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Showing posts with label interstellar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interstellar. Show all posts

Monday 26 January 2015

Wormhole to another galaxy may exist in Milky Way



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A giant doorway to another galaxy may exist at the centre of the Milky Way, a study suggests.




Scientists believe that dark matter at the centre of our galaxy could sustain a wormhole that we could travel through.




Wormholes are areas where space and time are being bent so that distant points are now closer together.




Einstein predicted them in his theory of General Relativity but nobody knows how they could be held open so that someone could travel through. Most scientists believe that It is extremely unlikely they could exist naturally in the universe. It would take a huge mass, like a Neutron star, to create a bend in time which could bend space time enough to meet another tunnel on the other side. No natural examples have ever been detected.

"If we combine the map of the dark matter in the Milky Way with the most recent Big Bang model to explain the universe and we hypothesise the existence of space-time tunnels, what we get is that our galaxy could really contain one of these tunnels, and that the tunnel could even be the size of the galaxy itself," said Professor Paulo Salucci.

"But there's more. We could even travel through this tunnel, since, based on our calculations, it could be navigable. Just like the one we've all seen in the recent film 'Interstellar"'.

He said the research was surprisingly close to what was depicted in director Christopher Nolan's movie, for which theoretical physicist Kip Thorne provided technical assistance.

"What we tried to do in our study was to solve the very equation that the astrophysicist 'Murph' was working on," said Prof Salucci. "Clearly we did it long before the film came out."

Wormhole, conceptual artwork

 Wormholes bend space-time to allow distant regions to meet


Any wormholes existing in nature have previously been assumed to be microscopic pinpricks in the fabric of space-time.

But the one possibly lying at the centre of the Milky Way would be large enough to swallow up a spaceship and its crew.

Prof Salucci added: "Obviously we're not claiming that our galaxy is definitely a wormhole, but simply that, according to theoretical models, this hypothesis is a possibility."

Other "spiral" galaxies similar to the Milky Way - like its neighbour Andromeda - may also contain wormholes, the scientists believe.

Theoretically it might be possible to test the idea by comparing the Milky Way with a different type of nearby galaxy, such as one of the irregular Magellanic Clouds.

In their paper, the scientists write: "Our result is very important because it confirms the possible existence of wormholes in most of the spiral galaxies ..

"Dark matter may supply the fuel for constructing and sustaining a wormhole. Hence, wormholes could be found in nature and our study may encourage scientists to seek observational evidence for wormholes in the galactic halo region."

The theory was published in the journal Annals of Physics.

Source : Telegraph

Friday 14 November 2014

A Universe of Blue Dots? --"Water Common During the Formation of All Planetary Systems"

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The new SciFi blockbuster, Interstellar, shows astonauts from post apocalyptic earth, destroyed by what appears to be a modern dust-bowl, catapulted into the unknown of outer space in the hopes of finding a new home for the human race, only to discover an extraterrestrial tidal wave on a distant exo planet. How realistic is the premise of an alien water planet? New findings suggest it's based on solid science.
"This is an important step forward in our quest to find out if life exists on other planets," said Tim Harries, from the University of Exeter's Physics and Astronomy department, who was part of the research team. "We know that water is vital for the evolution of life on Earth, but it was possible that the Earth's water originated in the specific conditions of the early solar system, and that those circumstances might occur infrequently elsewhere. By identifying the ancient heritage of Earth's water, we can see that the way in which our solar system was formed will not be unique, and that exoplanets will form in environments with abundant water. Consequently, it raises the possibility that some exoplanets could house the right conditions, and water resources, for life to evolve."
The implication of these findings is that some of the solar system's water must have been inherited from the Sun's birth environment, and thus predate the Sun itself. If our solar system's formation was typical, this implies that water is a common ingredient during the formation of all planetary systems.

To date, the Kepler satellite has detected nearly 1,000 confirmed extrasolar planets. The widespread availability of water during the planet-formation process puts a promising outlook on the prevalence of life throughout the galaxy.

