“We always thought of our Galaxy as an inactive galaxy, with a not so bright center,” said Magda Guglielmo from the University of Sydney about 2019 Hubble Space Telescope data showing that a titanic, expanding beam of energy sprang from close to the SgrA*, the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way, 3.5 million years ago, shooting a cone-shaped burst of radiation through both poles of the Galaxy and beyond into deep space.
Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google Scholar, Avi was formerly a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
During a keynote speech at a NASA conference a decade ago on the search for extraterrestrial life an attendee shouted out: “We have no idea what’s out there!” One of NASA’s goals is to search for life on other planets like Mars, where there was once flowing water and a thick atmosphere, or moons of the outer solar system like Europa and Enceladus, where vast water oceans churn under thick layers of ice. But what if life on those worlds doesn’t use our DNA? How could we recognize it? A 2019 DNA breakthrough may be the key to answering these questions and many more.
Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google Scholar, Avi was formerly a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
In 2019, astronomers accidentally discovered the faint, shimmering blob of a monster galaxy cloaked in dust and a lot of mystery in the early universe. Like a cosmic Yeti, the scientific community generally regarded these galaxies as folklore, given the lack of evidence of their existence, but astronomers in the United States and Australia managed to snap a picture of the beast for the first time. The discovery provides new insights into the some of the biggest galaxies in the universe.
Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google Scholar, Avi was formerly a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
“There’s something we just don’t understand about the internal structure of how the universe works,” said Enectali Figueroa-Feliciano, an associate professor of physics at Northwestern and the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, reacting to what astronomers think may be the first real signal from the “dark universe.”
“We now think that both dark matter and dark energy can be unified into a fluid which possesses a type of ‘negative gravity’, repelling all other material around them,” said Jamie Farnes from the Oxford University e-Research Center in 2018 about the what is perhaps the great unsolved mystery of the Universe. “The outcome seems rather beautiful: dark energy and dark matter can be unified into a single substance, with both effects being simply explainable as positive mass matter surfing on a sea of negative masses.”
Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google Scholar, Avi was formerly a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
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.
Nobody Knows What Form Dark Matter Might Take to Has a Super Intellect Tweaked Our Universe? (The Galaxy Report)
Giant Asteroid Impacts Created Earth’s Continents to Michio Kaku: “We’ll Make Contact with Aliens in This Century” (Planet Earth Report Weekend)Black Hole Robots to Physics of Nothing Key to Understanding Origin of the Universe (The Galaxy Report Weekend)
The Language That Doesn’t Use “No” to Why Do JWST’s Images Inspire Panic Among Cosmologists? (Planet Earth Report)
Michio Kaku On the Shift in the UFO Phenomenon to The Psychology of Alien Contact (The Galaxy Report)
Io, Jupiter’s Exploding Moon: Unique in the Milky Way?
Could Dark Matter Be a Source of Light In the Universe?
Human Brain Did Not Shrink 3,000 Years Ago to The Insect Apocalypse (Planet Earth Report)
Building Blocks for Life Found at Milky Way’s Center to Does Light Live Forever? (The Galaxy Report Weekend)Does Life on Earth Have a Purpose to Ancient ‘Ghost’ Tracks of the West (Planet Earth Report)