Wonder of Wonders -- Behold the Universe!

"From the data I've seen so far, from the work we've seen in commissioning and then this first week of science, yeah, this is going to be revolutionary."

"These are incredible capabilities we've never had before."

Jane Rigby, Webb operations project manager, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

 

"Those releases represented five days of observation with this observatory."

"And they include something that is a deeper infrared image than has ever been taken in history, deeper than Hubble images that required weeks to acquire. That was done in half a day with Webb."

Randy Kimble, Webb project scientist, Goddard. 

 

"I am so thrilled, and so relieved."

"It's just impossible to convey how hard it really was. We risked so much to say we're going to go do this, and it's so near impossible. But we did it."

John Mather, Nobel Prize winner, senior scientist, Webb project.

The James Webb Space Telescope's view of the Carina Nebula.  NASA

 Astronomers have awaited the results of the first photographs to be released, taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful such telescope yet to search the Universe beyond our solar system, beyond our Milky Way Galaxy. The clarity of the photographs and the wide scope of far distant galaxies will in due time explain much about the Universe. Photographs are now being seen that reflect the birth and death of stars, nature's most mysterious secrets now on the verge of being unlocked through observation of what could never be imagined might be possible to analyze.

 

Clouds on another world.

@NASAWebb

Webb captured the signature of water on giant gas planet WASP 96-b, which orbits a star 1,150 light-years away. For the first time, we've detected evidence of clouds in this exoplanet's atmosphere: http://nasa.gov/webbfirstimages #UnfoldTheUniverse

"[The initial deep look unveiled on July11 is] proof of concept ... whetting our appetite for the record-breaking results we now know will come from this exceptional facility."

Heidi Hammel, planetary astronomer, scheduled to use the Webb

"[The telescope, the successor to the Hubble which is still in operation] has capabilities that far surpass my most optimistic dreams."

"The capabilities of Webb are truly out of this world."

Garth Illingworth, astronomer, University of California, Santa Cruz

A world-achievement, expectations were high for the success of this new eye in the sky that would send back messages and photographs from the most distant areas of the Universe. And what was revealed in those exceptional photographs of never-imagined detail was beyond extraordinary and exciting beyond measure to the fertile, now febrile minds of the world's greatest astronomers and astrophysicists. The $10-billion investment in the James Webb Telescope sent the world of space science into orbit yesterday.

 

The first image to be revealed at the White House is that of a cluster of galaxies called SMACS 0723. which only the massive lens of the Webb could have penetrated and portrayed so stunningly. Behind the magnification of the cluster are seen faint objects of vast cosmic distance. The "highest resolution images of the infrared universe ever captured", in the words of the American president who presided over the unveiling of the images.

 

Stephan's Quintet   Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

 

The European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency partnered with NASA, maintaining a close grasp on the first images derived from the Webb during its initial sequence of observations as it orbits the sun a million miles from Earth. A few testing-phase images of the telescope were previously released, astounding astronomers with their detailed clarity. The newly-released photographs, however, were in full colour.

This initial first scrutiny deep into the universe by the Webb has excited the appetite of the world of astronomy for what is yet to come; revolutionary views of the universe crossing cosmic distances with unrivalled resolution. The coming months will transform what is currently known and assessed as an expansion of the understanding of the most basic rules and origin of the universe will gradually be resolved.

Now the formation of the earliest galaxies will be enabled by the Webb toward more intensive study along with the evolution of the expanding universe. Even our own solar system, hosting small worlds we hardly are aware of beyond the orbit of Neptune will come under scrutiny as nature's genius is examined and understood in time and space.

SMACS 0723  Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Eyeing The Hidden Universe

"Both projects [two telescopes, one in the North, the other South; the Thirty Meter/The Giant Magellan] finally woke up to the fact they are being creamed by the European 39-meter [European Extremely Large Telescope in Chile]."
Matt Mountain, president, Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy

"The ELT will produce discoveries that we simply cannot imagine today, and it will inspire people around the world to think about science, technology and our place in the universe." 
"As much as we astronomers always aim for ever bigger telescopes, the core purpose of such a revolutionary project as the ELT is to find the right balance between scientific capability and cost efficiency."
"ESO has always managed to lead ground-based astronomy and built front-line telescopes thanks to this approach."
"With the new ELT design we can still satisfy the bold science goals and also ensure that the construction can be completed in only ten to eleven years. This will allow the ELT to operate simultaneously with the James Webb Space Telescope."
Tim de Zeeuw, ESO's Director General (European Southern Observatory)

Top view 3-dimensional model European Extremely Large Telescope & enclosure.

(Image: © ESO)

Telescopes on American mountaintops such as Palomar, Kitt Peak and Mauna Kea until recently have been the ultimate telescopes on Earth. That will change in 2025 when the European Southern Observatory, a product of a multinational treaty organization, will first make use of a telescope destined to dwarf the universe-probing might of all others. Named the European Extremely Large Telescope, located on Cerro Paranal in Chile, a primary light-gathering mirror of 39 meters in diameter functions 13 times more powerfully than any other telescope now in use, anywhere in the world.

Should they ever be built, the Thirty Meter Telescope, to be constructed on Mauna Kea in Hawaii and the Giant Magellan on Cerro Las Campanas in Chile, represent two U.S.-led telescope projects capable of competing with the giant European telescope; both projects facing financial difficulties and political controversy. Should their eventual completion proceed, it would take at least a decade.

A protest movement arguing that decades of telescope building on Mauna Kea have served to pollute and desecrate a mountain sacred to Polynesian culture, violating the rights of native Hawaiins, has effectively stalled the Thirty Meter Telescope.

