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Saturday, 28 May 2016

Link Between Primordial Black Holes and Dark Matter

Scientist suggests possible link between primordial black holes and dark matter

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Left: This image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows an infrared view of a sky area in the constellation Ursa Major. Right: After masking out all known stars, galaxies and artifacts and enhancing what’s left, an irregular background glow appears. This is the cosmic infrared background (CIB); lighter colors indicate brighter areas. The CIB glow is more irregular than can be explained by distant unresolved galaxies, and this excess structure is thought to be light emitted when the universe was less than a billion years old. Scientists say it likely originated from the first luminous objects to form in the universe, which includes both the first stars and black holes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/A. Kashlinsky (Goddard)

Scientia — Dark matter is a mysterious substance composing most of the material universe, now widely thought to be some form of massive exotic particle. An intriguing alternative view is that dark matter is made of black holes formed during the first second of our universe’s existence, known as primordial black holes. Now a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, suggests that this interpretation aligns with our knowledge of cosmic infrared and X-ray background glows and may explain the unexpectedly high masses of merging black holes detected last year.

“This study is an effort to bring together a broad set of ideas and observations to test how well they fit, and the fit is surprisingly good,” said Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard. “If this is correct, then all galaxies, including our own, are embedded within a vast sphere of black holes each about 30 times the sun’s mass.”

In 2005, Kashlinsky led a team of astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to explore the background glow of infrared light in one part of the sky. The researchers reported excessive patchiness in the glow and concluded it was likely caused by the aggregate light of the first sources to illuminate the universe more than 13 billion years ago. Follow-up studies confirmed that this cosmic infrared background (CIB) showed similar unexpected structure in other parts of the sky.

In 2013, another study compared how the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory compared to the CIB in the same area of the sky. The first stars emitted mainly optical and ultraviolet light, which today is stretched into the infrared by the expansion of space, so they should not contribute significantly to the CXB.

Yet the irregular glow of low-energy X-rays in the CXB matched the patchiness of the CIB quite well. The only object we know of that can be sufficiently luminous across this wide an energy range is a black hole. The research team concluded that primordial black holes must have been abundant among the earliest stars, making up at least about one out of every five of the sources contributing to the CIB.

The nature of dark matter remains one of the most important unresolved issues in astrophysics. Scientists currently favor theoretical models that explain dark matter as an exotic massive particle, but so far searches have failed to turn up evidence these hypothetical particles actually exist. NASA is currently investigating this issue as part of its Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope missions.

“These studies are providing increasingly sensitive results, slowly shrinking the box of parameters where dark matter particles can hide,” Kashlinsky said. “The failure to find them has led to renewed interest in studying how well primordial black holes—black holes formed in the universe’s first fraction of a second—could work as dark matter.”

Physicists have outlined several ways in which the hot, rapidly expanding universe could produce primordial black holes in the first thousandths of a second after the Big Bang. The older the universe is when these mechanisms take hold, the larger the black holes can be. And because the window for creating them lasts only a tiny fraction of the first second, scientists expect primordial black holes would exhibit a narrow range of masses.

Primordial black holes, if they exist, could be similar to the merging black holes detected by the LIGO team in 2014. This computer simulation shows in slow motion what this merger would have looked like up close. The ring around the black holes, called an Einstein ring, arises from all the stars in a small region directly behind the holes whose light is distorted by gravitational lensing. The gravitational waves detected by LIGO are not shown in this video, although their effects can be seen in the Einstein ring. Gravitational waves traveling out behind the black holes disturb stellar images comprising the Einstein ring, causing them to slosh around in the ring even long after the merger is complete. Gravitational waves traveling in other directions cause weaker, shorter-lived sloshing everywhere outside the Einstein ring. If played back in real time, the movie would last about a third of a second. Credit: SXS Lensing

On Sept. 14, gravitational waves produced by a pair of merging black holes 1.3 billion light-years away were captured by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) facilities in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. This event marked the first-ever detection of gravitational waves as well as the first direct detection of black holes. The signal provided LIGO scientists with information about the masses of the individual black holes, which were 29 and 36 times the sun’s mass, plus or minus about four solar masses. These values were both unexpectedly large and surprisingly similar.

“Depending on the mechanism at work, primordial black holes could have properties very similar to what LIGO detected,” Kashlinsky explained. “If we assume this is the case, that LIGO caught a merger of black holes formed in the early universe, we can look at the consequences this has on our understanding of how the cosmos ultimately evolved.”

In his new paper, published May 24 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Kashlinsky analyzes what might have happened if dark matter consisted of a population of black holes similar to those detected by LIGO. The black holes distort the distribution of mass in the early universe, adding a small fluctuation that has consequences hundreds of millions of years later, when the first stars begin to form.

For much of the universe’s first 500 million years, normal matter remained too hot to coalesce into the first stars. Dark matter was unaffected by the high temperature because, whatever its nature, it primarily interacts through gravity. Aggregating by mutual attraction, dark matter first collapsed into clumps called minihaloes, which provided a gravitational seed enabling normal matter to accumulate. Hot gas collapsed toward the minihaloes, resulting in pockets of gas dense enough to further collapse on their own into the first stars. Kashlinsky shows that if black holes play the part of dark matter, this process occurs more rapidly and easily produces the lumpiness of the CIB detected in Spitzer data even if only a small fraction of minihaloes manage to produce stars.

As cosmic gas fell into the minihaloes, their constituent black holes would naturally capture some of it too. Matter falling toward a black hole heats up and ultimately produces X-rays. Together, infrared light from the first stars and X-rays from gas falling into dark matter black holes can account for the observed agreement between the patchiness of the CIB and the CXB.

Occasionally, some primordial black holes will pass close enough to be gravitationally captured into binary systems. The black holes in each of these binaries will, over eons, emit gravitational radiation, lose orbital energy and spiral inward, ultimately merging into a larger black hole like the event LIGO observed.

“Future LIGO observing runs will tell us much more about the universe’s population of black holes, and it won’t be long before we’ll know if the scenario I outline is either supported or ruled out,” Kashlinsky said.

Kashlinsky leads science team centered at Goddard that is participating in the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission, which is currently scheduled to launch in 2020. The project, named LIBRAE, will enable the observatory to probe source populations in the CIB with high precision and determine what portion was produced by black holes.

