Hubble Telescope Proves That Galaxies Transform #HubbleTelescope #galaxies #space - http://clapway.com/2015/08/28/hubble-telescope-galaxies-transform123/

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was launched into low Earth orbit roughly 25 years ago to allow scientists and astronomers to peer into space. Since that day, Hubble – the largest and most versatile space telescope – has recorded some of the most detailed and awe-inspiring images, which have led to several breakthroughs in astrophysics.

In line with its already established reputation, Hubble, along with the Herschel space telescope, was recently used to peer back in time in order to provide astronomers with an idea of how galaxies have undergone dramatic metamorphic transformations over the last eight billion years or so. The study, lead by Steve Eales, a professor at Cardiff University,   was recently published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

What The Hubble Space Telescope Tells Us About the Universe

According to Discovery News, an international team of researchers, studying data from 10,000 observable galaxies, found that 83 percent of stars, formed since the Big Bang, were originally grouped in “flat, rotating, disc-shaped galaxies” like our Milky Way.

Today, however, only 49 percent of stars that exist in the Universe are located within these so called “disc-shaped galaxies.” The rest exist in a second classification of galaxies, characterized by an oval or spherical shape.

HOW DID METAMORPHOSIS THIS HAPPEN?

To explain the change, scientists have come up with two possible hypotheses. The first attributes the transformation to a merging event, in which two disc-shaped clusters move too close to each other due to gravity. The second explanation suggests that stars in a “round, flat galaxy,” migrate towards the core to produce the spherical shape.

This galactic “shape-shifting,” as Discovery News states, has been theorized before. However, the space telescopes, combined with previous years of data, have provided a clearer understanding of the process.

“Galaxies are the basic building blocks of the Universe, so this metamorphosis really does represent one of the most significant changes in its appearance and properties in the last eight billion years,” stated Eales.

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Transforming galaxies make the study of space all the more interesting and exciting. Learn more about our universe with Space Scouts Summer Adventure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdcU4nKKV2E

Hubble Telescope Proves That Galaxies Transform

#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

The beasts of the universe confirmed! - http://clapway.com/2015/07/08/millions-of-hidden-black-holes-may-exist-in-our-universe-164/

The notion that the universe is likely filled with millions of supermassive black holes is quite disconcerting, yet that is exactly the conclusion arrived at by several scientists who recently used NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) satellite and uncovered the existence of five supermassive black holes which they had previously been unable to see.

The Quest to Find Hidden Black Holes

The five supermassive black holes that the scientists uncovered had previously been obscured by enormous clouds of dust and gas. It is commonly understood that supermassive black holes exist at the center of large galaxies, but most of the time, scientists are unable to fully confirm their presence because they are covered by vast quantities of dust and gas that most telescopes are not capable of piercing through.

However, astronomers from Durham University in the United Kingdom who were conducting research on black holes were finally able to pierce through that veil. They achieved this when they aimed the NuSTAR satellite at nine galaxies and discovered that five of them had been hiding supermassive black holes at their centers.

Horrors Spread Across The Universe

Durham University’s George Lansbury, who led the study, stated, “Thanks to NuSTAR, for the first time, we have been able to clearly identify these hidden monsters that are predicted to be there, but have previously been elusive because of their surrounding cocoons of material.”

His team’s findings were presented in Llandudno, Wales, at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting and published in The Astrophysical Journal. In a chilling statement, he added, “Although we have only detected five of these hidden supermassive black holes, when we extrapolate our results across the whole universe then the predicted numbers are huge and in agreement with what we would expect to see.”

The Power of the NuSTAR

NASA’s Nuclear Stereoscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) satellite was launched in 2012 and detects black holes by searching for the highest-energy x-rays. These highest-energy x-rays are much stronger than typical x-rays and can therefore be detected by telescopes equipped to find them.

Daniel Stern, a scientist for NuSTAR at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said of NuSTAR that it “allows us to see how big the hidden monsters are, and is helping us learn why only some black holes appear obscured.”

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What isn’t an adventure in space?

Millions of Hidden Black Holes May Exist In Our Universe

Loneliness is universal truths in the universe. How universal? - http://clapway.com/2015/06/08/lonely-stars-lead-us-to-a-type-ia-supernova-234/

Loneliness is universal truths in the universe. How universal? The Hubble Space telescope (HST) reveals that even stars can get lonely. And in that loneliness, lonely stars–far away from their parent galaxies–just might die. A lonely death, at that.

Hubble Space Telescope Reveals 3 Lonely Stars

The Hubble Space Telescope reveals images of three different stars getting separated form the galaxies in which they belong and end up dying from the isolation that prevents them from sustaining their energies. Talk about pack animals. When stars are removed from their parent galaxies, survival is shaky if not impossible.

The three massive stars were discovered between 2008 and 2010 thanks to the now infamous Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. These three stars went supernova in isolation, in-between galaxies. This is odd because usually stars supernova within galaxies of billions of other stars–never quite this alone.

The Emptiness Within Our Galaxies

Today, scientists know very little about the dark, empty spaces that sits between galaxies. Maybe even less than they know about very star-filled galaxies. The separation of stars from their galaxies is actually a pretty rare occurrence. These intracluster stars would have been 300-million-lightyears away from their closest neighbors.

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Supernovae Explosion Properties

These three stars were involved in a Type Ia supernovae. A Type Ia supernova is a kind of stellar explosion in which a smaller star is absorbed by a bigger one. Lead by lead researcher Melissa Graham, researchers are the University of California, Berkeley described that the lower-mass white dwarf may have gotten too close and was then broken by the bigger star. A transfer of mass occurred that caused the the Type Ida supernova. In the past, Graham has also previously studied intraclusters of stars and how Type Ia supernovae can occur.

Understandably, stars that are bigger in size tend to explode more and are more easily visible in their supernova explosions. Smaller stars sort of gradually run out of energy and die out that way. This is precisely what happened to the three lonely stars.

Lonely Stars Lead Us to a Type Ia Supernova