Many billions of years old, but still sparkling brightly, NGC 2257 is a globular cluster, the name given to the roughly spherical concentrations of stars that orbit galactic cores, but are often found far out from the centers in the halo areas of galaxies. NGC 2257 lies on the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way. The image is made from data taken with the Wide Field Imager instrument on the 2.2-meter MPG/ESO telescope at La Silla, as part of the ESO Imaging Survey project, which was planned to make public imaging surveys to identify targets for follow-up observations with the VLT.  ESO

Hundreds of millions of dollars are needed to finance both telescopes. The National Academy of Sciences in the U.S. is to be approached via a blue-ribbon panel by representatives of the two projects to ask for financial help. Part of the Decadal Survey where the astronomy community ranks priorities for allocating federal money, the panel has the kind of influence the telescope groups are hoping will be instrumental in allowing them to complete these two projects.

The survey's recommendations influence Congress and agencies such as the National Science Foundation.

With a high priority ranking, the National Science Foundation, traditionally funding ground-based observatories, could allocate greater funding for projects representing these two telescopes which will require at minimum a billion additional in funding to be completed, between them. To the present, about $600 million has been raised by the team behind the Giant Magellan Telescope from its partners, leading them now to search out an equivalent amount from the National Science Foundation.

The Hubble Space Telescope and its soon-to-be successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, provide
American astronomers with instruments in space, but Hubble is aging and the Webb telescope, once it reaches orbit in 2021, will take months to unfold itself. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope now under construction in Chile, will be at the service of astronomers as well, but it is a mere eight meters in size, incapable of viewing deeply into space.

One of most famous spiral galaxies is Messier 104, widely known as the "Sombrero" because of its particular shape. It is located towards the constellation Virgo, at a distance of about 30 million light-years. 

ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/R. Gendler and J.-E. Ovaldsen

American astronomers twenty years ago recognized a need for giant, ground-based telescopes. The California Institute of Technology and the University of California originated the Thirty Meter project. Since then the project has swelled to include Canada, Japan, China and India as viewing partners. The Carnegie Observatories began the Giant Magellan telescope, including now several universities and research institutes, along with South Korea, Australia and the State of Sao Paulo, in Brazil.

Extremely large telescopes are considered worldwide to be one of the highest priorities in ground-based astronomy. They will vastly advance astrophysical knowledge, allowing detailed studies of subjects including planets around other stars, the first objects in the Universe, supermassive black holes, and the nature and distribution of the dark matter and dark energy which dominate the Universe.   ESO

Unpeeling the Mysteries of Nature

"We're excited about this because ... it shows that we can start doing this more precise test and start to understand black holes in a deeper sense."
"We all expect general relativity to be correct, but this is the first time we have confirmed it in this way. This is the first experimental measurement that succeeds in directly testing the no-hair theorem."
"What we've done in this study is go back to the data from the first detection of gravitational waves ... and we reanalyzed it to look for a different kind of 'ringing' that has been all but ignored in previous analyses, and we were able to identify it."
"We were very surprised by this because the common wisdom was that this should not work. We were ecstatic."
Maximiliano Isi, NASA Einstein fellow, Kavil Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Image: © Shutterstock)

Published just a few days ago in Physical Review Letters, a study led by an MIT researcher in tandem with colleagues, managed to decipher the 'ringing' of an infant black hole, producing gravitational waves in a manner reminiscent of a bell producing sound. This permitted the researchers to predict the mass and spin of the black hole, an advance in understanding the phenomena of evolving matter and its gravitational impact in a way never before realized, and running counter to all expectations of success.

When two black holes collided they produced a new black hole whose waves resulting from the violent collision had been detected in 2017; while isolating the ringing from the baby black hole, the scientists have recognized a new method of studying the mysterious objects whose celebrated gravitational pull is so robust even light is incapable of escaping, held fast to the dark interior.

The research team headed by Dr. Isi in collaboration with a five-person team included the study co-author Matthew Giesler of the California Institute of Technology. Support was given to the Albert Einstein theory about gravity, now a century old, when the research team was enabled by their observation and its startling result, to demonstrate that ringing of gravitational waves can be utilized in the prediction of mass and spin of black holes.

Dr. Einstein theorized the existence of gravitational waves, how they might be useful in finding the composition of the objects that create them. His original theory of general relativity explains how it is that space, time, matter and energy interact in various ways. Black holes are "hairless", a theoretical term used by scientists to indicate a black hole has mass, spin and electrical charge but no other characteristics; it was the scientists' discovery of the ringing that supported that theory.

An artist’s impression of two black holes as they’re in the process of merging.

LIGO

Data was derived from LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave-Observatory, a scientific collaboration led by MIT and Caltech, including the participation of global institutions. In 2015 the organization first discovered gravitational waves resulting from the collision of the two black holes. A chirping sound was heard when the waves were translated into sound.

It was the focus on the last few milliseconds of the "chirp" that led the researchers to isolate waves specific to the newly-created black hole from the much more robust waves produced by the collision, allowing them to identify a specific "tone" of the ringing, in turn permitting the accurate prediction of the black hole's mass and spin.

This revelation represented a hitherto-unattainable goal that evaded scientists, to the point it was considered that making the breakthrough would demand technology that would only be developed some time in the next several decades. This new discovery has clearly resulted in an acceleration of the process, advancing the science enormously.



Dr. Isi enthuses over the opportunity to witness what the scientific community can construct of this new method of studying black holes at a time when new black hole collisions are being detected every week. "The dark universe", that surrounds us is on the cusp, it would seem, of becoming more explicable, opening the potential in identification and study of waves from mystifying astrophysical objects such as wormholes.