– Credit and Resource –

More information: A. Kashlinsky. LIGO GRAVITATIONAL WAVE DETECTION, PRIMORDIAL BLACK HOLES, AND THE NEAR-IR COSMIC INFRARED BACKGROUND ANISOTROPIES, The Astrophysical Journal (2016). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8205/823/2/L25 , On Arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/1605.04023

Journal reference: Astrophysical Journal Letters, Astrophysical Journal, arXiv

Provided by: NASA

Link Between Primordial Black Holes and Dark Matter

Juno Spacecraft Crosses Jupiter/Sun Gravity Boundary

NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Crosses Jupiter/Sun Gravitational Boundary

Scientia — Since its launch five years ago, there have been three forces tugging at NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it speeds through the solar system. The sun, Earth and Jupiter have all been influential — a gravitational trifecta of sorts. At times, Earth was close enough to be the frontrunner. More recently, the sun has had the most clout when it comes to Juno’s trajectory. Today, it can be reported that Jupiter is now in the gravitational driver’s seat, and the basketball court-sized spacecraft is not looking back.

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This artist’s rendering shows NASA’s Juno spacecraft making one of its close passes over Jupiter.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“Today the gravitational influence of Jupiter is neck and neck with that of the sun,” said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “As of tomorrow, and for the rest of the mission, we project Jupiter’s gravity will dominate as the trajectory-perturbing effects by other celestial bodies are reduced to insignificant roles.”

Juno was launched on Aug. 5, 2011. On July 4 of this year, it will perform a Jupiter orbit insertion maneuver — a 35-minute burn of its main engine, which will impart a mean change in velocity of 1,212 mph (542 meters per second) on the spacecraft. Once in orbit, the spacecraft will circle the Jovian world 37 times, skimming to within 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) above the planet’s cloud tops. During the flybys, Juno will probe beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and study its auroras to learn more about the planet’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

Juno’s name comes from Greek and Roman mythology. The mythical god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife — the goddess Juno — was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter’s true nature.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

– Credit and Resource –

NASA

Juno Spacecraft Crosses Jupiter/Sun Gravity Boundary

Life on Ceres

Life on Ceres? Mysterious changes in the bright spots still baffle scientists

Scientia –Bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres continue to puzzle researchers. When recently a team of astronomers led by Paolo Molaro of the Trieste Astronomical Observatory in Italy, conducted observations of these features, they found out something unexpected. The scientists were surprised to detect that the spots brighten during the day and also show other variations. This variability still remains a mystery.

The bright features have been discovered by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft which is orbiting this dwarf planet, constantly delivering substantial information about it. These spots reflect far more light than their much darker surroundings. The composition of these features is discussed as the scientists debate if they are made of water ice, of evaporated salts, or something else.

Molaro and his colleagues studied the spots on Ceres in July and August 2015, using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), as was reported by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) earlier this year. This instrument, mounted on ESO’s 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile, enables measurements of radial velocities with the highest accuracy currently available.

By utilizing HARPS, the researchers found out unexpected changes in the mysterious bright spots. However, at the beginning they thought that it was an instrumental problem. But after double checking, they had to conclude that the radial velocity anomalies were likely real. Then the team noticed that they were connected to periods of time when the bright spots in the Occator crater were visible from the Earth. So the scientists made an association between them.

However, these detected variations still continue to perplex the astronomers as they haven’t found a plausible explanation for their occurrence.

“We know nothing about these changes, really. And this increases the mystery of these spots,” Molaro told Astrowatch.net.

One of the proposed hypotheses is that the observed changes could be triggered by the presence of volatile substances that evaporate due to solar radiation. When the spots are on the side illuminated by the sun they form plumes that reflect sunlight very effectively. The scientists suggest that these plumes then evaporate quickly, lose reflectivity and produce the observed changes.

“It is already well known that a lot of water hides beneath the surface of Ceres, so water ice or clathrates hydrates are the most natural hypotheses. But a proper answer will be hopefully provided by scientists working in the Dawn team in the coming months,” Molaro said.

He noted that the indication of variability needs to be confirmed by direct imaging of Occator’s bright spot at the highest available spatial resolution.

“This kind of measurements are underway. I would say that the detection of a variability improves our ignorance rather than our understanding of this planetary body,” Molaro revealed.

The team is currently applying for further observations by the end of this year to repeat in a more systematical way what they have done in their pilot project. An important aspect of their work is to have shown a new way to study Ceres from ground, which could turn out to be useful even after the end of the Dawn mission. However by now, they are eager to see the results from the Dawn spacecraft in the next months.

If the team’s theory is confirmed, Ceres would seem to be internally active. While this dwarf planet is known to be rich in water, it is unclear whether this is related to the bright spots. It is also still debated if Ceres due to its vast reservoir of water, could be a suitable place to host microbial life.

“Life as we know it on Earth needs liquid water, biogenic elements and a stable source of energy. Is Ceres a good place to have these things simultaneously and for a substantial amount of time, like billions of years? Nobody knows at the moment,” Molaro concluded.

A little about Ceres

-Discovered: January 1,1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi of Italy (first asteroid/dwarf planet discovered)

-Size: 975 by 909 kilometers (606 by 565 miles)

-Shape: Spheroid

-Rotation: Once every 9 hours, 4.5 minutes

The object is known by astronomers as “1 Ceres” because it was the very first minor planet discovered. As big across as Texas, Ceres’ nearly spherical body has a differentiated interior – meaning that, like Earth, it has denser material at the core and lighter minerals near the surface. Astronomers believe that water ice may be buried under Ceres’ crust because its density is less than that of the Earth’s crust, and because the dust-covered surface bears spectral evidence of water-bearing minerals. Ceres could even boast frost-covered polar caps.

Astronomers estimate that if Ceres were composed of 25 percent water, it may have more water than all the fresh water on Earth. Ceres’ water, unlike Earth’s, is expected to be in the form of water ice located in its mantle.

– Credit and Resource –

NASA

Life on Ceres

Friday, 8 January 2016

Massive Galaxy Cluster Identified

Most distant massive galaxy cluster identified. Formed in the first 4 billion years of the universe, cluster is 1,000 times more massive than the Milky Way.

