universe

If the universe is closed, there is no room for an external observer

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In the world of theoretical physics, the different articles that are published can be dry texts, full of equations with endless integrals. However, a recent article has broken this rule. Although its content is rigorously technical, it is a small footnote that has captured the public’s imagination: a direct reference to the theological implications of his mathematical discovery. A universe without ‘outside’. To understand the reference that has been made to God, we must first understand the conclusion of the document. Harlow and his team address the quantum gravity problem in a closed universe. This, unlike the usual theoretical models that have “borders”, a closed universe It doesn’t have edges or an ‘exterior’ or anything.. In this way, the study indicates that the universe does not have an immense variety of possible states. It is a single, static and trivial state, so whatever has happened or what will happen will be contained in a single dimension. The appearance of God. This is where the phrase that has shaken the networks comes in, since they affirm that if we are in a closed system with only one possible state, there is no place for an external observer. That is, a God. This is something that clashes quite a bit with traditional physics and many theological and religious conceptions that suggest that there is someone or something that is observing the system with all its changes. Although for researchers, these implications are an exercise for the reader. They just give their own conclusion. The meaning. As reported by media such as IFLScience and Knewzthis comment is a humorous but profound “wink”. It is not that the article attempts to prove or disprove the existence of a deity, but rather it points out a structural paradox. What they point out is that if the universe contains everything and its state is unique, you cannot be “outside” it. Something that quite clashes with the classic theistic idea of ​​a God who exists separately from his creation, but who observes it from the outside. The problem is that for these scientists there is no outside. Your opinions. The physicist and popularizer Brian Cox qualified the document and its bold footnote as “exhilarating”, highlighting how a purely mathematical question about Hilbert spaces ends up bordering on questions that used to be the exclusive domain of metaphysics. The paradox. The article in this case raises a fascinating dichotomy that some philosophers of physics are already analyzing. What they propose is that if the “eye of God” sees the universe, they will only see a static point without any type of change. But from within we see a rich, chaotic and complex universe as we experience all its properties. The authors solve this mathematically using quantum code theory and holography, suggesting that complexity is an illusion of internal perspective. But the theological joke remains: if God is the fundamental reality, then reality is incredibly simple. It is we who complicate it by observing it from within. Images | Davide Cantelli In Xataka | The Hand of God trying to reach a galaxy: an impressive image in which not everything is what it seems

The Universe is already shutting down, and that only tells us what its end will be like.

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Just like us, when we get older we leave the party behind and begin to lose energy, something very similar happens to the universe. And in the past the cosmos had a frenetic youth with an era known as ‘Cosmic Noon’10 billion years ago, where literally everything was a fireworks party with colliding galaxiesgas compressing and a great birth rate of our stars. But this party is coming to an end. With this simile, we come to the conclusion that the Universe is entering a great decline, as has pointed out a gigantic study led by the Euclid Collaboration that points out that the Universe is not only cooling, but appears to have stuck at a “retirement temperature.” How to do it. The question is mandatory, since understanding the health of the cosmos can be complex. That is why scientists choose to look at the ‘dust’ that exists throughout the galaxy and is the raw material for silicates and metals. with which the stars arise. The good thing is that this powder has a fundamental characteristic: it heats up. In this way, when many new stars are forming in a galaxy, a very intense light is radiated that heats up the dust that surrounds it. That hot dust, in turn, emits a weak glow in the form of heat: far infrared light, which is precisely what we can measure from our planet. Many tools. To make this measurement, a combination of observatories was used, such as Euclid, an ESA telescopewhich is creating the largest 3D map of the Universe and to do so provided an unprecedented census of 2.6 million galaxies. This information, together with old detections of far-infrared light, has been used to average the heat signal of thousands of galaxies of the same age and mass to obtain an incredibly precise average temperature reading. What it tells us. In this way, there is a direct correlation that tells us that a galaxy with its hot dust is a ‘factory’ of stars at full capacity. But a galaxy with cold dust is something that is already in decline and stable. The study confirms that in the “fever” of the Cosmic Noon, the galactic dust It reached average temperatures of 35 Kelvin (-238 °C). But as the Universe aged and star formation plummeted, that temperature began to drop. And this is where the key discovery comes. The study indicates that the temperature does not continue to drop indefinitely. After a certain point (8 billion years ago), the temperature stops falling and stabilizes. Specifically, it has remained ‘stuck’ at -249.95 °C. Because. What has basically happened is that the ‘thermostat of the Universe’ has changed from youth mode, where many stars were forming, to old age mode, where the dust warms up with the population of stars that exists, which is logically much colder. This finding is crucial because it shows that the temperature of the dust, for the first time, has become independent of the mass of the galaxy. It doesn’t matter if it is a large or small galaxy; If it is in our time, its dust is around 23 Kelvins, or what is the same: -249.95 ºC. Although 23 Kelvins is the new norm, it is just a pit stop on a much longer journey. This study is further proof that we live in a Universe in decline, dominated by dark energy that accelerates its expansion. In this way, as space stretches, galaxies will become more isolated and their raw material will be depleted. That is why the future (although we will not see it) is that the old stars that maintain this stable temperature are going to die. It’s like those embers that emit constant heat to be able to cook in the fireplace, which go out little by little until it becomes completely cold. The final destination, although billions of years away, remains the “Cold Death” of the cosmos: a state of maximum entropy where the temperature will reach Absolute Zero (-273.15 °C) and all activity will stop forever. Images | Jeremy Thomas In Xataka | Forget the Matrix: a new mathematical proof settles the debate over whether the universe is a simulation