"This is very exciting. We're going to be learning all types of things. It's a good time to be a gravitational scientist", the astronomer enthused, thinking of future revelations that will bring the secrets of our encircling, universal environment and nature's bewitching blueprint for existence all the more closer to human understanding even in the face of a vast universe reluctant to reveal all the hidden details of its evolving and often puzzling realities.

Scientists have obtained the first image of a black hole, using Event Horizon Telescope observations of the center of the galaxy M87. The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun. This long-sought image provides the strongest evidence to date for the existence of supermassive black holes and opens a new window onto the study of black holes, their event horizons, and gravity. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

The Speculative Cosmos

"Early dark energy, the force invoked by the Johns Hopkins group, might represent a third episode of antigravity taking over the universe and speeding it up. Perhaps all three are manifestations of the same tendency of the universe to speed up occasionally. If so, it would mean that the current manifestation of dark energy might turn off one day."
"...If dark energy remains constant, everything outside our galaxy eventually will be moving away from us faster than the speed of light, and will no longer be visible. The universe will become lifeless and utterly dark. But if dark energy is temporary -- if one day it switches off - cosmologists can contemplate a sensible tomorrow."
"The dark energy currently in the universe actually has increased over cosmic time, according to a recent report in Nature Astronomy. If this keeps up, the universe could end one day in what astronomers call the Big Rip, with atoms and elementary particles torn asunder -- perhaps the ultimate cosmic catastrophe."
Dennis Overbye, science writer, The New York Times

NASA Dark Energy

From nothing arose everything. It did not take a celestial overseer six days to create the world. It took nature no time at all to create everything that exists. Time itself had no existence before nature took it upon herself to give birth to the universe and all that inhabits it, including thee and me, although thee and me represent an incidental, infinitesimally minuscule portion of a wee corner of a constellation, itself lost in relative time and space in the infinite immensity of the cosmos.

And when one contemplates the truly amazing structure of the world we live in, and our own quite incredible mind-cerebral functioning as a supreme work of excruciatingly detailed architecture, wondering as we do how it is we have a soul and a mind and what, in fact they actually represent within nature, the puzzle simply keeps expanding -- just like the universe.

If we're speaking time, and we are, rather casually in the thoughts above, the universe is 13.8-billion years old. Old, old. We being relatively recent additions. Experiments in nature? There have been countless earlier biological species that have come and gone, do we consider them nature's expendable experiments that failed to mesh with the larger plan? Will the entire experiment, which is to say the universe one day self-destruct?

In the universe's childhood at 100,000 years it represented an expanding mass of energy; particles, radiation, a switched-on experiment that great minds interpret from clues and intuit with sheer brain power as the never-ending search for the origins, purpose and meaning of the universe and life absorbs the minds of geniuses.Those minds grasp a theory that the switched-on energy field flooded an empty space.

Another 100,000 years passed and the field is abruptly terminated, leaving the universe to speedily distribute itself throughout welcoming space, filling that vacuum that nature is said to abhor. According, that is, to astronomers from Johns Hopkins University who suggest this field's existence answers to a puzzle in astronomy, how and why it is that the universe appears to expand swifter than it 'should'.


"If we're going to be serious about cosmology, this is the kind of thing we have to be able to take seriously", Harvard theorist Lisa Randall stated. She should know. We of course, wouldn't. Among some researchers the inference of the existence of previously unknown subatomic particles would answer the question. The Johns Hopkins group, however, favour the presence of hitherto unknown energy fields.

Dark energy is a force field that is known to urge upon the universe quicker expansion, while a new report suggests that very dark energy may be in the process of becoming stronger and denser where in future the result might become atoms ripped asunder, leading to the end of time. No actual evidence exists for these hypothesis; they could all be in error, or if correct the story of the origin, history and fate of the universe may have to undergo a rewrite.

Then there are quasars which arise from supermassive black holes centring galaxies; the brightest objects in nature, visible across the universe which researchers traced to the history of the cosmos about 12 billion years ago with the understanding that the rate of cosmic expansion has deviated from expectations during that time frame. A theory of dark energy as inconstant, altering, growing denser, stronger over cosmic time has arisen.

If this is a correct model, dark energy may just represent a particularly virulent, even implausible form identified as phantom energy whose existence might imply that as objects speed up, they lose energy. Therefore, the push from phantom energy would grow with no hold-backs to eventually overcome gravity and tear the Earth apart, as the universe expands. Oh.

Brian Stauffer, The New York Times

Humankind's Obsessive Curiosity

"This is a historic step in international scientific exploration of the moon, opening up the Luna Incognita of the lunar far side to surface exploration for the first time."
James Head, scientist, Brown University, Rhode Island

"We use radio wave lengths to probe everything from black holes in the local neighbourhood to distant galaxies, so a radio observatory on the far side [of the moon] could be a huge boon to astronomy."
Briony Horgan, scientist, Purdue University, Indiana

"We would be able to listen to a distant echo of the Big Bang and see the universe in a state before the first-ever stars formed."
"That was a baby picture [cosmic heat map of the universe dated 370,000 years after the Big Bang]."
"[From the far side of the moon it might be possible to] see a movie of the evolution of the young universe from toddler to puberty."
Heino Falcke, radio astronomer, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands

An artist’s impression of Chang’e 4 on the moon. Photograph: Costfoto/Barcroft Images

The Soviet Union's Luna 3 beamed back the first images of the far side of the moon in 1959, informing scientists for the first time that the two sides of the moon -- the near side facing us and the far side facing away from us as the moon circles Earth in its tidally locked state, ensuring the same hemisphere points at all times toward Earth -- are different. There are more craters on the far side, and unlike the near side of the moon where seas of solidified lava are commonly seen to form the shadow shape of a face viewed from Earth, the far side has few.

