Alien radio signals (FRBs) detected in 8 new sources by Astronomers, while Black Hole in middle of Milky Way starts blinking

British cosmologist Martin Rees issued a grave warning to the scientific community: These experiments meant to push the boundaries of nature and physics, he writes, “might do something far worse — destroy the Earth or even the entire universe.”

"Maybe a black hole could form, and then suck in everything around it [...] The second scary possibility is that the quarks would reassemble themselves into compressed objects called strangelets. That in itself would be harmless. However, under some hypotheses a strangelet could, by contagion, convert anything else it encounters into a new form of matter, transforming the entire earth in a hyperdense sphere about one hundred metres across."

This isn’t even the worst-case scenario. The third, and by far the most disturbing way in which a particle accelerator could potentially undo the world as we know it is by taking the entire universe down with it by means of a "catastrophe that engulfs space itself.”

The book goes on to elaborate on this impossible-to-fathom idea. Empty space - what physicists call the vacuum - is more than just nothingness. It is the arena for everything that happens. It has, latent in it, all the forces and particles that govern the physical world. The present vacuum could be fragile and unstable.

Some have speculated that the concentrated energy created when particles crash together could trigger a 'phase transition' that would rip the fabric of space. This would be a cosmic calamity not just a terrestrial one.

CERN officially says: LHC collisions present no danger and that there are no reasons for concern.

runt of the litter wrote:

Wouldn't they have realized by now that Planet Earth has no useful Dna? (and likely never will have any)

Earth has great DNA! From living as a tube worm in the crushing darkness of deep sea vents, to communicating vocally over hundreds of kilometers as a whale, to a bird flying adeptly in pressures of 1 bar, there's lots of specialized stuff well adapted to living on other Earthlike planets. As galactic travelers, they can go around collecting the best DNA from all the Earthlike planets, a huge advantage.

For example, the eye evolved on Earth only about 500 million years ago. That means Earth life went nearly 4 billion years without that great adaptation! Because it took so long, odds are most other Earth-like planets don't have them. We likely have lots of unique things no other planet has, and others unique things we don't have. But the aliens have access to all of them!

A black hole located within Earth’s Milky Way galaxy is voraciously consuming its neighboring star with such ferocity that it is literally flickering with visible light, in what is perhaps the cosmic equivalent of drooling.

The black hole, named MAXI J1820+070, is located roughly 10,000 light years away and is roughly seven times the mass of the Sun (the lowest estimated mass for a black hole is about five Suns).

Researchers managed to capture the star twinkling by using a new high frame-rate technique, which affords a rate of over 300 frames per second. The movie was made using real data, but slowed down to one tenth of actual speed, to allow the most rapid flares to be discerned by the human eye,

https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/research-highlights/violent-flaring-revealed-heart-black-hole-system

We’re getting something wrong about the universe.

We think that if our understanding of cosmology is correct, then all of these different measurements should be giving us the same answer, said Katie Mack, a theoretical cosmologist at North Carolina State University (NCSU) .

Measured one way, the universe appears to be expanding at a certain rate; measured another way, the universe appears to be expanding at a different rate. Those discrepancies have gotten larger in recent years, even as the measurements have gotten more precise.

"Everyone would love that. Physicists love to break their models," Wechsler said. People are excited about this because it could mean that there's new physics, and that would be really exciting, she said.

https://www.space.com/hubble-constant-universe-expansion-not-make-sense.html

We’re getting something wrong about the universe.

We think that if our understanding of cosmology is correct, then all of these different measurements should be giving us the same answer, said Katie Mack, a theoretical cosmologist at North Carolina State University (NCSU) .

Measured one way, the universe appears to be expanding at a certain rate; measured another way, the universe appears to be expanding at a different rate. Those discrepancies have gotten larger in recent years, even as the measurements have gotten more precise.

"Everyone would love that. Physicists love to break their models," Wechsler said. People are excited about this because it could mean that there's new physics, and that would be really exciting, she said.

Another group of "theorists" making "models"... at least they readily admit they don't care if they predict reality, calling it "exciting" (because people are excited, or maybe vice-versa) that something "new" might emerge instead. This whole field looks infected with dodginess. But they crunch enough computer cycles to create neat-looking "space pictures", so the fanboys applaud anyway.

Bad Wigins wrote:

For example, the eye

The eye is the internal combustion engine of sensory perception. 360° high resolution sonar would be much better -- no one could sneak up on you and club you from behind!