A new mathematical proof settles the debate over whether the universe is a simulation

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What if everything we see, feel and experience is not real? It is one of the most fascinating ideas in science fiction and modern philosophy, in which it is proposed that everything around us it’s a real simulation of computer of some higher civilizationas if we were literally sims. And such is its magnitude, that science has had to come out to deny this idea. The problem. The ‘simulation hypothesis’ has gone beyond being a simple movie premise to a serious debate in technology circles and physical. The argument is usually statistical: if a civilization can create one simulation of reality, it will probably create many. These simulations could in turn generate their own and in this infinite ‘stack’ of realities, the odds that our universe be original, they are almost non-existent. And although this has been a very restrained topic among philosophers, science has also wanted to fully enter into research to respond to a problem within fundamental physics and pure mathematics. And the answer is quite clear: we are not in a simulation. The study. An international team of physicists, including Dr. Mir Faizal of the University of British Columbia (UBC) and renowned physicist Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss, has mathematically proven that the universe cannot be a computer simulation. His findings, published in it Journal of Holography Applications in Physicsnot only disprove the idea, but reveal something much deeper about the nature of reality: the universe is based on a type of “understanding” that exists beyond the reach of any algorithm. The reality. To understand this test, we must first understand what ‘reality’ is. Modern physics no longer sees the universe as tangible ‘matter’ moving in empty space, but thanks to Einstein space and time merged to now demonstrate that the microscopic world is probabilistic. The most widely accepted theory today focuses on quantum gravity, which suggests that space and time are fundamental. They are “emergent”: they spring from something deeper, something more like pure information. In this way, physicists assume that a “Theory of Everything“(ToE) that unifies gravity and quantum physics would, in essence, be a large axiomatic system: a set of meaningful rules and algorithmic calculations from which the entire universe, including spacetime itself, could be “computed” and generated. Incompleteness Theorems. In 1931, logician Kurt Gödel demonstrated something that blew up the foundations of mathematics: any formal system (such as a computer program or a set of physical laws) that is complex enough to include basic arithmetic will be incomplete or inconsistent. By ‘incomplete’ we mean that there will be true statements within the systems themselves that will never be able to be demonstrated following their own rules. It’s like the famous paradox that says “this statement is true, but it cannot be proven.” Faizal’s team argues that any purely algorithmic ToE would suffer from this limitation. There would always be “Gödelian truths” about the physics of the universe (perhaps about specific microstates of black holes or the nature of the singularity) that such a computational system could not test. Two layers. If the algorithmic universe is “incomplete”, how does our reality seem to work? Researchers propose that reality is not only the algorithm. This is what allows the universe to “know” that these Gödel truths are true, even though the algorithm alone cannot prove them. It is a fundamental layer of reality that transcends simple computing. The final test. With all the pieces on the table, the refutation of the simulation hypothesis becomes clear and elegant. The first of all is that every simulation is logarithmic, that is, a computer executes a problem following very specific rules that leave no room for doubt. In this way, we come face to face with our theories that are not ‘perfect’ in their demonstrations. But they don’t stop there, since scientists have pointed out that an algorithm can only simulate the algorithmic part, meaning that a computer could only, in the best of cases, emulate the computational and incomplete part of our universe. And the most important thing without a doubt is that our universe is more than an algorithm, since as Gödel’s theorems demonstrate, complete physical reality must include a non-algorithmic layer to be consistent and complete. Images | Compare Fiber In Xataka | Exactly 100 years ago we began to understand how the world works. Quantum physics has radically changed our lives

