Tag Archives: universe

We’ve come a long way from the luminiferous aether. The speed of light, sometimes abbreviated as c, is a universal maximum posted speed that causality will enforce. It’s the greatest speed at which any known substance or object can travel. Even light itself can’t exceed its own speed limit: specifically, …

In a new paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, an international team of theoretical physicists described a scenario for the formation of primordial black holes from vacuum bubbles in the early Universe and discussed its intriguing realization that can naturally account for all of the dark matter. ‘Baby universes’ …

  Humans have wrestled with the nature of the universe since time immemorial, but we’ve had science to guide us in recent generations. Most experts on physics and cosmology accept the inflation model, a straight line from the Big Bang to our infinitely expanding universe. However, some scientists hold onto …

Using the polarization data from ESA’s Planck satellite, a mission that have studied the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the oldest light in the Universe, a duo of astrophysicists has uncovered intriguing signs of new physics beyond the Standard Model of elementary particles and fields. As the CMB light (left image) …

Physics is sometimes closer to philosophy when it comes to understanding the Universe. Dr. Donald Chang, a physicist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, attempts to elucidate whether the Universe has a resting frame. An experiment proposed by Dr. Donald Chang aims at resolving divergence between special …

This summer, a suite of instruments called the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) will fly to the International Space Station (ISS), where it will utilize the microgravity environment of the space station to form, create, and study ultra-cold quantum gases. Artist’s concept of a magneto-optical trap and atom chip to be …

What you think of as “cold” really isn’t very cold in the grand scheme of things. Even the frigid depths of space are toasty by the standards of NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), an instrument being developed to study matter at extremely low temperatures. This device will head up to …

A team of theoretical physicists at the University of Basel, Switzerland, has found that in the very early Universe, so-called oscillons — strong localized fluctuations of the inflaton field — can act as ‘gravitational wave factories.’ According to Antusch et al, oscillons produced a characteristic peak in the otherwise broad …

Last year, Alberta beauty queen Ashley Callingbull took home the Mrs. Universe crown, as the debut Canadian winner. Not only was the 27-year-old actress the first Canuck to be crowned in the pageant, she was also the first ever indigenous woman to win the title. Callingbull, who was born on …

The Universe is not spinning or stretched in any particular direction, according to a team of researchers from University College London and Imperial College London, UK. A massive cluster of yellowish galaxies, seemingly caught in a red and blue spider web of eerily distorted background galaxies, makes for a spellbinding …