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Astronomers have detected a massive, sprawling, churning galaxy cluster that formed only 3.8 billion years after the Big Bang. The cluster, shown here, is the most massive cluster of galaxies yet discovered in the first 4 billion years after the Big Bang.
Image: NASA, European Space Agency, University of Florida, University of Missouri, and University of California

Scientia — The early universe was a chaotic mess of gas and matter that only began to coalesce into distinct galaxies hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang. It would take several billion more years for such galaxies to assemble into massive galaxy clusters — or so scientists had thought.

Now astronomers at MIT, the University of Missouri, the University of Florida, and elsewhere, have detected a massive, sprawling, churning galaxy cluster that formed only 3.8 billion years after the Big Bang. Located 10 billion light years from Earth and potentially comprising thousands of individual galaxies, the megastructure is about 250 trillion times more massive than the sun, or 1,000 times more massive than the Milky Way galaxy.

The cluster, named IDCS J1426.5+3508 (or IDCS 1426), is the most massive cluster of galaxies yet discovered in the first 4 billion years after the Big Bang.

IDCS 1426 appears to be undergoing a substantial amount of upheaval: The researchers observed a bright knot of X-rays, slightly off-center in the cluster, indicating that the cluster’s core may have shifted some hundred thousand light years from its center. The scientists surmise that the core may have been dislodged from a violent collision with another massive galaxy cluster, causing the gas within the cluster to slosh around, like wine in a glass that has been suddenly moved.

Michael McDonald, assistant professor of physics and a member of MIT’s Kavli Center for Astrophysics and Space Research, says such a collision may explain how IDCS 1426 formed so quickly in the early universe, at a time when individual galaxies were only beginning to take shape.

“In the grand scheme of things, galaxies probably didn’t start forming until the universe was relatively cool, and yet this thing has popped up very shortly after that,” McDonald says. “Our guess is that another similarly massive cluster came in and sort of wrecked the place up a bit. That would explain why this is so massive and growing so quickly. It’s the first one to the gate, basically.”

McDonald and his colleagues presented their results this week at the 227th American Astronomical Society meeting in Kissimmee, Florida. Their findings will also be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

To get a more precise estimate of the galaxy cluster’s mass, Michael McDonald and his colleagues used data from several of NASA’s Great Observatories: the Hubble Space Telescope, the Keck Observatory, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Courtesy of the researchers

“Cities in space”

Galaxy clusters are conglomerations of hundreds to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. They are the most massive structures in the universe, and those located relatively nearby, such as the Virgo cluster, are extremely bright and easy to spot in the sky.

“They are sort of like cities in space, where all these galaxies live very closely together,” McDonald says. “In the nearby universe, if you look at one galaxy cluster, you’ve basically seen them all — they all look pretty uniform. The further back you look, the more different they start to appear.”

However, finding galaxy clusters that are farther away in space — and further back in time — is a difficult and uncertain exercise.

In 2012, scientists using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope first detected signs of IDCS 1426 and made some initial estimates of its mass.

“We had some sense of how massive and distant it was, but we weren’t fully convinced,” McDonald says. “These new results are the nail in the coffin that proves that it is what we initially thought.”

“Tip of the iceberg”

To get a more precise estimate of the galaxy cluster’s mass, McDonald and his colleagues used data from several of NASA’s Great Observatories: the Hubble Space Telescope, the Keck Observatory, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

“We were basically using three completely different methods to weigh this cluster,” McDonald explains.

Both the Hubble and Keck Observatories recorded optical data from the cluster, which the researchers analyzed to determine the amount of light that was bending around the cluster as a result of gravity — a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. The more massive the cluster, the more gravitational force it exerts, and the more light it bends.

They also examined X-ray data from the Chandra Observatory to get a sense of the temperature of the cluster. High-temperature objects give off X-rays, and the hotter a galaxy cluster, the more the gas within that cluster has been compressed, making the cluster more massive.

From the X-ray data, McDonald and his colleagues also calculated the amount of gas in the cluster, which can be an indication of the amount of matter — and mass — in the cluster.

Using all three methods, the group calculated roughly the same mass — about 250 trillion times the mass of the sun. Now, the team is looking for individual galaxies within the cluster to get a sense for how such megastructures can form in the early universe.

“This cluster is sort of like a construction site — it’s messy, loud, and dirty, and there’s a lot that’s incomplete,” McDonald says. “By seeing that incompleteness, we can get a sense for how [clusters] grow. So far, we’ve confirmed about a dozen or so galaxies, but we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg, really.”

He hopes that scientists may get an even better view of IDCS 1426 in 2018, with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope — an infrared telescope that is hundreds of times more sensitive than the Spitzer Telescope that first detected the cluster.

“People had kind of put away this idea of finding clusters in the optical and infrared, in favor of X-ray and radio signatures,” McDonald says. “We’re now re-emerging and saying it’s actually a fantastic way of finding clusters. It suggests that maybe we need to branch out a little more in how we find these things.”

– Credit and Resource –

Written by: Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office

Provided and researched by: NASA

Massive Galaxy Cluster Identified

Saturday, 2 January 2016

Hubble Views Two Galaxies Merging

Galaxies Merging

This image, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the galaxy NGC 6052, located around 230 million light-years away in the constellation of Hercules. It would be reasonable to think of this as a single abnormal galaxy, and it was originally classified as such. However, it is in fact a “new” galaxy in the process of forming. Two separate galaxies have been gradually drawn together, attracted by gravity, and have collided. We now see them merging into a single structure. As the merging process continues, individual stars are thrown out of their original orbits and placed onto entirely new paths, some very distant from the region of the collision itself. Since the stars produce the light we see, the “galaxy” now appears to have a highly chaotic shape. Eventually, this new galaxy will settle down into a stable shape, which may not resemble either of the two original galaxies.

Scientia — This image, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the galaxy NGC 6052, located around 230 million light-years away in the constellation of Hercules.

It would be reasonable to think of this as a single abnormal galaxy, and it was originally classified as such. However, it is in fact a “new” galaxy in the process of forming. Two separate galaxies have been gradually drawn together, attracted by gravity, and have collided. We now see them merging into a single structure.