75% of the universe is made of unknown matter. Australia has gone to look for her 1 km underground

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More than a kilometer underground, in an old gold mine in a small Australian town, a group of scientists is building a laboratory that aims to look where no one has been able to look before. Its name is SABER South, and its mission sounds simple but borders on the impossible: detect the particles that make up dark matter, that mysterious component of which, until now, we only sense its existence. The search begins. To understand how we got here, we have to travel back to 1998. That year, an experiment in the underground laboratory of Gran Sasso, in Italy, registered a strange signal which some interpreted as a clue to dark matter. That observation, known as DAMA/NaI, ignited a scientific career that has not stopped since. Now, Australia enters that global race. According to ABC News AustraliaSABER South will be the first dark matter detector in the southern hemisphere and will begin collecting data next year. Its director, physicist Phillip Urquijo, explains that the objective is to reproduce the Italian observations and check whether these signals are real or the product of interference from the environment. Currently, three other teams—in Italy, Spain and South Korea— they are still trying to replicate the original experiment. However, the Australian project has a unique advantage: its location in the southern hemisphere will allow the data to be compared with those from the north and rule out seasonal or local effects. The enigma of the invisible universe. Powered by the University of Melbourne and the ARC Center of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, seeks to understand the nature of a substance that surrounds everything, but that no one has ever seen. The Standard Model of physics accurately describes the particles and forces we know, but it still leaves too many gaps unfilled. One of the biggest is this: why don’t galaxies disintegrate? What holds them together if everything we see—planets, stars, gas, dust—barely adds up to 5% of the universe? The rest is hidden from view. The physicists They estimate that around 27% would be dark matter and another 68% would be dark energy. Physicist Elisabetta Barberio, director of the ARC Center of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics, puts it bluntly: “Between 75% and 80% of the universe is made of something we can’t see or touch. This experiment brings us closer to discovering what most of the cosmos is really made of.” Therefore, if SABER South detects WIMPs —those hypothetical massive particles that interact weakly—, we would be facing a new form of matter and, perhaps, facing a physics that goes beyond the Standard Model. Simply put: it would demonstrate that almost everything that exists has a tangible structure. And every time humanity has understood a new force or particle, technologies that previously seemed like science fiction have appeared: semiconductors, lasers or magnetic resonance. A mine converted into a cosmic laboratory. The experiment is carried out at the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL), excavated 1,025 meters deep a distance that is equivalent to a protection of almost three kilometers of water, enough to block cosmic rays and natural radiation that could interfere with the measurements. The laboratory is air-conditioned, has filtered air and has data connections linking to the University of Melbourne. At its heart, a room-sized detector houses ultrapure sodium iodide (NaI) crystals. When a WIMP particle collides with an atom in the crystal, it produces a tiny flash of light, so weak that it lasts just a few nanoseconds. These flashes are captured by photomultiplier tubes (PMT), devices capable of transforming light into measurable electrical pulses. The crystals they are submerged in a scintillating liquid—linear alkylbenzene (LAB)—that acts as a “veto”: if the LAB detects light at the same time as the crystal, the event is discarded as background noise. The entire system is sealed inside a low-radioactivity stainless steel tank, surrounded by alternating layers of steel and polyethylene, and monitored from above by a muon detector. A machine that listens to itself. SABER South will operate almost autonomously. According to the technical reports of the projectthe system records in real time the temperature, humidity, detector voltage, nitrogen gas flow and even mine vibrations. If something goes out of normal values, it generates an automatic alert. In addition, human presence will be minimal: scientists will monitor the data remotely and will only access the laboratory for specific maintenance tasks. Even before its construction, the operation of the detector was simulated with the GEANT4 software, a tool also used by NASA and CERN. These simulations allowed us to estimate the background radiation levels and optimize the sensitivity of the system. Each light pulse captured will be analyzed with programs designed to distinguish between noise and possible real signals. Some are not optimistic. In a study by the University of Ottawa, physicist Rajendra P. Gupta poses that what we think we see as dark matter could just be a mathematical effect. Their model suggests that the fundamental constants of the universe could vary with time, and that the so-called “tired light”—the loss of energy of photons as they travel through space—would explain the observations that until now we attribute to an invisible mass. Waiting for the flash. For years to come, SABER South’s crystals will remain in the shadows of the mine, waiting for a flash so faint it could barely illuminate a speck of dust. If that signal is confirmed, it would be the first direct trace of dark matter, the invisible glue that holds galaxies together. But if it doesn’t appear, it will also be an answer: a sign that perhaps the universe works in a way we don’t yet understand. As detailed theoretical physicist Nicole Bellfrom the University of Melbourne: “This project represents the definitive quest to understand the world in which we live.” And perhaps, in that tiny spark beneath the ground, humanity will find the answer to a question it has been pursuing for decades: what is the universe actually made of? Image | … Read more

