#ALMA has given us the ability to peer #BackInTime and learn about the #origins of the #universe. - http://clapway.com/2015/07/22/galaxies-800-million-years-after-big-bang-limned-by-alma-112/

We all know about the Big Bang, but the formation of the first galaxies has always been a mystery to scientists, until now. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope, scientists have gained the ability to peer into the depths of foggy beginnings, when hydrogen gas was just starting to collect and condense into galaxies, in the first several hundred million years following the Big Bang.

ALMA TELESCOPE IS NOT A TIME MACHINE

The thing about light is that it doesn’t travel instantaneously. Travelling at about 300 million meters per second, even the darkest patches of the sky are filled with light that’s travelled so far that it actually outlived the object it originated from. This scientific fact is why the Sun as we know it from the Earth’s surface is actually the Sun as it appeared approximately 8 minutes ago.

ALMA TELESCOPE IS A TIME MACHINE

Recently, astronomers using ALMA peered far enough back in time that they were able to view galaxies existing 800 million years after the Big Bang. Ironically, this was only made possible by the light of glowing ionized carbon, emitted from the gaseous clouds giving birth to stars.

One of these early galaxies named BDF 3299 was specifically recognized by the clear signal of glowing carbon emitting from one side of the ancient galaxy.

QUALIFYING ALMA’S FINDINGS

“This is the most distant detection ever of this kind of emission from a ‘normal galaxy (sic), seen less than one billion years after the Big Bang,” exclaimed Andrea Ferrara, co-author of these new findings. “It gives us the opportunity to watch the build-up of the first galaxies. For the first time we are seeing early galaxies not merely as tiny blobs, but as objects with internal structure!”

The reason for the above mentioned galaxies’ glowing side is that the normally brighter central clouds are being disrupted by the chaotic environment surrounding freshly born stars. Additionally, the carbon’s glow is actually tracing new, cold gas on its way into the stars from intergalactic space, and then the light is sent back out on its long journey to the ALMA’s dishes.

SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS

Ferrara explains further, “We have been trying to understand the interstellar medium and the formation of the re-ionization sources for many years…[f]inally to be able to test predictions and hypotheses on real data from ALMA is an exciting moment and opens up a new set of questions. This type of observation will clarify many of the thorny problems we have with the formation of the first stars and galaxies in the universe.”

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Galaxies 800 Million Years After Big Bang Limned By ALMA

On #quarks and #pentaquarks -- courtesy of #LHC. - http://clapway.com/2015/07/14/switzerland-cern-discovers-pentaquark-once-thought-not-to-exist-335/

At some point it seemed as though CERN’s Large Hadron Collider was surely due to fail, but now all systems have been functional for enough time that researchers have been able to discover a mysterious pentaquark particle. Funnily enough, at one point, this pentaquark particle was thought to be non-existent. A series of mishaps caused the incredibly massive, and expensive Large Hadron Collider to shut down for roughly two years. Since it repairs have been made, it has been able to run tests constantly, and allowed further research into the mysterious and convoluted world of quarks.

What exactly is a pentaquark?

In order to understand the nature of pentaquarks, first you must delve into the idea of the quark in general. A quark is building block of matter, a very basic particle of which most everything is comprised, and composed of subatomic particles with an electrical charge. Quarks are very theoretical in nature, previously there was a tremendous amount of speculation about whether Quarks could actually be observed.

Now, scientists at CERN believe they have created the first pentaquark, a collection of five quarks bound together, using the Large Hadron Collider.

 

 

Guy Wilkinson a spokesman for the Hadron Collider experiments, comments on the knowledge to be gained from this new understanding of quarks, “The pentaquark is not just any new particle. It represents a way to aggregate quarks, namely the fundamental constituents of ordinary protons and neutrons, in a pattern that has never been observed before in over 50 years of experimental searches. Studying its properties may allow us to understand better how ordinary matter, the protons and neutrons from which we’re all made, is constituted.”

Understanding the composition of the universe one quark at a time

Hopeful experts study quarks with the hope that by gaining an understanding of these particles, they can gain an understanding of the way the entire universe functions. The discovery of the pentaquark moves the understanding we have of quarks a little further, and pushes mankind that much closer to understanding the origins of existence.

The discovery is due in large part to a new take on how to view quarks according to CERN, “earlier experiments that have searched for pentaquarks have proved inconclusive. Where the LHCb experiment differs is that it has been able to look for pentaquarks from many perspectives, with all pointing to the same conclusion. It’s as if the previous searches were looking for silhouettes in the dark, whereas LHCb conducted the search with the lights on, and from all angles.”

Origins of the idea of the quark can be traced back to Gell-Mann in 1964, and although that was a breakthrough then, no one has quite come as far as CERN in regards to research. With this newly discovered pentaquark, the future seems to filled with a few more answers to burning questions about the creation of matter.

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Switzerland: CERN Discovers Pentaquark Once Thought Not to Exist