As the merging process continues, individual stars are thrown out of their original orbits and placed onto entirely new paths, some very distant from the region of the collision itself. Since the stars produce the light we see, the “galaxy” now appears to have a highly chaotic shape. Eventually, this new galaxy will settle down into a stable shape, which may not resemble either of the two original galaxies.

What is the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2

The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) was Hubble’s workhorse camera for many years. It recorded images through a selection of 48 colour filters covering a spectral range from far-ultraviolet to visible and near-infrared wavelengths. The ‘heart’ of WFPC2 consisted of an L-shaped trio of wide-field sensors and a smaller, high resolution (Planetary) Camera placed at the square’s remaining corner.

WFPC2 produced most of the stunning images that have been released as public outreach images over the years. Its resolution and excellent quality were some of the reasons that WFPC2 was the most used instrument in the first 13 years of Hubble’s life.

WFPC2 was replaced by WFC3 during Servicing Mission 4 in 2009.

After being brought down by the Space Shuttle, WFPC2 was put on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, alongside parts from its predecessor, WFPC1.

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WFPC2 is being readied for insertion into Hubble during the First Servicing Mission.

This colourful image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the collision of two gases near a dying star. Astronomers have dubbed the tadpole-like objects in the upper right-hand corner ‘cometary knots’ because their glowing heads and gossamer tails resemble comets.
This colorful image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the collision of two gases near a dying star.
Astronomers have dubbed the tadpole-like objects in the upper right-hand corner ‘cometary knots’ because their glowing heads and gossamer tails resemble comets.
Credit:
Robert O’Dell, Kerry P. Handron (Rice University, Houston, Texas) and NASA/ESA

– Credit and Resource –

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
Text credit: European Space Agency

Hubble Views Two Galaxies Merging

Saturday, 19 December 2015

HoloLens Development

HoloLens development edition is coming in 2016

Microsoft is focusing on developers, not the general public, for the latest in HoloLens events and announcements. The good news for the public is that, in doing so, the conversation is shedding light on what is behind HoloLens and what to expect once availability happens.

Do not expect to be mentally transported into another world; you remain in a familiar place where virtual characters may join your space. You’re looking at sessions of mixed reality, not virtual reality.

Engadget features editor Joseph Volpe asserted that “any and all comparisons to emerging virtual reality tech and related gaming or entertainment applications should be excised from the conversation for now. It’s not ‘immersive’ as one Microsoft rep stressed to me, clearly keen to avoid the confused commingling of AR and VR buzzwords. It’s ‘complementary."”

The development edition will ship in the first quarter of 2016, for $3000.

This is an augmented reality headset; some watchers call it an “untethered wearable.” HoloLens works all on its own: all the hardware necessary to run any program is inside the headset, said Popular Science. Microsoft’s definition of its HoloLens: The first holographic computer running Windows 10. You get to place holograms in your own physical environment.

From mixed reality to virtual reality, though, the immediate perception of a headset development on the horizon is gaming. Nonetheless, the HoloLens creators point out that it has been engineered for productivity as well as design.

“HoloLens is very much a powerful tool for business, science and education—both Volvo and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are actively experimenting with it,” said Engadget’s Volpe.

Developers can check out HoloLens at the Microsoft store on 5th Avenue in New York City where showcasing has begun.

For Bryan Lukfkin in Gizmodo, a key role the user’s eyes will play was noteworthy. “With the HoloLens, the ‘cursor’ is your eyes. You look around a real room you’re in and select holographic images that appear in your goggles by hovering the cursor in the middle of your field of vision over the object.

To interact with the object, you ‘air tap.’ In front of the goggles by pointing your index finger in the air and making a fast swipe down motion. Voice commands are also at your disposal.”

Edward Baig of USA Today shared the experience: At the store, Baig found himself shooting at robotic aliens firing at him as he fired back at them, floating around him. They seemed to hide inside the walls of the room and he went after them. He could see them through a built-in X-ray feature.

Those were games; Lufkin described a demo which indicated how businesses and other organizations may use HoloLens for presentations.

Goodbye yawnfests of having to watch 23 charts on a white screen.

“The idea here is that you can replace boring PowerPoints with holograms. (How appropriate for Microsoft!) In the demo, I stepped into a fictional boardroom pitch for a luxury watch. I looked at real table in the room and saw a large hologram watch blown up to the size of a golden retriever.

I could move the cursor with my eyes to different points of interest on the watch. When I looked at the band, a pop up told me what the links were made of. In another spot I was given info about the battery.”

“What I can tell you is that the technology is ‘mindblowing,’ said Baig. He said that “when digital becomes part of the physical and vice versa, the most promising reality is that you’re in for a treat.”

Said Michael Nuñez in Popular Science: “It’s true that the HoloLens already has all of necessary computing power to be used as a legitimate productivity tool. Now all it needs is a killer app.”

He said the HoloLens is powered by a CPU, graphics process unit (GPU), and something that Microsoft is calling a “holographic processing unit” (HPU), which interprets and processes data from the device’s sensor array.

HoloLens Development

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

Visualization of Space Environment at Pluto

NASA Releases New Visualization of Space Environment at Pluto

This video shows a simulation of the space environment all the way out to Pluto in the months surrounding New Horizons’ July 2015 flyby. At the time, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, worked with the New Horizons team to test how well their models—and other models contributed by scientists around the world—predicted the space environment at Pluto. Understanding the environment through which our spacecraft travel can ultimately help protect them from radiation and other potentially damaging effects. Visualizers at Goddard recently updated the movie of the model, creating this new release.

Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, the Space Weather Research Center (SWRC) and the Community-Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC), Enlil and Dusan Odstrcil (GMU).
Download this video in HD formats from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio

Though the vacuum of space is about a thousand times emptier than a laboratory vacuum, it’s still not completely empty. The sun releases a constant stream of particles called the solar wind—as well as occasional denser clouds of particles known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs—both containing embedded magnetic fields. The density, speed, and temperature of these particles, as well as the direction and strength of the embedded magnetic fields, make up the space environment.

To map the space environment at Pluto, scientists combined the predictions of several models—and looked at events that had long since passed Earth.

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This artist’s concept depicts the New Horizons spacecraft during its July 2015 encounter with Pluto and one of the dwarf planet’s moons, Charon.
Credits: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

“We set the simulation to start in January of 2015, because the particles passing Pluto in July 2015 took some six months to make the journey from the sun,” said Dusan Odstrcil, a space weather scientist at Goddard who created the Enlil model. The Enlil model, named for the Sumerian god of the wind, is one of the primary models used to simulate the space environment near Earth and is the basis for the New Horizons simulation.