With the James Webb we have seen the oldest black hole in the universe. But you just have more questions

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He James Webb Space Telescope has accustomed us to discoveries that break with our schemes mental The last discovery Where he has been the protagonist, he has undoubtedly re -rethink what we knew about the universe, by confirming the existence of the black hole more distant ever observed. Something that will allow answering some questions that astronomy still had. A colossus that has already been baptized. This black hole has received the name of Capers-lrd-Z9 And it is 13,300 million light years away, which means that we are seeing it as it was just 500 million years after big Bang. In this way, its existence, and especially the size it has, challenges everything we thought about how these giants grow. How this black hole was found. Finding something that is so far is not a simple task precisely. Astronomers used program data Capers (Candels-Aea Prism Epoch of Reion Survey) of the James Webb space telescope, specially designed for explore the confines of the universe. The leader of the research team, Anthony Taylor, Explain that “when looking for black holes, this is the farthest that can be reached in practice. We are really expanding the limits of what current technology can detect.” A discovery to confirm. The key to confirmation was spectroscopy, the technique that breaks down the light of an objective in its different wavelengths, such as a prism. For Identify an active black holescientists are looking for an unmistakable firm: gas that moves at extreme speeds. Turning the spiral towards the black hole, the light of the gas that moves away from us will tend towards a red wavelength, and that of the gas approaching is compressed towards the blue length. In this way, if these two trends are found, it is quite unmistakable that a black hole is ‘seeing’. In this way, the Nirspec Spectrograph The Webb detected a remarkably wide hydrogen emission line, the irrefutable test that a massive object was stirring the gas around it at speeds of up to 3,500 km/s. It belonged to something bigger. Initially, Capers-LRD-Z9 was just an intriguing motorcycle in webb images. However, it was belonging to a new and enigmatic class of objects called ‘Small red points’ (Little Red Dots or LRDS). These galaxiespresent only in the first 1.5 billion years of the universe, they are extremely compact, bright and as its name indicates very red. His discovery was “a big surprise,” according to Steven Finkelstein, co -author of the study. “They didn’t look anything like galaxies seen with Hubble.” In this way, this finding has helped explain two of the great mysteries above the table. Why are they so bright? Its brightness would suggest an unlikely number of stars for such an early era of the universe. In this way, this study confirms the theory that light comes from a supermassive black hole that is active and literally devours the subject. Something that results in hot and shines with a huge intensity. Why are they so red? The model that best suits the observations of Capers-LRD-Z9 suggests that the black hole is wrapped in a dense and neutral gas environment. This gas cloud absorbs the blue light and lets the red pass, staining the entire galaxy. Something that could be confirmed when comparing this object with other similar sources of energy. An impossible giant. The most shocking of Capers-LRD-Z9 is the size of its black hole. It is estimated that it could have a mass of up to 300 million times that of our sun. To put it in perspective, it is so massive that it could represent more than 4.5% of the total mass of all the stars of its host galaxy, a proportion much greater than the 0.1% we see in the nearby galaxies. How could it grow so much and so fast? This is one of the big questions that anyone can ask, taking into account that this black hole appeared at a very early stage of the universe. Something that questions the current models that we have on the table. Finkelstein summarizes it as follows: “This adds to the growing evidence that primitive black holes grew much faster than we thought were possible. Or they began being much more massive than our models predict.” Two models to explain its existence. The first of these is that the black hole was not born from a star, but from the direct collapse of a cloud of primary gas, starting its life with a mass of thousands of soles and growing at a normal pace. The second theory that scientists have on the table is that it was actually born from one of the first massive stars (with a mass 100 times higher than the sun) that existed. The question here is that he would have grown at a rhythm ‘Super-Edington‘, devouring matter much faster than the stable theoretical limit is considered. There is still much to find out. The team expects to obtain more observations with the Webb to unravel the secrets of this single object. “We had not been able to study the early evolution of black holes until recently,” concludes Taylor, “and we are excited to see what we can learn.” Images | Nasa Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | Two astronomers studied the “sound of the Big Bang” and reached a disturbing conclusion: the earth is in a lonely bubble

