Deep space radio signal reaches Earth after 8B years
earth.com
earth.com
These highly magnetized neutron stars—objects only ~20 km in diameter—have magnetic fields that may reach up to 1015 Gauss, a quadrillion (thousand trillion) times our Sun’s pitiful 1 Gauss. The energy density of just these magnetic fields (via E=mc2) is 10,000x the mass density of lead. Magnetars are a likely source of Fast Radio Bursts and can also emit giant gamma-ray flares—one flare, GRB 200415A, was seen to emit the same amount of energy as our Sun does over 100,000 years, but in only 0.016 s. We don’t really know how these flares form, but if they involve large mass motions, they could also produce gravitational waves, something LIGO and other gravitational wave observatories are watching for. Near a magnetar, “X-ray photons readily split in two or merge. The vacuum itself is polarized, becoming strongly birefringent, like a calcite crystal. Atoms are deformed into long cylinders thinner than the quantum-relativistic de Broglie wavelength of an electron (pdf),” resulting in a breakdown of anything resembling what we think of as chemistry. It’s believed that their magnetic fields decay relatively quickly over about 10,000 years, so magnetars are a transient state. We know of about 30 magnetars so far. Oh, and they may also have volcanoes (sort of).
Edit: found this below to start
"I sometimes think the universe is a machine, designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers" -Sir Arthur C Clarke (1980)
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
-- Douglas Adams
Thank you for writing this, made my day :)
Much better off reading the wilipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_radio_burst#FRB_220610
In addition to the short summary of that specific event, it has a much more detailed treatment of the subject overall.
It always blows my mind how little we actually know. Everything we can observe and that science can describe is just a small fraction of what is actually out there. Since we don't know what dark matter is maybe its possible that it is all around us, here on Earth. I find that slightly disturbing for some reason.
I think I read that no, in fact, I am not expanding. The space that I occupy is also not expanding. In fact, no space anywhere near us is expanding. The expansion (we think?!) happens due to dark matter (?) which is not evenly distrubuted and which we can kind of measure (?) and we can know that there isn't any here (?)
Maybe someone who knows more about this can fill in the question marks or otherwise correct me.
No. I've heard experts say so explicitly. The exception is that if the expansion continues to accelerate, then billions of years from now first planets, then people will be ripped apart.
Also the expansion is due to dark energy which is quite different from dark matter. dark energy is everywhere but (for now) it is weak enough that, e.g., gravity can easily hold the planet together.
And the extent to which we're really ignorant, is generally not ackcowledged in the way things are generally described.
For instance, in this article as is typical, the discrepancy between what current theory predicts, and what is currently observed, is described as the universe being "missing" something 8-)
It's not that our theories are incorrect, it's that the universe is "missing" this thing that we predict should be there 8-)
Maybe eventually the universe will correct it's error and meet human expectations 8-)