Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of existence,[1][2][3][4] including planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, and all matter and energy.[5][6] Similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature.
For more information about Universe check the Wikipedia article here
ZME Science posts about Universe
Using the incredible Planck cosmology probe astronomers at the European Space Agency have assembled a map of the “oldest light” in the sky – the cosmic microwave background (CMB) that was thrown into space in all directions just a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang and which is still picked up here on Earth today. [...]
A metal poor star located in the Milky Way galaxy, “just” 190 light years away from our Sun is 14.46+-0.80 billion years old – nearly as much as the age of the Universe! All stars follow a stellar evolutionary path; by knowing some parameters about the star (such as mass, luminosity, and surface temperature), astronomers [...]
So, remember that Higgs boson discovery we got all excited about a while ago? You know, validated the Standard model, proved our understanding of the subatomic world not wrong, and all that? Turns out, that same data could very well be an obituary for our Universe – at least that’s what Joseph Lykken of the [...]
A startling study, which looked at data 10 times more comprehensive compared to previous similar efforts, found that half of all the stars that have ever existed were created between 9 and 11 billion years ago, with the other half created in the years since. What this means is an exponential fall in new stars being [...]
Previously, we shared the largest and, respectively, most detailed 3-D maps of the Universe released by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Now the survey has released a new, massive update to the map, again, making it the largest 3-D map of the Universe, which pinpoints the locations and distances of over a million galaxies. Were you [...]
Quasars are some of the brightest objects in the Universe. Their formed after black holes devour captured material, like gas dust and stars that come too close, and release bright light that can be seen across the universe. Most of the popular astronomy today is orientated towards the particularly extremely bright quasars; those formed in a singular [...]
Astronomers have discovered the most distant quasar known so far, dubbed ULAS J1120+0641, powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass 2 billion times that of our sun – it’s also the brightest object in the known Universe. At a redshift of 7.1, placing it at only 770 million years after the Big Bang, the newly discovered [...]
While a 3D map of the Universe using the light from 14,000 quasars has been previously released to the public by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which is considered the largest map of the known Universe, another version has been recently unveiled which scientists claim to be the most complete map. Called the 2MASS Redshift [...]
Unveiled this past weekend, astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have created a 3D map of the Universe using the light from 14,000 quasars, some of the brightest bodies in the universe, to illuminate gas clouds in regions of space some 11 billion light years away. From the study‘s abstract: These features arise as [...]
I was quite pleasantly surprised by Universe in a Sandbox. It is one of the best pieces of software I’ve come across lately; you get the ultimate power, create and destroy galaxies, run virtually any astronomic simulation you want, but most of all, you get to explore and learn about the very universe you live [...]
A new study suggests that a blunder of cosmic proportions has been made when estimating the total number of stars in the universe; the research points out that a specific kind of galaxy has 10 times more red dwarf stars than previously estimated. This would not only triple the number of stars throughout the universe, [...]
Two studies put Einstein’s theory, the General Theory of Relativity to a test unlike any other before. The two teams used extensive observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to analyze galaxy clusters, the biggest objects in the Universe that are bound together by gravity (at least, that we know of). The first team produced results [...]
Two years ago, researchers reported the strange movement of hundreds of galaxy clusters moving in the same direction at about 3.6 million kilometers per hour. Current spatial movement models can’t explain this in any way, so at the time, they launched a strange hypothesis: clusters are being tugged by the gravity of something outside our [...]
Whether intelligent life exists in our universe is a long debated problem. But for some scientists, there’s something even more interesting than that: is there life in another universe? A definite answer is impossible, especially since it’s not even clear if such a universe exists, thoush researchers have speculated such an existance for more than [...]
ESO’s Very Large Telescope has shown something that scientists concluded is the signature of the explosion of the object furthest away from Earth we have found so far, a redshift of 8.2; it’s estimated that the explosion took place more than 13 billion years ago (!!), just 600 million years after the Big Bang. They [...]
A few days ago, something remarkable has been captured by NASA’s telescopes, as an unusual set of Gamma rays were picked up by the Swifst satellite. What’s so remarkable about the find is that the respective burst of Gamma rays is the farthest such discovered, and, according to NASA’s specialists, originated from an explosion near [...]
Thu, Mar 21, 2013
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