UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

The Big Bang Theory hasn’t been having a good year. First, of course, the iconic television sitcom of the same name ended. Besides being a top-performing show right up until the end, it did wonders for convincing the general public that nerds can be cool while showing nerds that they can meet attractive soulmates as long as they don’t spend too much discussing Star Trek movies or string theory. Then last week, THE Big Bang theory itself was brought into question by new data which seems to show that an old star appropriately dubbed “Methuselah” is actually older than the universe. If that hit to its big ego was wasn’t big enough, a study released this week showing how dark matter, which was thought to have been created by the Big Bang, actually predates it. What next? Secret documents showing Dr. Sheldon Cooper cheated on his IQ test?

“If dark matter were truly a remnant of the Big Bang, then in many cases researchers should have seen a direct signal of dark matter in different particle physics experiments already.”

Tommi Tenkanen, a postdoctoral fellow in Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University and author of “Dark Matter from Scalar Field Fluctuations” published recently in Physical Review Letters, uses the enemy of many weak theories – mathematics – to put the Big Bang theory into question. Tenkanen developed a simple mathematical framework (graphs can be seen here) which illustrates a scenario where dark matter was produced in a period of cosmic inflation BEFORE the Big Bang, causing a massive production of scalars. Scarlars (also called scalar boson – you can see where this is going) are boson particles whose spin equals zero. The only boson particle ever found is the Higgs boson, also known affectionately as the ‘God particle’ because it gives all other particles their mass. In other words, it created the mass of the universe, which up until now was believed to have birthed the universe.

Figure 1

The parameter space relevant for the “fuzzy DM” scenario [25]. Contours show the value of $H_{*}$ required for $χ$ to constitute all DM. The regions below the horizontal red dashed line and between the dotted green lines are in tension with observations of the Lyman- $α$ forest [26] and the recent Event Horizon Telescope data due to the black hole superradiance mechanism [27], respectively. See also Ref. [28] which placed tentative constraints excluding the entire region shown here. The lower limit for $x$ axis, $χ_{*} / H_{*} ≃ 7 \times 10^{4}$ , is given by the isocurvature constraint (14).

Figure 2

The region of the model parameter space where the scalar simultaneously constitutes all DM (along the red curve) and avoids the DM isocurvature constraints (blue region). Also the region $m \leq 0.4 GeV$ , $H_{*} ≲ 10^{5} GeV$ in the lower left corner is allowed. The result is not sensitive to the exact value of $β$ . Above the blue region, $m > H_{*}$ , the scalar fluctuations during inflation are strongly suppressed.

Does this mean dark atter really existed before the Big Bang?

“We do not know what dark matter is, but if it has anything to do with any scalar particles, it may be older than the Big Bang. With the proposed mathematical scenario, we don’t have to assume new types of interactions between visible and dark matter beyond gravity, which we already know is there.”

Well, if the math says it did … then it did – although it would be nice to have some physical evidence to back it up. Tenkanen told Phys.org that’s coming in 2022 when the Euclid satellite is launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Euclid Consortium. It will be carrying a near-infrared space telescope that will accurately measure the acceleration of the universe as it expands, thus giving scientists the means to trace back to the origins of dark energy (the theoretical cause of the expansion) and dark matter (the content of up to 85% of the universe).

Or not.

“It’s going to be very exciting to see what it will reveal about dark matter and if its findings can be used to peek into the times before the Big Bang.”

That’s a BIG if … meaning the Big Bang theory — and the universe and all that is in it — is safe.

For now.

I like my black holes like I like my internal organs: doing what they’re supposed to and not surprising anyone. After all, we barely even understand black holes beyond descriptions that would fit perfectly in an H.P. Lovecraft novel—a dead star at the center of the galaxy, collapsed under its own tremendous mass to an impossible singularity, warping the very fabric of reality around it like a cloak blacker than the blackest night, as even light itself struggles feebly and fails to escape its terrible pull. Yeah, I don’t want any surprises from black holes.

But alas, the great old one has awakened and all humanity’s brightest minds know not for what weird purpose. According to astronomers, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way has been acting really strange. Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is a pretty quiet and mundane supermassive black hole (as far as they go). It’s fluctuations in the brightness of the “electromagnetic counterpart” are normally relatively small. This summer, however, that seems to have changed. Observations from the Keck telescope have recorded massive spikes in the brightness of Sgr A*, including one when the black hole spiked to 75 times its normal brightness and held there for a period of two hours.

Astronomer Tuan Do at the University of California Los Angeles, who observed the unprecedented spike in Sgr A* says:

“I was pretty surprised at first and then very excited. The black hole was so bright I at first mistook it for the star S0-2, because I had never seen Sgr A* that bright. Over the next few frames, though, it was clear the source was variable and had to be the black hole. I knew almost right away there was probably something interesting going on wit h the black hole.”

Tuan Do’s research was recently published in the Journal of Astrophysical Letters, but astronomers still don’t know what’s caused these massive spikes. Black holes don’t emit light on their own (go figure), but the swirling disk of stuff around it does. The so-called accretion disk consists of dust and gas and busted up cosmic debris that is pulled towards the black hole but doesn’t make it past the event horizon. Sometimes unlucky stars passing through the neighborhood have their matter ripped out by the supermassive black hole’s enormous gravity and assimilated by the accretion disk. The working hypothesis for the spikes in Sgr A*’s brightness is that it got its claws on an unusually large object and pulled it into the accretion disk, though what the object could be is unknown.

Astronomers will keep studying Sgr A* and try to figure out just what it’s up to. The Keck telescope only has a few more weeks where it will have the right angle to observe Sgr A*, but there are four more telescopes that have been pointed at it all summer with their data yet to be released. After that, the center of our galaxy won’t be observable again until 2020. Which leaves an approximately six month blind spot, and as everyone knows, black holes only strike when you’re not looking.