Anyway, if the aliens are smart enough to come here, they'd certainly have more efficient ways to develop superior dna. Our method is pretty disgusting and wasteful when you think about it.

It's like they're finding new stuff in outer space all the time. Who knew?

Astronomers in the US and Australia say they have discovered a "cosmic Yeti" galaxy hiding out in a distant corner of the universe. The light from this galaxy is believed to have taken 12.5 billion years to reach us.

“It was very mysterious because the light seemed not to be linked to any known galaxy at all,” said Williams, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Steward Observatory. “When I saw this galaxy was invisible at any other wavelength, I got really excited because it meant that it was probably really far away and hidden by clouds of dust.”

"Like a cosmic Yeti, the scientific community generally regarded these galaxies as folklore, given the lack of evidence of their existence," the university said in a statement.

This particular abominable astronomical behemoth boasts as many stars as our own Milky Way galaxy, but forms new stars at a rate roughly one hundred times faster, according to study co-author Ivo Labbé with the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

Galactic Formator wrote:

The light from this galaxy is believed to have taken 12.5 billion years to reach us.

what does this even mean? Earth wasn't here 12.5 billion years ago. "Here" wasn't here either. What thing existed back then that just got reached by the light now?

Where is that thing from 12.5 billion years ago now? They'll say it's 12.5 billion ly away, of course, but nobody knows if the damn thing still even exists.

It's evolved several times independently since then though.

Doubtful if an alien star faring civilization could exist without having evolved eyes.

Observing a wormhole

If a wormhole smoothly connects two different spacetimes, then the flux cannot be separately conserved in any of these spaces individually. Then objects propagating in the vicinity of a wormhole in one space must feel the influence of objects propagating in the other space. We show this in the cases of the scalar, electromagnetic, and gravitational field. The case of gravity is perhaps the most interesting. Namely, by studying the orbits of stars around the black hole at the center of our galaxy, we could soon tell if this black hole harbors a traversable wormhole.... I

They propose honing in on Sagittarius A*, believed to be a supermassive black hole right at the centre of our galaxy. Wormholes, in theory, require the extreme gravitation conditions of such an enormous black hole.

“Even if a wormhole is traversable, people and spaceships most likely aren’t going to be passing through,” he says. “Realistically, you would need a source of negative energy to keep the wormhole open, and we don’t know how to do that. To create a huge wormhole that’s stable, you need some magic.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191023135913.htm

https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.100.083513

Kieron Fallon wrote:

Bad Wigins wrote:

the eye evolved on Earth only about 500 million years ago.

It's evolved several times independently since then though.

Doubtful if an alien star faring civilization could exist without having evolved eyes.

that's what science thought before the genetics was figured out. They now say eyes are monophyletic.

I doubt the aliens would be star-faring without having evolved some other sort of sensory perception that we haven't. Our model of the universe is based almost completely on vision. What if they have a form of ESP that works instantaneously over vast distances by quantum entanglement?

The super-intelligent aliens would never worry about us, they would be more concerned with cognitions about super-super-intelligent aliens, and the super-super-powers they might possess.

The team behind NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has released a cosmically terrifying image of what appears to be a celestial spook looking right at us from deep in the universe.

Ttwo galaxies merging in a system called called Arp-Madore 2026-424, 704 million light-years away.

The crash has pulled and stretched the galaxies’ discs of gas, dust, and stars outward, forming the ring of intense star formation that shapes the ‘nose’ and ‘face’ features of the system,

https://twitter.com/HUBBLE_space/status/1188818103691558912

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/menacing-looking-face-formed-by-titanic-smashup-between-two-galaxies/

ALIEN WATER from beyond our solar system found on interstellar comet ‘Borisov’

Water from a completely alien star system has been detected on the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, which is currently passing through our space neighborhood.

Astronomers studying Borisov believe they have detected the tell-tale signs of water on the visiting comet. Water from another planetary system has never before been spotted inside our solar system.

Borisov was spotted by an amateur astronomer on 30 August, and the professionals have been scrambling to analyse before it flies away. Researchers had already detected gas being spewed from the comet’s surface, but finding water would signal a hugely significant discovery.

The researchers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center studied the light reflected by Borisov and found large amounts of oxygen around the comet, which they believe is the result of water ice changing from solid to gas as it is heated by the sun. The research suggests that Borisov produces up to 19 kilograms of water per second.

Of course, the researchers want to play philosopher with their findings. Researcher Adam McKay: Are we special as a planetary system or are a lot of planetary systems like ours? That has implications for the origin of life, and how common life is throughout the universe.