Astrophysics do not know how to certain how the first stars of the universe formed. This is about to change

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All stars are different. Each of them has its own character. His own “personality.” However, THE MECHANISM OF NATURE that has triggered the birth of most of those we can observe is always the same, so, in some way, we can consider that All are related. The stars are born from clouds of dust and gas that are disseminated by the universe, and that began to form Shortly after the Big Bangwhich took place, according to the estimates of scientists, almost 14,000 million years ago. The analyzes that many research groups are carrying out defend that the first stars were born shortly after the formation of the universe. In fact, it is currently considered that the oldest known, whose name resists me to transcribe because it is a cluster of letters and numbers that will not contribute anything, was born nothing less than 13.6 billion years, which reflects that it is almost as old as the universe itself. A team of astronomers from the National University of Australia, which is the group of scientists responsible for its discovery, assures which is sixty times larger than our sun and is located in our same galaxy, the Milky Way, but to 6,000 light years from the earth. Just to a jump. Our protagonist is the oldest molecule known in the cosmos The most interesting thing is that, despite their age, astronomers are convinced that there are even more archaic stars. This suspicion relies on the fact that our 13.6 billion giant is composed, in addition to hydrogen, carbon, magnesium and calcium. These chemical elements have necessarily had to be previously manufactured by one or several stars of an even older generation and with a very low presence of metals, understanding as metals all those elements that are heavier than helium, regardless of their position in the periodic table. The problem is that the knowledge that astrophysics have about these primal stars is still very limited, although this scenario seems to be about to change. And it is that a research team of the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics, which is housed in Heidelberg (Germany), has identified unexpected behavior of helium hydride (heh⁺), which is the oldest molecule known in the cosmos. It consists of a helium atom (He) and a proton (H⁺), and astrophysicists believe it was formed in the universe shortly after the Big Bang, when the temperature was reduced enough so that the helium and hydrogen atoms began to join. Astrophysics of the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics have managed to reproduce the conditions of the original universe using a cryogenic storage ring One of the reasons why helium hydride is so important is that its appearance triggered the beginning of chemical bonds in the universe and strengthened the foundations for the creation of molecular hydrogen (H₂), which is the fuel that feeds the stars. The strategy used by astrophysicians from the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics to recreate how this molecule behaved just after the Big Bang is amazing. And they have managed to reproduce the conditions of the original universe using a cryogenic storage ring. This experimental ingenuity is used to store ion beams for prolonged periods of time at extremely low temperatures and under ultra -oral vacuum conditions. This allows scientists to study the properties of molecules as unstable as helium hydride without being destroyed very quickly when colliding. As explained in the very interesting article that these astrophysicians have published in Astronomy & AstrophysicsDuring their experiment they realized that instead of slowing down as the temperature dropped, the reaction between helium hydride and the deuterium remained constant. This finding is important because in the primal universe helium hydride interpreted a leading role in the primordial gas cooling process. This cooling was essential so that the clouds of dust and gas collapse under the effects of gravity and give rise to the formation of the stars. In short, what these scientists have discovered is that Helio hydride had a much more active role in the primary chemistry of the universe of what was believed so far. Taking this idea as a starting point, astrophysicists onwards will be able to rethink the theoretical models that describe the processes involved in the formation of the oldest stars. Image | POT More information | Astronomy & Astrophysics In Xataka | The CERN has made an incredible pirouette: its last discovery has the ability to revolutionize quantum computers

A laboratory has recreated the first molecule after the Big Bang. The result does not fit with our history of the universe