Now that China has landed its Chang'e-4 lunar explorer, scientists from all over the world are anxious to understand finally why those two sides of the moon are so radically different; one illuminated by the sun and never viewed from our planet. China's second moon landing when Chang'e-4 settled on the far side on January 3 represents a milestone and the expectations are high that the data it will deliver will answer many scientific questions about the formation of the Universe.

The far side of the moon, as seen by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

The dark areas on the near side of the moon represent where ancient asteroids struck the moon's surface and when lava was  unleashed darkening the facade, smoothing it, and thus serving to erase the records from previous impacts. When the far side of the moon was struck by ancient asteroids on the other hand, no floods of lava ensued. Instead the surface was left with craters pockmarking it, leaving that side lighter, older and more heavily cratered.

This dichotomy occurred, according to some astronomers' hypotheses, as a result of the crust on the near side being substantially thinner than that on the far side, making ti easier for magma to emerge on the near side. Were that to be the most plausible explanation that through samples yet to be extracted and studied the mystery of the differences on each side's crust thickness might be explicated. Asteroids and comets smashed the rocky planets in the early history of the solar system, leaving craters.

The Moon is divided into two basic physiographic regions: smooth maria and cratered highlands. The smooth maria fill the large circular basins and spill out onto low lying regions. They were sampled by Apollo 11, 12, 15 and 17 and Luna 16 and 24. The ejecta blankets of the large basins were sampled by Apollo 14, 15 and 17. The heavily cratered highlands were sampled by Apollo 16 and Luna 20. Note the great distances covered by rays from fresh craters. NASA photo no. 84-31673 (Lick Observatory)

Hopes are high even in these early days that Chang'e-4 may provide some of the answers to these critical questions of the early formation of the Universe. The moon's far side presents as a solution to a mystery whereas on Earth and other rocky planets volcanoes washed these craters away over aeons of time. Studying the far side of the moon is being viewed as an opportunity to assess and investigate a pristine surface of the moon's early days; in particular to unravel the geological record of the time when the moon was assaulted by ancient objects.

It has long been the dream of astronomers to build and install a radio telescope on the far side of the moon, shutting out the many sounds that emanate from Earth, such as cellphones, television stations and cars which a radio telescope on the near side would pick up, muffling the distant, more muted and ancient sounds of an exploding and forming Universe. Study of the primordial clouds of hydrogen gas that coalesced into the first stars of the Universe might be feasible with future lunar missions.

The geology of the far side is rougher, more cratered and contains more ancient material than the near side.  Tidal forces long ago slowed the moon's rotation so that the less-dense highlands of the far side face away our planet.   This topographic image from Nasa shows the highest elevations in red and the lowest in blue.  
China’s Chang’e 4 Moon lander touched down in the Von Kármán crater within the Aitken basin – the moon’s largest, deepest and oldest crater.

Capturing an Elusive Cosmic Theory

"In many moments you search and ask yourself, why do I do this?"
"I thought, Oh my God, what is this?"
"[But witnessing the joy of astronomers at this discovery was] awe-inspiring and unique. It's so exciting to find and register something yet unseen by humans."
Victor Buso, amateur astronomer, Rosario, Argentina

"In our field, this is a fundamental question: What is the structure of the star at the moment of explosion [birth of a supernova]?"
"We immediately noticed this was an incredibly important discovery. Given that we don't know where and in which moment a supernova is going to explode, it is very easy to lose this very fast early phase."
"This is the first confirmation of the existence of this phase, which is really in agreement with the [computer] models."
Melina Bersten, astrophysicist, Institute of Astrophysics, La Plata, Argentina

"[Stellar explosions] come in different flavours."
"Victor was really very lucky - cannot deny that - but also he had enough expertise to be able to see the object and to realize that this was possible."
"I would hope the amateur astronomers are encouraged to do more of this." 
"We want to know how stars evolve into the different structures that give different outcomes in supernovas."
Gaston Fotalli, astrophysicist, Institute of Astrophysics, La Plata, Argentina

To date, no one has been able to capture the 'first optical light' from a supernova, since stars explode seemingly at random in the sky, and the burst is fleeting. Pictured is the supernova (red cross) captured by University of California researchers after Mr Buso's find

A passion for astronomy led a man whose parents instilled that fascination in him when he was a little boy, to dedicate himself to scanning the night sky to discern what he could of the mysteries of the universe. As a child he made his first telescope as precocious children are wont to do with tin cans, lenses from magnifying glasses and clay mucilage. He watched, alongside his parents on television as Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the surface of the moon, for humanity. "Vitito, you have to see this moment. You will never forget it", his mother told him.

And he never did. Now 58, and a locksmith by trade, his love of astronomy only grew over the years. He had at one point, sold some property belonging to his family and with the proceeds built an observatory on the roof of his house. It is where he spends all of his leisure hours, scanning the skies. To help him in this passion, he acquired a powerful 40-centimeter telescope and with it observes the sky and the shimmering stars that are housed in his observable cosmos and in the process takes photographs.

On September 21, 2016 he was putting a new camera to the test, pointing it toward a barred spiral galaxy, some 65 million light-years away, called NGC-613. Soon something unusual drew his attention; a tiny pixel of light appeared in his photographs, and that pixel of light had no presence in archival images he studied online for comparison. He keenly observed as the light appeared to become brighter. He wanted to immediately contact professional astronomers but they all had gone off to attend an annual conference.

Victor Buso at the rooftop observatory in which he captured the first images of the early stages of the birth of a supernova.