Borisov will reach its closest flyby of the sun on December 10, giving scientists another six weeks to examine the extraterrestrial visitor before it disappears from view.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2221767-alien-water-may-have-been-found-on-interstellar-comet-borisov/

More proofs that "scientists" are largely just guessing at new theories to keep their funding up.Physicists claim to have found NEW force of nature which may unravel one of the universe’s greatest MYSTERIES Hungarian researchers may have detected a new, fifth force of nature which could finally solve one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, namely the existence and nature of dark matter. The universe is governed by four fundamental forces: Gravitational force, Weak Nuclear force, Electromagnetic force and Strong Nuclear force. However, a fifth force has long been rumored to exist, scientists just couldn’t prove it. Until now. Maybe. A new study by Attila Krasznahorkay and his colleagues from the Institute for Nuclear Research in Hungary reveals that they spotted what they suspected might be a new type of boson in the decay of an isotope of beryllium in 2016.

Attila ain't no Hun wrote:

More proofs that "scientists" are largely just guessing at new theories to keep their funding up.

Physicists claim to have found NEW force of nature which may unravel one of the universe’s greatest MYSTERIES

Hungarian researchers may have detected a new, fifth force of nature which could finally solve one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, namely the existence and nature of dark matter.

Establishment Wonks want to fend this off quickly.

Scientists in Hungary claim to have found new signs of a subatomic particle they’ve termed ‘X17’, which could explain dark matter and rewrite the laws of physics by revealing a ‘fifth force of nature’.

The current standard model of physics incorporates four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong interaction, and the weak interaction. If its existence is proven, this ‘fifth force’ could finally explain the mysteries surrounding the invisible substance dark matter, which is thought to account for around 85 percent of all matter in the universe.

The Hungarian team first claimed to have found evidence of the particle back in 2016 when conducting experiments with radioactive beryllium atoms, and recently published a new paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, giving more detail of their observations. The apparently elusive subatomic particle was dubbed ‘X17’, with ‘X’ denoting that it’s unknown and ‘17’ indicating that its mass was calculated by the team to have a mass of nearly 17 megaelectronvolts.

Other scientists have greeted the claims with open skepticism though, particularly as no one else – not even the team at CERN – has managed to find any trace of this supposed ‘fifth force’.

“I’m skeptical. I think, as an experimentalist, that’s my natural position when I see something like this, but I think it needs to be investigated,” Richard Milner, physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Live Science. He added that if proven, it would be a “tremendously important” discovery.

Other physicists voiced their uncertainty on Twitter, with one joking: “I am too old to waste time on ‘big fish’ physics stories told by drunken Hungarian fishermen.”

Some scientists said they are certainly willing to believe in the possibility, but they’ll hold off on celebrating it until it’s been independently verified.

A recent theory about an “impossibly” large black hole roughly 70 times the mass of the Sun, and rumored to be residing in our own Milky Way, appears to have been debunked, as three separate papers claim it really is impossible. The central thesis in all three papers, coincidentally published around the same time, is that the light interpreted as coming from this behemoth black hole may have come from an entirely different source.

In the original paper, astronomers led by Jifeng Liu of the National Astronomical Observatory of China, claimed the existence of LB-1, a black hole located 15,000 light-years away with a mass 70 times that of the Sun, something previously believed (and now most likely confirmed) to be impossible.

The stars which could potentially form a black hole of that mass typically die in an extremely violent kind of supernova which guarantees that such large black holes do not form. If it existed, LB-1 would have upended our understanding of black holes and the wider universe.

So, how did Liu and his team make such a gargantuan error?

It turns out the ‘radial velocity’ technique Liu and his fellow researchers employed to measure ‘wobbling’ light emanating from the black hole’s accretion disk (superheated debris from objects it has destroyed) had some major flaws.

The black hole Liu and his team studied is locked in an orbit with its binary star partner. Normally, the radial velocity technique is used to determine the mass of objects orbiting each other by measuring how much they move (wobble) relative to each other.

What Liu and his team interpreted as light being emitted from the black hole was actually light being absorbed by the star (or rather, its superheated gas). Once the companion star’s dark ‘absorption line’ was removed from observations of the “impossibly” massive black hole, it suddenly stopped wobbling, leading the potential debunkers to conclude that the black hole is actually no more than 20 solar masses.

Just a reminder that any posts in this thread that mention Uranus will be heavily scrutinized by the mods and likely be deleted because they are anal and because:

T.M.A.D.D.D.H.A.S.F.N.E.