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In the beginning, God created heavens and earth. And the earth was without order and empty. And the darkness covered the surface of the abyss, and the Spirit of God moved on the surface of the waters. Then God said: Be the light. And there was light. Go if there was light. A little context. Just after the Big Bang, the universe was an unimaginably dense and hot place. But as it expanded and cooled, the matter began to organize. First, protons and neutrons formed the nuclei of the lighter elements. Three hundred eighty thousand years later, temperatures fell enough for electrons to join these nuclei, forming the first neutral atoms: mainly hydrogen and helium. And it was then, in that cosmic childhood, when chemistry was born. The first molecule. The first chemical bond of the universe was the helium hydride ion (HEH+). A simple molecule formed by an atom of neutral helium and a hydrogen core; That is, a proton. For decades, his role in the birth of the first stars was subject to intense debates and theoretical simulations. Now, a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Nuclear Physics in Germany has achieved recreate for the first time The reactions of this molecule in conditions similar to those of the primitive universe. The result has been a capital surprise that will force physicists to reconsider what they thought they knew about how the first lights lit. The first stars. After the formation of neutral atoms, the universe entered into A period known as the “dark age”. There were still no objects that emitted light, such as stars. For a star to be born, a gas cloud had to contract until enough density and temperature to start the nuclear fusion. But there is a problem: for the cloud to contract until that point due to gravity, it needed to dissipate heat. Below the 10,000 degrees Celsius, hydrogen atoms are not able to radiate that heat. This is where the molecules come into play. Helium hydride (heh+) can cool gas in a much more efficient way due to its strong dipole moment: it radiates heat emitting photons when rotating and vibrating. Something does not fit. Physicists believed that HEH+ had been a key cooling agent in the primitive universe. The problem was that HEH+ could also be destroyed by colliding with the omnipresent hydrogen atoms. Until now, the theoretical models predicted that the destruction reaction had slowed down drastically due to the very low temperatures of the primitive universe, but no one had verified it experimentally. The results of the experiment, published in the magazine Astronomy & AstrophysicsThey are completely unexpected. To the difference of all predictions, the reaction does not slow down at low temperatures. In fact, its speed remains almost constant. What physicists call a “reaction without barrier” occurs. Image | NASA, that In Xataka | The first molecule of the universe: after decades after it, we just discovered one of the key pieces of chemistry dawn

The conversation between geniuses that gave name to the greatest enigma of the universe

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It was the year 1950. In Los Alamos, New Mexico, the best cafeteria conversation of all time took place. The physicist Enrico Fermi, eating with his colleagues Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller and Herbert York, asked: “Where is everyone?” The Fermi paradox was born. What does Fermi’s paradox say If our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains between 100,000 and 400,000 million stars, many of them thousands of years older than the Sun. Yes, by extension, we are surrounded by a huge number of exoplanets. Yes, as we know today, The rocky planets are common in the habitable zone of other solar systems. Why have we not found any evidence of extraterrestrial life? That is the essence of one of the most disturbing problems of modern science: Fermi’s paradox. From the abundance of worlds, intelligence and technology should have emerged capable of colonizing the galaxy or at least sending detectable signals. A flagrant contradiction between the high probability that there is intelligent life in other places and the absolute lack of evidence: a cosmic silence that persists in our telescopes and explorations. Until today we have not seen a convincing proof of visits, or artificial signals from other civilizations. The Milky Way is old: it is 13,000 million years old. A species capable of making interstellar “slow” trips would suffice to colonize it in less than 100. But we still do not see its mega -structures. And what is worse, we still do not detect its radio transmissions. Or they are extraordinarily rare civilizations, or do not exist. What is the difference with Drake’s equation Fermi’s paradox is an empirical observation that was born from an informal conversation. To give it structure and mathematics, astronomer Frank Drake proposed in 1961 the Drake equation: a probabilistic formula that tries to estimate the number of technologically advanced civilizations and with the ability to communicate that there should be in our galaxy. The equation multiplies a series of factors, such as the rate of stars, the number of planets per star and the fraction of planets that could develop life. Statistics are overwhelmingly favorable. Drake’s formula serves to give meaning to the search for extraterrestrial lifefeeding our statistical hope. But while Drake’s equation tells us that there should be someone out there, Fermi’s paradox asks us why we haven’t found anyone. This contradiction is actually the heart of Fermi’s question. It is not a formal theory, but a line of argument that forces us to ask ourselves why the universe seems so empty. And perhaps the best possible tribute to Enrico Fermi, astronomers are still looking for answers to their question 75 years later. Who was Enrico Fermi Known as the “Architect of the Atomic Bomb”, it was an Italo-American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for his works on induced radioactivity. Fermi was a key figure in the Manhattan project, the program that developed the first nuclear bomb during World War II. He directed the construction of the Chicago Pile-1, the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor. His team achieved the first self -sustained nuclear reaction in 1942. Born in 1901, he died of cancer at age 53, shortly after formulating Fermi’s paradox. The question “Where is everyone?” He emerged during a lunch with his colleagues in the National Laboratory of Los Alamos. Despite the informal nature of the conversation, the depth of the question and the authority of those who raised it gave it a weight that has endured 75 years, becoming a pillar of thought about extraterrestrial life. Responses to Fermi’s paradox Image | Jiang et al. (CC By-C-SA 4.0) Throughout these decades, scientists, philosophers and astronomers have proposed innumerable hypotheses to resolve Fermi’s paradox. These responses can be grouped into three great families of hypotheses. Smart life is extremely rare. Maybe the simplest and desolate solution. It suggests that there is a “great filter”, a barrier or a series of barriers extremely difficult to overcome so that living beings appear, evolve or come to expand through the galaxy. It may be the conditions for life to arise, they are so incredibly specific that they only occur once, here on earth. It may be to move from simple microorganisms to complex and multicellular life, it is the true bottleneck. Or intelligence like ours may not be an inevitable consequence of evolution. Or maybe, as the Apocalypse clock From the bulletin of atomic scientists, technological civilizations tend to self -destruct before being able to expand through the galaxy, either by a nuclear war, by climate changes or by pandemics. In any case, Humans do not usually succeed In our apocalyptic predictions. They exist, but we cannot detect them. There are many hypotheses to explain our lack of contact. A recent one NASA funded study I found the simplest. The space is so great and we have been observing it so little, that it is normal for us to continue without clues: “Fermi’s paradox is a very large extrapolation from a very local observation. You could look out the window and conclude that bears do not exist because you don’t see any.” Perhaps its technology is undetectable. They may not need to build mega -structures as Dyson spheres that would be visible to us. They could use energy sources that we don’t even understand. Maybe they have decided to enter hibernation and are asleep. As the summation hypothesis says, it is possible that are waiting for the cosmos to cool Within billions of years to maximize their computational capabilities. And his communications? As the astrophysician Amri Wandel postulates, our radio signs have only traveled about 100 light years. Any response would take the same to return. We might need between 400 and 50,000 years for a first contactassuming that someone who is listening to answer. But first they would have to find our needle in the haystack. They exist, but they deliberately avoid us. The most disturbing hypotheses propose that other more advanced civilizations know our existence, but have decided … Read more