The new, combined model tracks CMEs longer than ever before. Because particles must travel for many months before reaching Pluto, the CMEs eventually spread out and merge with other CMEs and the solar wind to form larger clouds of particles and magnetic field. These combined clouds stretch out as they travel away from the sun, forming thin ring shapes by the time they reach Pluto—quite different from the typical balloon shape of CMEs seen here at Earth.

– Credit and Resource –

NASA

Visualization of Space Environment at Pluto

Tuesday, 27 October 2015

Huge Flare from Black Hole

Scientia — The baffling and strange behaviors of black holes have become somewhat less mysterious recently, with new observations from NASA’s Explorer missions Swift and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. The two space telescopes caught a supermassive black hole in the midst of a giant eruption of X-ray light, helping astronomers address an ongoing puzzle: How do supermassive black holes flare?

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This diagram shows how a shifting feature, called a corona, can create a flare of X-rays around a black hole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The results suggest that supermassive black holes send out beams of X-rays when their surrounding coronas—sources of extremely energetic particles—shoot, or launch, away from the black holes.

“This is the first time we have been able to link the launching of the corona to a flare,” said Dan Wilkins of Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada, lead author of a new paper on the results appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “This will help us understand how supermassive black holes power some of the brightest objects in the universe.”

Supermassive black holes don’t give off any light themselves, but they are often encircled by disks of hot, glowing material. The gravity of a black hole pulls swirling gas into it, heating this material and causing it to shine with different types of light. Another source of radiation near a black hole is the corona. Coronas are made up of highly energetic particles that generate X-ray light, but details about their appearance, and how they form, are unclear.

Astronomers think coronas have one of two likely configurations. The “lamppost” model says they are compact sources of light, similar to light bulbs, that sit above and below the black hole, along its rotation axis. The other model proposes that the coronas are spread out more diffusely, either as a larger cloud around the black hole, or as a “sandwich” that envelops the surrounding disk of material like slices of bread. In fact, it’s possible that coronas switch between both the lamppost and sandwich configurations.

The new data support the “lamppost” model—and demonstrate, in the finest detail yet, how the light-bulb-like coronas move. The observations began when Swift, which monitors the sky for cosmic outbursts of X-rays and gamma rays, caught a large flare coming from the supermassive black hole called Markarian 335, or Mrk 335, located 324 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Pegasus. This supermassive black hole, which sits at the center of a galaxy, was once one of the brightest X-ray sources in the sky.

“Something very strange happened in 2007, when Mrk 335 faded by a factor of 30. What we have found is that it continues to erupt in flares but has not reached the brightness levels and stability seen before,” said Luigi Gallo, the principal investigator for the project at Saint Mary’s University. Another co-author, Dirk Grupe of Morehead State University in Kentucky, has been using Swift to regularly monitor the black hole since 2007.

In September 2014, Swift caught Mrk 335 in a huge flare. Once Gallo found out, he sent a request to the NuSTAR team to quickly follow up on the object as part of a “target of opportunity” program, where the observatory’s previously planned observing schedule is interrupted for important events. Eight days later, NuSTAR set its X-ray eyes on the target, witnessing the final half of the flare event.

After careful scrutiny of the data, the astronomers realized they were seeing the ejection, and eventual collapse, of the black hole’s corona.

“The corona gathered inward at first and then launched upwards like a jet,” said Wilkins. “We still don’t know how jets in black holes form, but it’s an exciting possibility that this black hole’s corona was beginning to form the base of a jet before it collapsed.”

How could the researchers tell the corona moved? The corona gives off X-ray light that has a slightly different spectrum—X-ray “colors”—than the light coming from the disk around the black hole. By analyzing a spectrum of X-ray light from Mrk 335 across a range of wavelengths observed by both Swift and NuSTAR, the researchers could tell that the corona X-ray light had brightened—and that this brightening was due to the motion of the corona.

Coronas can move very fast. The corona associated with Mrk 335, according to the scientists, was traveling at about 20 percent the speed of light. When this happens, and the corona launches in our direction, its light is brightened in an effect called relativistic Doppler boosting.

Putting this all together, the results show that the X-ray flare from this black hole was caused by the ejected corona.

“The nature of the energetic source of X-rays we call the corona is mysterious, but now with the ability to see dramatic changes like this we are getting clues about its size and structure,” said Fiona Harrison, the principal investigator of NuSTAR at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who was not affiliated with the study.

Many other black hole brainteasers remain. For example, astronomers want to understand what causes the ejection of the corona in the first place.

– Credit and Resource –

Journal reference: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Huge Flare from Black Hole

Monday, 26 October 2015

Cassini"s Enceladus Final Flyby

Scientia — In late 2015, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is making its final three flybys of Enceladus, the little moon that stunned scientists with the revelation it harbors a global ocean under its icy shell, active geysers of water-ice feeding one of Saturn’s rings and the first tantalizing signs of hydrothermal activity beyond Earth. All these discoveries have vaulted Enceladus to one of the top future destinations for exploration and the search for signs of potential life beyond Earth.

14 October 2015: Cassini aligned it self to get some of the best shots of Saturn’s Moon Enceladus. Cassini was looking at the moon’s north polar region at an altitude of just 1,142 miles (1,839 kilometers).
This high-resolution Cassini image shows a landscape of stark contrasts on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Thin cracks cross over the pole — the northernmost extent of a global system of such fractures. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute – Provided by NASA

Scientists expected the north polar region of Enceladus to be heavily cratered, based on low-resolution images from the Voyager mission, but the new high-resolution Cassini images show a landscape of stark contrasts. “The northern regions are crisscrossed by a spidery network of gossamer-thin cracks that slice through the craters,” said Paul Helfenstein, a member of the Cassini imaging team at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. “These thin cracks are ubiquitous on Enceladus, and now we see that they extend across the northern terrains as well.”