The next night Victor Buso rushed up to his roof, anxious to see if that faint pixel had developed to become a brilliant, full-bore supernova, and to his amazement his expectation was met. In time, those images he took which had so excited him, came into the possession of Drs. Bersten and Folatelli, and they were thunderstruck by the revelations and ramifications. Buso, according to a statement from the University of California Berkley, had captured light from the first hour of a supernova.

The two astrophysicists at the La Plata Institute of Astrophysics authored a paper on this event so unusual it had never before been witnessed, an event that bore out all the theories that astronomers had posited about the birth of supernovas. Their paper was published in the journal Nature, as a landmark event for astronomy. The instantaneous "shock breakout" phase of a supernova; an energy wave rolling out of a star's core to its exterior, heralding the star's explosion. Theorized and finally witnessed.

With the photographs acquired from Mr. Buso to guide them, the two astrophysicists used powerful telescopes, observing the supernova in multiple wavelengths, detecting the light signature of a star whose hydrogen envelope had disintegrated, then exploded, allowing insight into the structure of the progenitor star, a yellow supergiant identified as a binary star, roughly 20 times more massive than Earth's sun.

That Mr. Buso was able to capture this singular event, one that had eluded the best efforts of trained astronomers in their search to observe just such an event, represented an opportunity of rare synchronicity, serendipitous and coincidental to the fact that as an amateur he was in possession of a new, powerful camera, all of which came together; his determined passion, his keen eye and acquired knowledge, his excellent equipment and the particularity of the event occurring just at that moment.

In 1987, astronomers spotted a ‘titanic supernova’ in a nearby galaxy blazing with the power of over 100 million suns (pictured)

Interstellar Interception? Misconception?

"It appears to be moving at an orbit affected only by gravity. The object is rotating and we want to make sure to catch every face of it."
"[Should Listen's telescopic probe detect something outside the norm, it could indicate] that either there is some very exotic physics going on, in and around the object] or that an advanced, extraterrestrial civilization had created it and perhaps sent it to our solar system for purposes that are unknown."
"Nature doesn’t broadcast on a very specific frequency, it smears it out across colour and time."
"Technology behaves differently. It can compress electromagnetic energy and so we look for those specific signs and for repeating patterns which nature doesn’t tend to do. We look for structure."
Andrew Siemion, director, Berkeley SETI Research Centre

"With our equipment at Green Bank, we can detect a signal the strength of a mobile phone coming out of this object."
"We don't want to be sensational in any way and we are very realistic about the chances this is artificial, but because this is a unique situation, we think mankind can afford ten hours of observing time using the best equipment on the planet to check a low-probability hypothesis."
Yuri Milner, Breakthrough Listen

"A cigar or needle shape is the most likely architecture for an interstellar spacecraft, since this would minimize friction and damage from interstellar gas and dust."
University of California, Berkeley, Breakthrough Listen project

"We're not implying anything here with respect to artificial intelligence or extraterrestrial life."
"It's on a trajectory that is well defined, moving at a speed that says it had to have entered from interstellar space. So it came from elsewhere, if you will."
"There's a lot of stuff flying between the stars. We eject material from planetary systems all the time, especially during formation processes."
Paul Delaney, Professor of physics and astronomy, York University, Toronto

An artist's impression of the huge cigar-shaped object (PA)

It is unusual enough to have drawn the attention of the world's foremost theoretical physicist and cosmologist to the possibility that the asteroid-like rock formation hurtling through space in a trajectory that brought it from outer space as an interstellar object of interest into our solar system for some deliberate purpose which in the minds of astronomers could only be to document the presence of life in solar systems throughout the universe other than their own; which is to say the advanced technological civilization that presumably lives elsewhere in the universe.

"Perhaps the aliens have a mothership that travels fast and releases baby spacecrafts that freely fall into planetary system on a reconnaissance mission."
"If this object is natural in origin, there should be many more like it in the solar system… and even if most of them are natural, perhaps one of them will be found to be of artificial origin, some space device or junk from an alien civilization."
"The more I study this object, the more unusual it appears, making me wonder whether it might be an artificially made probe which was sent by an alien civilization."
Professor Stephen Hawking, Britain

The mysterious object is cigar shaped and believed to be from interstellar space

Seriously, can we take this seriously? But there it is, the first object to have ever been spotted coming into our solar system from interplanetary space. If it is indeed a highly advanced technological spaceship-laboratory designed and sent off by some alien extraterrestrials it would seem that however this object is designed, its exterior resembling a rocky asteroid, it is not dependent on any kind of rocketry or jet propulsion of any kind to attain its tremendous speeds through space, but on gravity itself, a method of taking advantage of the most basic force in nature unknown to earthly physicists.

The largest telescope on Earth will dedicate multiple hours of focused attention on this interloper into our solar system. Tentatively identified as an asteroid, or, in the enthused minds of astronomers, as a spaceship placed within an asteroid-like exterior covering, this strange object was discovered with the use of the University of Hawaii's PanSTARRS1 telescope in October. Funded by NASA's Near Earth Object Observations Program, the telescope is among the most powerful on the planet.

The Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia, US, which is going to track the object (PA)

NASA revealed that the asteroid whipped past our sun on September 9 at a speed described as "blistering", some 87.3 kilometres each second. Hedging their bets, astronomers admit that chances are slim this curious object is an abandoned spacecraft, or alternately an alien interstellar probe. As of today, however, the University of California, Berkeley's Breakthrough Listen project which has been set up as a global astronomical program to search for life beyond Earth, will dedicate time using the Green Bank telescope in West Virginia to search for signs of extraterrestrial technology across four radio bands, emanating from Oumuamua.