A pioneering new study has shown that water found on Earth predates the formation of the Sun – raising hopes that life could exist on exoplanets, the planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. The ground-breaking research set out to discover the origin of the water that was deposited on the Earth as it formed.

It found that a significant fraction of water found on Earth, and across our solar system, predates the formation of the Sun. By showing that water is 'inherited' from the environment when a star is born, the international team of scientists believe other exoplanetary systems also had access to an abundance of water during their own formation.

As water is a key component for the development of life on Earth, the study has important implications for the potential for life elsewhere in the galaxy.

Scientists have previously been able to understand the conditions present when stars are formed by looking at the composition of comets and asteroids, which show which gases, dust and, most importantly, ices were circling the star at its birth.

The team of international scientists were able to use 'heavy water' ices – those with an excess of water made with the element deuterium rather than hydrogen – to determine whether the water ices formed before, or during, the solar system's formation.

Sunday 2 November 2014

'Interstellar' Black Hole is Best Black Hole in Sci-Fi

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Christopher Nolan’s movie ‘Interstellar’ will be an epic space adventure encapsulating humanity’s need to explore the Universe, but it’s the visual effects for the movie that are garnering early attention.

By combining the help of one of the world’s leading black hole physicists with a cutting-edge visual effects (VFX) team, ‘Interstellar’ will depict the most scientifically accurate black hole in science fiction history. And, during production, some new discoveries were made as to how a black hole would appear if we could view it up close.

“Neither wormholes or black holes have been depicted in any Hollywood movie in the way they actually would appear,” said Caltech physicist Kip Thorne in a behind-the-scenes video released by Paramount Pictures (featured below). “This is the first time that the depiction (of a black hole) began with Einstein’s general relativity equations.”

General relativity describes the nature of gravity. How a black hole, being the most gravitationally dominant object in the known Cosmos, would look to an observer can therefore be described by Einstein’s equations — except for when tangling with the Black Hole Information Paradox, then you’ll need some quantum equations to boot.

Thorne is a lifelong friend of fellow black hole guru Stephen Hawking and between both of the theoretical physicists, our modern understanding of how these singularities work has flourished. So with the help of Thorne, Nolan has done something very smart; he’s been able to provide the movie-viewing public with a rare sci-fi look into the actual science of a black hole while maintaining an artistic representation that we can easily comprehend.

Interstellar Movie Trailer #3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePbKGoIGAXY

Warped Spacetime

While crunching the mathematics and arriving at graphical representations of Einstein’s famous equations, Thorne and the movie’s VFX team realized that if a star is positioned behind the black hole, the starlight may become trapped in the warped spacetime close to the black hole’s event horizon. Known as gravitational lensing, this spacetime effect can be used by astronomers to detect exoplanets, for example. But during the production of ‘Interstellar,’ the team realized a spacetime subtlety.



The Matter of an Accretion Disk

Of course, no black hole would be complete without the addition of a radiating accretion disk. But how would that appear on film?

As matter falls toward the spinning black hole’s event horizon, the gas collects into a hot accretion disk, shining brilliantly. By adding the disk, “we found that if you then render this whole thing and you visualize it all through this extraordinary gravitational lens, the gravity twists this glowing disk of gas into weird shapes and you get this extraordinary ‘rainbow of fire’ across the top of the black hole,” said Franklin.

Science fiction movies are produced to entertain, first and foremost. But as computer graphics become more sophisticated and the science fiction-viewing public becomes more savvy, there is a growing motivation by filmmakers to make space phenomena as ‘real’ as possible. And often that will mean employing the help of scientists to make our most extreme space fantasies as scientifically accurate as possible to maintain a credible storyline.

‘Interstellar’ is shaping up to be one of those rare movies that will combine science and fiction, exciting the viewing public, potentially engaging us with astrophysics in a way we’ve never experienced before.

Source : Discovery News