28 October 2015: Cassini will make a daring flight through the moon’s famous plume only 30 miles (48 kilometers) above Enceladus’ south pole. The flyby is Cassini’s deepest-ever dive through the jets. The encounter will allow Cassini to obtain the most accurate measurements yet of the plume’s composition, and new insights into the ocean world beneath the ice.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will sample the ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus on Wednesday, Oct. 28, when it flies through the moon’s plume of icy spray.

Cassini launched in 1997 and entered orbit around Saturn in 2004. Since then, it has been studying the huge planet, its rings and its magnetic field. Here are some things to know about the mission’s upcoming close flyby of Enceladus:
1. Enceladus is an icy moon of Saturn. Early in its mission, Cassini discovered Enceladus has remarkable geologic activity, including a towering plume of ice, water vapor and organic molecules spraying from its south polar region. Cassini later determined the moon has a global ocean and likely hydrothermal activity, meaning it could have the ingredients needed to support simple life.
2. The flyby will be Cassini’s deepest-ever dive through the Enceladus plume, which is thought to come from the ocean below. The spacecraft has flown closer to the surface of Enceladus before, but never this low directly through the active plume.
3. The flyby is not intended to detect life, but it will provide powerful new insights about how habitable the ocean environment is within Enceladus.
4. Cassini scientists are hopeful the flyby will provide insights about how much hydrothermal activity — that is, chemistry involving rock and hot water — is occurring within Enceladus. This activity could have important implications for the potential habitability of the ocean for simple forms of life. The critical measurement for these questions is the detection of molecular hydrogen by the spacecraft.
5. Scientists also expect to better understand the chemistry of the plume as a result of the flyby. The low altitude of the encounter is, in part, intended to afford Cassini greater sensitivity to heavier, more massive molecules, including organics, than the spacecraft has observed during previous, higher-altitude passes through the plume.
6. The flyby will help solve the mystery of whether the plume is composed of column-like, individual jets, or sinuous, icy curtain eruptions — or a combination of both. The answer would make clearer how material is getting to the surface from the ocean below.
7. Researchers are not sure how much icy material the plumes are actually spraying into space. The amount of activity has major implications for how long Enceladus might have been active.

19 December 2015: Cassini’s final targeted flyby will allow the spacecraft to measure heat flow from the moon’s interior at an altitude of 3,106 miles, or 4,999 kilometers.

– Credit and Resource –

NASA

Cassini"s Enceladus Final Flyby

Tuesday, 29 September 2015

Liquid Water Flows on Mars

New findings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.

These dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks called recurring slope lineae flowing downhill on Mars are inferred to have been formed by contemporary flowing water. Recently, planetary scientists detected hydrated salts on these slopes at Hale crater, corroborating their original hypothesis that the streaks are indeed formed by liquid water. The blue color seen upslope of the dark streaks are thought not to be related to their formation, but instead are from the presence of the mineral pyroxene. The image is produced by draping an orthorectified (Infrared-Red-Blue/Green(IRB)) false color image (ESP_030570_1440) on a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the same site produced by High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (University of Arizona). Vertical exaggeration is 1.5.
Credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Now when I first read this article and all the news channels were buzzing about, Mars having water and potential life on Mars, I was first very skeptical and to be fair, who could blame me. However, I have left the hype for as long as I could bare before joining in on the hype, so here it is

Scientia — Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.

“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water — albeit briny — is flowing today on the surface of Mars.”

These downhill flows, known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), often have been described as possibly related to liquid water. The new findings of hydrated salts on the slopes point to what that relationship may be to these dark features. The hydrated salts would lower the freezing point of a liquid brine, just as salt on roads here on Earth causes ice and snow to melt more rapidly. Scientists say it’s likely a shallow subsurface flow, with enough water wicking to the surface to explain the darkening.

“We found the hydrated salts only when the seasonal features were widest, which suggests that either the dark streaks themselves or a process that forms them is the source of the hydration. In either case, the detection of hydrated salts on these slopes means that water plays a vital role in the formation of these streaks,” said Lujendra Ojha of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, lead author of a report on these findings published Sept. 28 by Nature Geoscience.

Ojha first noticed these puzzling features as a University of Arizona undergraduate student in 2010, using images from the MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). HiRISE observations now have documented RSL at dozens of sites on Mars. The new study pairs HiRISE observations with mineral mapping by MRO’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).

Dark narrow streaks called recurring slope lineae emanating out of the walls of Garni crater on Mars. The dark streaks here are up to few hundred meters in length. They are hypothesized to be formed by flow of briny liquid water on Mars. The image is produced by draping an orthorectified (RED) image (ESP_031059_1685) on a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the same site produced by High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (University of Arizona). Vertical exaggeration is 1.5.
Credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The spectrometer observations show signatures of hydrated salts at multiple RSL locations, but only when the dark features were relatively wide. When the researchers looked at the same locations and RSL weren’t as extensive, they detected no hydrated salt.

Ojha and his co-authors interpret the spectral signatures as caused by hydrated minerals called perchlorates. The hydrated salts most consistent with the chemical signatures are likely a mixture of magnesium perchlorate, magnesium chlorate and sodium perchlorate. Some perchlorates have been shown to keep liquids from freezing even when conditions are as cold as minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 70 Celsius). On Earth, naturally produced perchlorates are concentrated in deserts, and some types of perchlorates can be used as rocket propellant.

Perchlorates have previously been seen on Mars. NASA’s Phoenix lander and Curiosity rover both found them in the planet’s soil, and some scientists believe that the Viking missions in the 1970s measured signatures of these salts. However, this study of RSL detected perchlorates, now in hydrated form, in different areas than those explored by the landers. This also is the first time perchlorates have been identified from orbit.

MRO has been examining Mars since 2006 with its six science instruments.

“The ability of MRO to observe for multiple Mars years with a payload able to see the fine detail of these features has enabled findings such as these: first identifying the puzzling seasonal streaks and now making a big step towards explaining what they are,” said Rich Zurek, MRO project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

For Ojha, the new findings are more proof that the mysterious lines he first saw darkening Martian slopes five years ago are, indeed, present-day water.

“When most people talk about water on Mars, they’re usually talking about ancient water or frozen water,” he said. “Now we know there’s more to the story. This is the first spectral detection that unambiguously supports our liquid water-formation hypotheses for RSL.”

The discovery is the latest of many breakthroughs by NASA’s Mars missions.