Several days earlier, the asteroid was 50 to 70 times closer to Earth than was NASA's Voyager-1 spacecraft, and at the present time is roughly two astronomical units away, calculated at over two times as far as the Earth is from the sun, with no evidence it is propelled by anything but gravity. Electromagnetic emissions, optic or infrared light fundamentally in variance from known astrophysical background if detected, will offer affirmation that this space object is no mere asteroid but something profoundly more complex and puzzling.

On the one hand, scientists fully expect the object to be verified as completely natural; on the other hand if signals are detected that indicate otherwise, whatever is ultimately discovered will further humankind's knowledge of the universe and the world we inhabit.

The project will fly past Jupiter next year and will hurtle beyond Pluto by the 2020s

Here's Stephen Hawking with his sobering last thoughts expressed  a while ago in an interview:
"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they could reach."
"If so, it makes sense for them to exploit each new planet for material to build more spaceships so they could move on. Who knows what the limits would be?"
"We don't know much about aliens, but we know about humans. If you look at history, contact between humans and less intelligent organisms have often been disastrous from their point of view, and encounters between civilizations with advanced versus primitive technologies have gone badly for the less advanced."
"A civilization reading one of our messages could be billions of years ahead of us. If so, they will be vastly more powerful, and may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria."

Cheerfully constructive optimist, isn't he?

The Imagined Confirmed

"The observations showed we were observing a kilonova, an object whose light is powered by extreme nuclear reactions."
"This tells us that the heavy elements, like the gold or platinum in jewelry, are the cinders, forged in the billion-degree remnants of a merging neutron star."
Dr. Joe Lyman, University of Warwick

"The first discovery of gravitational waves from the merger of two neutron stars is a historic event."
"It is every bit as exciting as the first discovery of gravitational waves from merging black holes. Since this involves neutron stars that radiate light, for the first time we can also see what is going on in an extreme astronomical event that shakes up spacetime."
David Wiltshire, department of physics and astronomy, University of Canterbury

"We're all made of stardust, but gold, silver and platinum are made of neutron stardust."
"In this particular event, it's likely that hundreds or thousands of Earth masses of gold and other elements were made."
"If the rate of neutron star mergers is as high as we now think, these dying stars are now the source of most of these elements in the universe."
Dr. J.J. Eldridge, astro-physicist, University of Auckland

"This discovery has answered three questions that astronomers have been puzzling for decades -- what happens when neutron stars merge? What causes the short duration gamma ray bursts? Where are the heavy elements, like gold, made?"
"In the space of about a week all three of these mysteries were solved."
Dr. Samantha Oates, University of Warwick astrophysics group

New source in galaxy NGC 4993   space in images

The Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory  in Washington and Louisiana a few short months ago validated as a reality a prediction that Albert Einstein proposed fully one hundred years ago. Einstein's theories, clarity in his mind, imponderable in the minds of most humans incapable of grasping the intuitive leaps of imagining the mechanics of the universe, have over time been shown to be amazingly scientifically clairvoyant. His visionary genius guided the science of astrophysics, theoretical physics.

His successors have built upon his theories, his advice, his philosophical view of science and the natural phenomena that we struggle to fully comprehend. One can only wonder what he might make of the great strides that have been realized since his death? What, above all, he might have taken out of the latest observations of the heavens. That scientists' theories that cataclysmic collisions of neutron stars and the monumental explosive force that ensued would create the sought-after precious metals mined on Earth, have seen observable confirmation.

These events of unimaginable force, dimensions, time-space occurrences where supernovas created from the death of giant stars become neutron stars where protons and electrons combine forming neutrons in the creation of tiny, dense stars and then collide in a spectacular burst of fierce energy, spewing debris hundreds of millions of years in the past, in a sense mimic the creation of the universe as we know it, through the Big Bang theory when planets and stars emerged.

Neutron stars merging     Space.com

The sheer magnitude of the event, the concussion that followed, were picked up in a space-time ripple in the detection of gravitational waves. The signal picked up by the LIGO Washington/Louisiana observatory by American astronomers was the remnant of a cosmic event at a time on Earth when dinosaurs made their home here, 130 million years ago. Space and time were rattled, to send gravitational waves throughout the universe in a powerful reaction.

Once the exciting word got out, astronomers worldwide aimed  heir telescopes toward the identified area of space, to pick up the infrared afterglow caused by the monumental collision and within that light they found the unique chemical signatures for gold, silver and platinum. The stars, before colliding, were 10 kilometres wide, yet each as heavy as our own sun. (A teaspoon-size of neutron star material has an estimated mass of a billion tons.)Their galaxy was NGC 4993, and gravity drew them to each other over millions of years as they revolved around each other more and more swiftly until they span at a rate of 500 times per second before crashing.

Another bonus from the discovery appears to be the realization that the mystery of what creates shortwave gamma ray bursts picked up on Earth may lead to future discoveries including how fast the universe is expanding. Stardust produces sensate, animate forms of life, it seems, while neutron dust creates dense material, inanimate, rare and costly. Will this discovery spur a precious metals rush into space to mine it of its treasures?

This map shows the locations of all five gravitational-wave signals detected by LIGO since the first detection in 2015. In the background is an optical image of the Milky Way; the discoveries are plotted on the entire celestial sphere, which is represented as a translucent dome. The gravitational waves come from relatively small sources (the two neutron stars were each only about the size of a large city),   Space.com

Exploring Nature's House

It is beyond difficult for the ordinary human mind to grasp the significance and wonder at the colossal advance in space exploration made manifest by the European Space Agency's success in landing a tiny robotic science laboratory on a speeding comet that made a ten-year journey across 6.4-billion kilometres through the solar system to succeed in what surely must have seemed a dauntingly impossible mission.

