Physicists have reproduced a pattern resembling the cosmic microwave background radiation in a laboratory simulation of the Big Bang, using ultracold cesium atoms in a vacuum chamber at the University of Chicago.
“This is the first time an experiment like this has simulated the evolution of structure in the early universe,” said Cheng Chin, professor in physics. Chin and his associates reported their feat in the Aug. 1 edition of Science Express, and it will appear soon in the print edition of Science. (more…)
University of Colorado Boulder astronomers targeting one of the brightest quasars glowing in the universe some 11 billion years ago say “sideline quasars” likely teamed up with it to heat abundant helium gas billions of years ago, preventing small galaxy formation.
CU-Boulder Professor Michael Shull and Research Associate David Syphers used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the quasar — the brilliant core of an active galaxy that acted as a “lighthouse” for the observations — to better understand the conditions of the early universe. The scientists studied gaseous material between the telescope and the quasar with a $70 million ultraviolet spectrograph on Hubble designed by a team from CU-Boulder’s Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. (more…)
This summer welcomed the delivery of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first flight instrument, the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The instrument will peer out into the farthest depths of the cosmos and capture light showcasing star and galaxy formation.
MIRI’s design, assembly and journey were made possible because of a collaboration between a European consortium of institutes that developed the instrument in a partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., working with the European Space Agency, University of Arizona and NASA. (more…)
Astronomers detected the faint signature of small, dim red dwarf stars in nearby galaxies (right), and found they are much more numerous than in our own Milky Way (left). Image credit: Patrick Lynch/Yale University
Astronomers have discovered that small, dim stars known as red dwarfs are much more prolific than previously thought — so much so that the total number of stars in the universe is likely three times bigger than previously believed.
Because red dwarfs are relatively small and dim compared to stars like our Sun, astronomers hadn’t been able to detect them in galaxies other than our own Milky Way and its nearest neighbors before now. Therefore, they did not know how much of the total stellar population of the universe is made up of red dwarfs.
Now astronomers have used powerful instruments on the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to detect the faint signature of red dwarfs in eight massive, relatively nearby galaxies called elliptical galaxies, which are located between about 50 million and 300 million light years away. They discovered that the red dwarfs, which are only between 10% and 20% as massive as the Sun, were much more bountiful than expected. (more…)