“It took multiple spacecraft over several years to solve this mystery, and now we know there is liquid water on the surface of this cold, desert planet,” said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “It seems that the more we study Mars, the more we learn how life could be supported and where there are resources to support life in the future.”

Animation of Site of Seasonal Flows in Hale Crater, Mars

This animation simulates a fly-around look at one of the places on Mars where dark streaks advance down slopes during warm seasons, possibly involving liquid water. This site is within Hale Crater. The streaks are roughly the length of a football field.

There are eight co-authors of the Nature Geoscience paper, including Mary Beth Wilhelm at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California and Georgia Tech; CRISM Principal Investigator Scott Murchie of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland; and HiRISE Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona. Others are at Georgia Tech, the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, and Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique in Nantes, France.

The agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin built the orbiter and collaborates with JPL to operate it.

– Credit and Resource –

NASA

Liquid Water Flows on Mars

Thursday, 24 September 2015

Abell 2744 | Pandora"s Cluster Revealed

This composite image features one of the most complicated and dramatic collisions between galaxy clusters ever seen. Known officially as Abell 2744, this system has been dubbed Pandora’s Cluster because of the wide variety of different structures found. Data from Chandra (red) show gas with temperatures of millions of degrees. In blue is a map showing the total mass concentration (mostly dark matter) based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and the Subaru telescope. Optical data from HST and VLT also show the constituent galaxies of the clusters. Astronomers think at least four galaxy clusters coming from a variety of directions are involved with this collision.

Scientia — One of the most complicated and dramatic collisions between galaxy clusters ever seen is captured in this new composite image. This collision site, known officially as Abell 2744, has been dubbed “Pandora’s Cluster” because of the wide variety of different structures seen. Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are colored red, showing gas with temperatures of millions of degrees. In blue is a map showing the total mass concentration (mostly dark matter) based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), and the Japanese Subaru telescope. Optical data from HST and VLT also show the constituent galaxies of the clusters.

The “core” region (rollover mouse for labels) shows a bullet-shaped structure in the X-ray emitting hot gas and a separation between the hot gas and the dark matter. (As a guide, local peaks in the distribution of hot gas and overall matter in the different regions are shown with red and blue circles respectively). This separation occurs because electric forces between colliding particles in the clouds of hot gas create a friction that slows them down, while dark matter is unaffected by such forces.

In the Northwest (“NW”) region, a much larger separation is seen between the hot gas and the dark matter. Surprisingly, the hot gas leads the “dark” clump (mostly dark matter) by about 500,000 light years. This unusual configuration may require a slingshot scenario, as suggested previously by scientists, to fling the hot gas ahead of the dark matter during an earlier interaction. In the North (“N”) and the West (“W”) two additional examples of hot gas separated from dark matter may be visible. The latter appears to exhibit the largest separation seen to date between hot gas and dark matter.

The authors of this study retraced the details of the collision, and deduce that at least four different galaxy clusters coming from a variety of directions were involved. To understand this history, it was crucial to map the positions of all three types of matter in Abell 2744. Although the galaxies are bright, they make up less than 5% of the mass in Abell 2744. The rest is hot gas (around 20%) visible only in X-rays, and dark matter (around 75%), which is completely invisible.

Dark matter is particularly elusive as it does not emit, absorb or reflect light, but only makes itself apparent through its gravitational attraction. To pinpoint the location of this mysterious substance the team used a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. This is the bending of light rays from distant galaxies as they pass through the gravitational field present in the cluster. The result is a series of telltale distortions in the images of galaxies in the background of optical observations. By carefully plotting the way that these images are distorted, a map is constructed of where the mass — and hence the dark matter — actually lies (shown in blue).

Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the Universe and have become powerful tools in cosmology studies. Further studies of Abell 2744 may provide a deeper understanding of the way that these important objects grow and provide new insight into the properties of dark matter.

Quick Facts on Abell 2744: Pandora

What is it?

A complex collision of at least four galaxy clusters.

How Far Away is it?

About 3.5 billion light years from Earth.

How Big is it?

5.9 million light years across.

Where is it Located?

In the constellation Sculptor visible in Southern Hemisphere.

– Credit and Resource –

Chandra X-Ray Obervatory

Abell 2744 | Pandora"s Cluster Revealed

Planck Mission

Scientia — PASADENA, Calif. – The Planck space mission has released the most accurate and detailed map ever made of the oldest light in the universe, revealing new information about its age, contents and origins.

Planck is a European Space Agency mission. NASA contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck’s science instruments, and U.S., European and Canadian scientists work together to analyze the Planck data.

Freedawn, Scientia, Best Map Ever of the Universe , Universe, galaxies, stars , NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory,

Best Map Ever of the Universe
This map shows the oldest light in our universe, as detected with the greatest precision yet by the Planck mission. The ancient light, called the cosmic microwave background, was imprinted on the sky when the universe was 370,000 years old. It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars and galaxies of today.
By analyzing the light patterns in this map, scientists are fine tuning what we know about the universe, including its origins, fate and basic components.
Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant participation from NASA. NASA’s Planck Project Office is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck’s science instruments. European, Canadian and U.S. Planck scientists work together to analyze the Planck data.

The map results suggest the universe is expanding more slowly than scientists thought, and is 13.8 billion years old, 100 million years older than previous estimates. The data also show there is less dark energy and more matter, both normal and dark matter, in the universe than previously known. Dark matter is an invisible substance that can only be seen through the effects of its gravity, while dark energy is pushing our universe apart. The nature of both remains mysterious.

“Astronomers worldwide have been on the edge of their seats waiting for this map,” said Joan Centrella, Planck program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “These measurements are profoundly important to many areas of science, as well as future space missions. We are so pleased to have worked with the European Space Agency on such a historic endeavor.”

The map, based on the mission’s first 15.5 months of all-sky observations, reveals tiny temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, ancient light that has traveled for billions of years from the very early universe to reach us. The patterns of light represent the seeds of galaxies and clusters of galaxies we see around us today.