The weird event that humanity has witnessed on average, each billion the age of the universe

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Year 2019. In an underground laboratory, A kilometer and a half under the Masso del Gran Sasso in Italya dark matter detector witnessed something extraordinary: the radioactive disintegration of an atom of Xenon-124. It is the slowest process (And therefore, more rare) Never registered. They touched the cosmic lottery. The Xenon-124 has a semi-width of 1.8 × 10²² years. That is 18 followed by 21 zeros: 18,000 trillions of years. To put it into perspective, the universe has “just” about 13.8 billion years, so that the process that Italian scientists could observe in 2019 is a billion times more durable than the universe’s own age, as The researchers described it In Nature magazine. A little context. The “semi -experience” is a statistical measure similar to half -life, but specifically defines the semi -dear period of a radioactive substance. Uranium-238, for example, has a semi-width of 4.5 billion years. In the case at hand, the semi-experience tells us how long it has to pass so that half of a very large group of Xenon-124 atoms disintegrate and become another element, the teluro-124. For an individual atom, its disintegration is a purely random event. A concrete atom could disintegrate in the next second or be stable for a much greater time than its semi -experience. For a group of atoms, the semi -experience is a very reliable prediction of its collective behavior. If you had a container with a large number of Xenon-124 atoms, you would have to wait 18,000 trillions of years for half of the atoms to transform. How did they do it? With a very large container, which contained 3.2 tons of ultra -overthopuro liquid xenon. We refer to Xenon1t experiment of the National Laboratory of Gran Sassoin the center of Italy. A dark matter detector designed for the direct search for hypothetical Massive weak interaction particles (WIMP). The detector was designed with extreme sensitivity and built under a mountain to isolate it from cosmic radiation. But what he captured was not dark matter, but the whisper of an atom of Xenón-124 decomposing; transforming into Teluro-124. The weirdest event ever witnessed. It is not a hyperbole. It really was a milestone of experimental physics that we should not have seen even in a billion lives of the universe. But although the probability that an atom of Xenon-124 disintegrate in a year is practically nil, the detector contained almost 10,000 billion xenon atoms in the two tons of volume that were analyzed. With such an overwhelming amount of “lottery tickets”, the probability that at least one disintegrate during the observation period increased dramatically. During the 177 days of data collection, the team observed not one, but a total of 126 events that could later confirm how the decay of the Xenon-124, a type of radioactive disintegration allowed by the standard model of particle physics, but practically undetectable. What did they see. An atom of Xenón-124 disintegrates when its nucleus simultaneously captures two electrons of the innermost layers. This causes two protons to become neutrons, transforming the atom into Teluro-124. But the energy released is carried by two neutrinos, which escape without being detected. What the Xenon1T photomultipliers detected up to 126 times was the X-ray waterfall and omer electrons that occur when the electrons of the upper layers of the Xenon-124 fall to fill the gaps that have left the two captured electrons. This is the energy firm, the “flash” that betrays the weird event of the universe. Has it served for something? For more than it seems. Although there was no luck with dark matter, the detection showed that Xenon1T can capture an incredibly weak and rare signals, validating its design. But the measurement also provided experimental data to test and improve the theoretical models that describe the structure and stability of atomic nuclei. This observation is a general trial for an even more ambitious goal: the search for double electron catches without neutrinos. If this hypothetical process was detected, it would demonstrate that Neutrinos are their own antiparticles (What is known as Majorana particles). This would explain why the universe is made of matter and not of antimatter. Image | Lngs In Xataka | When no result is a good result: Xenon’s story and the search for dark matter