That the Space Agency could even predict with such accuracy when the first signal from Philae would reach Earth to confirm that landing after the suspenseful detachment from its mother ship Rosetta is nothing short of amazing; they predicted the first signal would come in at 11:03 a.m. and so it did on Wednesday, November 12. Capping a journey and an intent beyond mere imagination of even the most feverishly aware science fiction writer.

"We are on the comet. We are sitting on the surface and Philae is talking to us", announced the lander manager, Dr. Stephan Ulamec. "It's complicated to land on a comet. It's also complicated to understand what has happened during the landing. What we know is that we touched down and we landed on the comet We had a very clear signal and we also received data from the lander. That is the very good news.
"The not-so-good news is that the anchoring harpoons did not fire So the lander is not anchored to the surface. Did we just land in a softsand box and everything is fine? Or is there something else happening? We still do not fully understand what has happened.
"Some of the data indicated that the lander may have lifted off again. It touched down and was rebouncing. We saw data on the solar generator which could be interpreted that the lander lifted off and started to turn itself. About two hours later this information of turning stopped. So maybe today, we didn't just land, we landed twice."

Twice indeed; the initiating bounce sent Philae into a seven-hour-long lift-off from which it returned to the comet finally, to rest under the shade of a cliff in that landscape of house-sized boulders, craters and alien cosmic rockface. The little science laboratory went right to work, sending back reams of data to the excited scientific minds sifting through it all, beyond joyful at the success of the mission. With the realization that because of where the little lab had finally landed its solar-fuelled generators would soon lapse into deep sleep for lack of sunlight, under the shade of that great cliff.

Even trying to imagine the cold black indifference of outer space, and a space ship hurtling purposefully through it all to finally put a distance of a half-billion kilometres between itself and Earth, to obey instructions it received from the command centre in Darmstadt, Germany to focus on landing on the surface of a speeding comet, everything depending on precise follow-up, boggles the mind. Let alone the design of the ship and its landing cargo, and the inputting of instructions for geological-scientific retrieval data to be beamed back to Earth.

The dazzling enormity of the wonder of human inquisitiveness aligned with the magnitude of human scientific ingenuity is difficult to quite comprehend. The colossal wonder that is Nature, and the incredible functioning capabilities that she endowed Earthling human beings with to enable them to explore her magnificent house of existence reflects a reality resistant to complete mindful digestion.

 
A probe named Philae is seen after it landed safely on a comet in this CIVA handout image

 Creation

"It would have been a very, very bad day for the Earth. One potential outcome could have been complete destruction."
"Subsequent to that bad day, it was a good thing."
"It's quite possible that by probing material from the deep Earth we may learn something more about the different formation stages of the Earth, how it was put together... We don't quite know what fraction melted, what vaporized, what stayed solid."
Sujoy Mukhopadhyay, associate professor, Earth and Planetary sciences, Harvard University

NASA   Apollo 8 astronauts took this photo of the Earth while on the Moon. Scientists say the Moon was created when the Earth collided with another planet 4.5 billion years ago.

"This hypothesis [the Big Splash] can explain a lot of features of the moon, but there is one problem, that if you model this process [by computer], these computer models predict that most of the debris [that forms the moon] is coming from the impacting body [Theia], and because every body in the solar system has its own unique fingerprint, you would expect to have different isotopic compositions of the Earth and the Moon."
"Until now, this difference has not been found, and we've now found it."
"We really don't know if we could find this material anywhere on Earth ... We don't know if it's anywhere. It might have been all mixed away."
"If I find this, if you can give me like 10 milligrams of proto-Earth, I could tell you how large the impactor was and what its composition was. This would be very exciting, but currently we have no idea where that might be in the Earth."
Daniel Herwartz, University of Cologne, Germany

A new creation story, or at the very least, a theory of the Earth's final creation was presented at a geophysics conference that took place in California recently, of a violent collision in primordial space between what is called proto-Earth and a much smaller object named Theia. The result of which was a melding of the two through a force so powerful both were reduced to molten rock and silicate vapour.

This collision has been named the Big Splash. An event that spun the earth, and tilted its axis by 23 C, creating the moon from the resulting debris blasted into orbit. This might-have-been cataclysmic collision resulted in the Earth that presents itself today, and the moon that shines overhead. It resulted in the protective atmosphere of the Earth, seasonal cycles, polar ice caps, moon-driven tides and the eventual emergence of life.

Mr. Mukhopadhyay has analyzed material derived from deep within the Earth, from places like Iceland and Hawaii where "mantle plumes" forcefully dredge up materials through volcanoes. He posits that though the initial impact reduced both planets  to melting stage through the force of the impact, the side opposite the collision on proto-Earth was shielded, remaining partially solid, settling into a layer deeply close to the Earth's molten iron core.

When the planetary crash occurred, gravity held all the succeeding exploded bits together, and they gradually settled into a slightly flattened sphere we call Earth and upon whose crust we all live and thrive. The occurrence represented what scientists name a "giant impactor".  As for the moon, it formed from the spinning detritus of the Big Splash, in less than a millennium: "Geologically that is incredibly fast", explained Mr. Mukhopadhyay.

And the date when that is intelligently hypothesized to have occurred? How does 4.5-billion years ago sound? A French team felt that the collision occurred 60 million years earlier than had been thought. In other words scientists believe Earth was formed about 40 million years after the solar system itself began its formation, the product of perhaps ten billion years of cosmic evolution.

The beginning, of course, was the Big Bang; an expansion with space and time flooding from a single point, creating a universe where matter and antimatter were created in almost equal measure, each contesting the other in existence to create the flash of light that telescopes of today are still capable of detecting, called the Cosmic Microwave Background. Because there was slightly more matter than antimatter, even though each set out to annihilate the other, when antimatter was exhausted, matter was left.