Freedawn, Scientia, Best Map Ever of the Universe , Universe, galaxies, stars , NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Matter , full-sky map, observable universe, dark matter,

Map of Matter in the Universe
This full-sky map from the Planck mission shows matter between Earth and the edge of the observable universe. Regions with more mass show up as lighter areas while regions with less mass are darker. The grayed-out areas are where light from our own galaxy was too bright, blocking Planck’s ability to map the more distant matter.
Normal matter, which is made up of atoms, is only a small percent of the total mass in our universe. Most of the matter in the universe is dark – that is, it does not emit or absorb any light – so creating a map of its distribution is challenging. To make the full-sky map, the Planck team took advantage of the fact that all matter, even dark matter, has gravity that will affect light traveling to us from near the very edge of the observable universe. Planck mapped this light, called the cosmic microwave background, with exquisite precision over the whole sky, enabling scientists to create this matter map.
Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant participation from NASA. NASA’s Planck Project Office is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck’s science instruments. European, Canadian and U.S. Planck scientists work together to analyze the Planck data.

“As that ancient light travels to us, matter acts like an obstacle course getting in its way and changing the patterns slightly,” said Charles Lawrence, the U.S. project scientist for Planck at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “The Planck map reveals not only the very young universe, but also matter, including dark matter, everywhere in the universe.”

The age, contents and other fundamental traits of our universe are described in a simple model developed by scientists, called the standard model of cosmology. These new data have allowed scientists to test and improve the accuracy of this model with the greatest precision yet. At the same time, some curious features are observed that don’t quite fit with the simple picture. For example, the model assumes the sky is the same everywhere, but the light patterns are asymmetrical on two halves of the sky, and there is a spot extending over a patch of sky that is larger than expected.

Peculiar Features in Patterns of Ancient Light
The Planck mission has imaged the oldest light in our universe, called the cosmic microwave background, with unprecedented precision. The results fit well with what we know about the universe and its basic traits, but some unexplained features are observed.
The top map shows Planck’s all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background, whereas the bottom map shows the largest-scale features of the map.
One of the anomalies observed by Planck, and hinted at before by previous missions, is an asymmetry in the temperature fluctuations of the ancient light across two halves of our sky. Temperature variations are represented by the different colors, with red being warmer and blue, cooler. The extent of these variations is greater on the hemisphere shown at right than the one at left. This goes against the accepted simple model of our universe, which holds that the sky is the same in all directions. Scientists are in the process of incorporating these and other anomalies into their picture of the universe.
Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant participation from NASA. NASA’s Planck Project Office is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck’s science instruments. European, Canadian and U.S. Planck scientists work together to analyze the Planck data.
Image credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration

“On one hand, we have a simple model that fits our observations extremely well, but on the other hand, we see some strange features which force us to rethink some of our basic assumptions,” said Jan Tauber, the European Space Agency’s Planck project scientist based in the Netherlands. “This is the beginning of a new journey, and we expect our continued analysis of Planck data will help shed light on this conundrum.”

The findings also test theories describing inflation, a dramatic expansion of the universe that occurred immediately after its birth. In far less time than it takes to blink an eye, the universe blew up by 100 trillion trillion times in size. The new map, by showing that matter seems to be distributed randomly, suggests that random processes were at play in the very early universe on minute “quantum” scales. This allows scientists to rule out many complex inflation theories in favor of simple ones.

“Patterns over huge patches of sky tell us about what was happening on the tiniest of scales in the moments just after our universe was born,” Lawrence said.

This tone represents sound waves that traveled through the early universe, and were later “heard” by the Planck space telescope. The primordial sound waves have been translated into frequencies we can hear.
They sound like a constant humming and are made up of a primary wave (the lowest tone) and higher overtones. The “whooshing” oscillation sounds you hear were produced during the processing to make this sound file.
Before there were any stars or galaxies, 13.8 billion years ago, our universe was just a ball of hot plasma — a mixture of electrons, protons, and light. Sound waves shook this infant universe, triggered by minute, or “quantum,” fluctuations happening just moments after the big bang that created our universe.
As these sound waves propagated through the young universe, they left imprints on the matter and light, much like patterns made by waves on the surface of a pond into which a stone has been dropped. These patterns were imprinted as slightly brighter and darker patches in the light. By mapping this ancient light that has traveled to us through space and time, Planck can essentially see the sound echoes of the early universe.
For this sound file, the patterns in the sky observed by Planck have been translated to audible frequencies. This sound mapping represents a 50-octave compression in going from the actual wavelengths of the primordial sound waves (around 450,000 light-years, or around 47 octaves below the lowest note on the piano) to wavelengths we can hear.
Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant participation from NASA. NASA’s Planck Project Office is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck’s science instruments. European, Canadian and U.S. Planck scientists work together to analyze the Planck data.

Planck launched in 2009 and has been scanning the skies ever since, mapping the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the theorized big bang that created our universe. This relic radiation provides scientists with a snapshot of the universe 370,000 years after the big bang. Light existed before this time, but it was locked in a hot plasma similar to a candle flame, which later cooled and set the light free.

The cosmic microwave background is remarkably uniform over the entire sky, but tiny variations reveal the imprints of sound waves triggered by quantum fluctuations in the universe just moments after it was born. These imprints, appearing as splotches in the Planck map, are the seeds from which matter grew, forming stars and galaxies. Prior balloon-based and space missions learned a great deal by studying these patterns, including NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), which earned the COBE Team the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Planck is the successor to these satellites, covering a wider range of light frequencies with improved sensitivity and resolution. Its measurements reveal light patterns as small as one-twelfth of a degree on the sky.

“Planck is like the Ferrari of cosmic microwave background missions,” said Krzysztof Gorski, a U.S Planck scientist at JPL. “You fine tune the technology to get more precise results. For a car, that can mean an increase in speed and winning races. For Planck, it results in giving astronomers a treasure trove of spectacular data, and bringing forth a deeper understanding of the properties and history of the universe.”

The newly estimated expansion rate of the universe, known as Hubble’s constant, is 67.15 plus or minus 1.2 kilometers/second/megaparsec. A megaparsec is roughly 3 million light-years. This is less than prior estimates derived from space telescopes, such as NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble, using a different technique. The new estimate of dark matter content in the universe is 26.8 percent, up from 24 percent, while dark energy falls to 68.3 percent, down from 71.4 percent. Normal matter now is 4.9 percent, up from 4.6 percent.

The Planck Space Telescope: Revealing the Ancient Universe

– Credit and Resource –

NASA

Planck Mission