We have found the matter that was missing in the universe. I was hidden in the filaments of the cosmic network

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Where is the dark matter is one of the great mysteries of the cosmos, but if someone thought we had all the barionic matter (the “conventional” matter) in the cosmos … it was wrong. At least until now. What was missing. A new study He has found in the cosmic network the barionic matter that remained hidden and that would represent about half of the “conventional” matter of the universe (matter which in turn only represents about 15% of the total matter). He has achieved it thanks to rapid radio (FRB) bursts, mysterious radio wave bursts that run the cosmos occasionally and have served to “illuminate” the subject of this intergalactic network. A network of “highways” in space. The cosmic network is a series of filaments of enormous size located in the intergalactic space in which a good part of the subject of the universe is distributed. These filaments are stretched clouds of gas and particles whose characteristics We discover little by little. Recent studies had documented the existence of this elusive network. The fact that the gas and particles that compose it are inert and do not give off light made their observation very difficult, which required hundreds of hours of dedication by powerful telescopes like VLT (Vary Large Telescope) of the European Observatory Austral (ESO). DSA-110. For study, the team had to build its own observatory in the California desert, in DSA (Deep synoptic array) -110. The name DSA-110 refers to the fact that this is a telescope composed of a network of 110 antennas. FRB The new Observatory was responsible for the detection of 39 of the 69 FRB thanks to which the deccovement was possible. These bursts are intense intriguing radio signals that we occasionally receive from the cosmos. We do not know exactly its cause or causes, but we suspect that they can be caused by supernovae or similar events. Some of these frb are repeated periodically while others are punctual; The origin of some can be located in a concrete galaxy, that of others does not. The frb used in the study They had their origin at points located at distances between 11.74 million light years and 9,100 million light years. This last distance, marked by the event FRB 20230521B, now marks a record: that of the most distant gust detected. Illuminating the highway. According to Explain the team itself Responsible for the study, the FRB “shine through the fog of the intergalactic medium.” When studying how this light stops when you meet matter, it is possible to measure this mist. When crossing the filaments, the frb light also separates in different wavelengths, such as when we see that a white light breaks down when crossing a prism, generating an rainbow. The measure to which the light decomposes also offers key information about the medium that is going through. The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Nature Astronomy. Halos or networks. So far the cosmological models indicated that there was more barionic matter in the universe than we were able to observe. The new estimate of the mass of the huge filaments of the cosmic network allows us to fill in these holes. The new estimate indicates that 76% of the conventional matter of the cosmos is in the intergalactic environment, while 15% would be in the “halos” of the galaxies, while the rest, about 9% of this matter, would be the subject of which the interior of the galaxies is composed: planet stars and everything that lives are already vast cosmic structures. In Xataka | Dark matter has been one of the most fascinating mysteries of physics for years. Now we have a new theory Image | Vikram Ravi/Caltech/Ovro / Jack Madden, Illustristng, Ralf Konietzka, Liam Connor/CFA

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