The gravitational pull of dark matter gathered the basic elements into strands that eventually came together to form stars, where hydrogen and helium fused to create heavier atoms. When the stars died and exploded they seeded the universe with stardust, over time forming into spinning discs of diffuse matter that eventually became asteroids, comets and planets orbiting newer stars distributed within spiral galaxies.

One of those stars was our very own Sun which back then had perhaps 20 planets orbiting it, including proto-Earth and Mars-sized Theia. How's that for a creation story?

The entire universe in blog form

April 17 2014 2:09 PM

An Astronomical Discovery: Earth-Size Planet Found in Its Star’s Habitable Zone

By Phil Plait

Artwork depicting the newly discovered Earth-size planet Kepler-186f and its sister planets. Click to embiggen, and you really want to; this is a pretty stunning piece of artwork.

Drawing by NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-CalTech

I have some cautiously exciting exoplanets news: Astronomers have announced the discovery of a planet that is very nearly the same size as Earth and orbiting its star in the habitable zone—that is, at the right distance from its star to have liquid water on its surface. We don’t know how Earth-like it is, but this shows that we’re edging closer and closer to finding another Earth, and this one is the best bet we’ve found so far.

The planet is called Kepler-186f and was discovered using the Kepler Space Telescope, which was designed to look for planets orbiting other stars. Kepler exploits what’s called the transit method: It stares at 150,000 stars all the time, looking for dips in the amount of light received from every star. The idea is that if a star has planets, and if we see the orbits edge-on, then every time the planet passes between us and its parent star it’ll block an teensy bit of light (usually far less than 1 percent).

This method is extremely powerful—about a thousand planets have been found this way in Kepler data! In fact, most of the planets found this way have been from Kepler. Another cool thing is that if you know how big the star is (and we generally do) then you can also determine the size of the planet by how much light it blocks.

Kepler-186f is one of the big success stories. It’s part of a mini-solar system, a five-planet system orbiting a red dwarf: a smaller, cooler star than the Sun. The other four planets (Kepler-186b-e) are all very roughly Earth-size, but orbit far closer to the star, ranging from 5.1 million kilometers (3.2 million miles) to 16.5 million kilometers (10 million miles)—for comparison, Mercury orbits the Sun at a distance of about 50 million kilometers (31 million miles), so this really is a solar system shrunk down. But even though the star is cooler than the Sun, these planets are close enough to it to be pretty hot; even the farthest of the four previously known would be hot enough to boil water on its surface (assuming it has a surface).

Worlds alike: a comparison of the sizes of Earth and Kepler-186f.

Drawing by NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-CalTech

186f is different, though: It orbits farther out, about 53 million kilometers (33 million miles) from the star, where temperatures are more clement. Making some basic assumptions, it lies near the outside edge of the star’s “habitable zone,” where liquid water can easily exist on the surface of a planet. We know of several dozen planets like that in the galaxy so far, but what makes 186f special is its size: it’s only about 1.1 times the size of Earth! Together, these make it potentially the most Earth-like planet we’ve yet found.

I say potentially because honestly we don’t know all that much about it besides its size and distance from its star (and its year—it takes 130 days to orbit the star once). The next things we’d need to know about it are the mass, what its atmosphere is like, and the surface temperature. The gravity of the planet depends on its mass, and in many ways the atmosphere depends on the gravity.

Unfortunately, we don’t know either, and we’re unlikely to. The techniques used to find planet masses aren’t up to the task for this planet—the star is too dim to get reliable data. The same is true for any air the planet might have as well. And without that, we don’t really know its surface temperature.

So we don’t know if this planet is like Earth, or more like Venus (with an incredibly thick, poisonous atmosphere that keeps the surface ridiculously hot), or like Mars (with very little air, making it cold). It could be a barren rock, or a fecund water world, or made entirely of Styrofoam peanuts, or some weird thing we haven’t even imagined yet.

Still, our models of how planets form are getting better, and we’re getting a handle on how they behave. According to what we know, it’s most likely that Kepler-186f is a rocky planet like the Earth, with a similar surface gravity. That in turn implies it could have water. But again, we just don’t know, and anything beyond this is speculation; there are a lot of factors in making a planet habitable. As a random one, it may take a magnetic field to make a planet livable. Ours protects us from the constant stream of subatomic particles the Sun emits, which, over several billion years, would have eroded away Earth’s atmosphere. That may be what happened to Mars.

To be fair, I’ll note that there is one planet found before that’s roughly the size of Earth (though bigger than Kepler-186f) and in its star’s habitable zone, but in that case the planet orbits at a distance where it receives about as much heat and light from its star as Venus does from the Sun … and look where that got Venus. Kepler-186f is therefore more likely to be Earth-like than that other planet, though again we can’t be sure with the information we have now.

Still, this is exciting news—after all, one of the main mission objectives of Kepler was to do just this: find an Earth-sized planet in its star’s habitable zone. So, my congrats to the team of astronomers involved: It’s very nice indeed to see a spacecraft achieve its goal! And there’s still lots and lots of data to go through from Kepler. There could easily be many, many more such worlds hidden in the blips of starlight Kepler has returned to Earth.

We’re pretty sure there are billions—billions—of Earth-sized planets in the galaxy. We now know of four that are in their star’s habitable zone (if you include Venus and the other planet I mentioned)… and we also know that some worlds are outside the strict definition of the HZ and yet still have liquid water (Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus).

We’ve only just started looking. Who knows what else is out there?

Tip o’ the Lyot stop to Stephen Kane (one of the astronomers who found this planet, for his gracious help with info; go check out his website, Habitable Zone Gallery) and to the lead author Elisa Quintana.