professor of geology, who with his colleagues first reported evidence of an event in 2012 of the direct effects of a fragmented comet on a human settlement. Such intensity, he added, could only have resulted from an extremely violent, high-energy, high-velocity phenomenon, something on the order of a cosmic impact.
The Galaxy Report newsletter brings you daily news of space and science that has the capacity to provide clues to the mystery of our existence and add a much needed cosmic perspective in our current Anthropocene Epoch.
Shards of Planet Mercury on Earth to Giant Binary Planets May Make Their Star Systems Ultra-Habitable (The Galaxy Report)
New Insights from a Dark-Matter-Free Galaxy Revives Controversial Gravity Theory (Weekend Feature)
Could An Alien Civilization Change the Laws of Physics to Gravity Powered Batteries (Planet Earth Report)
Our Sun as Never Seen Before (and a New Discovery)Did the Milky Way Lose Its Original Black Hole to Will the James Webb Space Telescope Reveal Another Earth? (The Galaxy Report)
Radio Galaxies of the Early Universe -Would Take Several Million Years to Cross at Speed of Light
Before the “Bang” –The Primordial Universe NASA Probing How Life Began on Earth to Alpha Centauri a Billion Years Older than Our Solar System (The Galaxy Report)“Simultaneously Beautiful and Terrifying” –First Image of Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole to A New Earth Rises (Planet Earth Report)Extraterrestrial Lighthouses to Harvard’s Avi Loeb & Company On Our Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole Image (The Galaxy Report)
