General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsData from the Edge of Space & Time Itself
"Bizarre! Not Based on Current Understanding of Cosmology"
The Daily Galaxy, April 11, 2016
"Since these black holes don't know about each other, or have any way of exchanging information or influencing each other directly over such vast scales, this spin alignment must have occurred during the formation of the galaxies in the early universe," notes Andrew Russ Taylor, University of Cape Town, Director of the recently-launched Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy.
Deep radio imaging by researchers in the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape, in South Africa, has revealed that supermassive black holes in a region of the distant universe are all spinning out radio jets in the same direction most likely a result of primordial mass fluctuations in the early universe. The astronomers publish their results in a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The new result is the discovery for the first time of an alignment of the jets of galaxies over a large volume of space, a finding made possible by a three-year deep radio imaging survey of the radio waves coming from a region called ELAIS-N1 using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT).
The jets are produced by the supermassive black holes at the centers of these galaxies, and the only way for this alignment to exist is if supermassive black holes are all spinning in the same direction, says Taylor, joint UWC/UCT SKA Chair and principal author of the Monthly Notices study. This implies that there is a coherent spin in the structure of this volume of space that was formed from the primordial mass fluctuations that seeded the creation of the large-scale structure of the universe.
With study co-author and UCT PhD student currently working at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, New Mexico, USA Preshanth Jagannathan, the team discovered the alignment after the initial image had been made. Within the large-scale structure, there were regions where the spin axes of galaxies lined up. The image below shows the deep radio map covering the ELAIS-N1 region, with aligned galaxy jets. The image on the left has white circles around the aligned galaxies; the image on the right is without the circles. (Russ Taylor)
CONTINUED...
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2016/04/supermassive-black-hole-jets-found-aligned-in-same-direction-bizarre-finding-not-based-on-current-un.html
Amazing news! We now have important information about what the early universe was like immediately after its birth. Symmetry formed from the chaos, leaving patterns after the Big Bang.
Science is so cool. New information is always welcome, as it adds to what we can THINK about.
Isn't that exactly like a Free Press to Democracy?
2naSalit
(86,798 posts)But I take issue with one statement...
I wonder how he can be so certain of that. The universe is enormous and who, on our tiny planet, is to say that there is no communication between other intelligent whatevers out there?
Otherwise, this is awesome and reminds me of a micro example in a geologic sense. Most of our minerals contain some form of magnetic elements (basically iron) which, upon formation, were aligned with the planetary magnetic field as it was at that time creating a sort of time stamp on formations.
That this occurs - or is indicated to be so - on a macro scale this huge is truly informative.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The idea that things can be separate in space and time and yet exchange information is way cool.
"Spooky Action at a Distance" Confirmed by New Quantum Experiment
IFLscience.com, March 31, 2015 | by Janet Fang
Albert Einstein may have been the greatest mind of the 20th century, but the great physicist famously disliked some of the weirder implications of quantum physics. Now, nearly a century after his protests, physicists may have proven one of the points that he doubted the most.
According to quantum mechanics, a particle can be described as a wave that spreads out over a great distance. Yet the particle is still just one particle. You can't detect it in two places at once. When physicists observe the particle in a particular location, they say that the wave functionthe mathematics that describes how a particle could be in multiple places at oncehas collapsed.
Einstein could not accept this. Or, at least, that he thought the quantum mechanics of his day could not adequately explain it, referring to the phenomenon with the now-iconic phrase "spooky action at a distance." But in new research published in Nature Communications, Griffith University's Howard Wiseman and colleagues use a single particle to show that the wave function really does collapse in this strange way. In so doing, their work backs up years of research into quantum entanglement, in which particles are connected in a mysterious way even when separated, so that observing or affecting one instantly affects the other.
Previous experiments had tested quantum entanglement with two particles, but the researchers wanted to get at Einstein's claim by entangling a single photon of light. They did this by firing a beam of photons into a splitter that cut each photon in two, sending half of the light to one lab and half to another lab.
Using a finely tuned homodyne detectora tool used to measure the waves of these particlesLab A tried to look for its photon and measure its phase. So did the scientists in Lab B. They found that if the Lab A researchers had detected the photon, then the Lab B researchers did not, and vice versa. Plus the photon state that Lab B detected depended upon what Lab A detected. That's exactly what you'd expect if the single split photon were entangled.
"Einstein's view was that the detection of the particle only ever at one point could be much better explained by the hypothesis that the particle is only ever at one point, without invoking the instantaneous collapse of the wave function to nothing at all other points," Wiseman says in a news release. "Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong."
SOURCE w/links: http://www.iflscience.com/physics/einsteins-spooky-action-distance-confirmed-new-quantum-experiment
And then we venture past infinity and find that we have come back to discover...
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)rather the physical transfer of some force across that vast distance (billions of light years).
2naSalit
(86,798 posts)I stil wonder how he can say that with certainty... it just doesn't makes sense to me, it's such a massive assumption.
Other than that, it's way cool.
gordianot
(15,245 posts)Is Donald the wave to the Hillary photon particle?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)...Like gravity, it's the weakest force in the universe and works across the greatest of distances if one is in a position to add a few trillion green quarks if you get my drift to UBS Switzerland which'll give back three quarks, keeping only two for the transaction. Goldic, really.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)...so the phenomenon seems to cross a vast range of spatial scales (from human-scale in the lab, to cosmological distances)!
Mystery Alignment of 'Butterfly' Nebulae Discovered
Astronomers have discovered something weird in the Milky Way's galactic bulge -- a population of planetary nebula are all mysteriously pointing in the same direction.
While using the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope (NTT) to survey 130 planetary nebulae situated near the hub of our galaxy, astronomers from the University of Manchester sorted them into three populations based on their shape: "elliptical," "either with or without an aligned internal structure" and "bipolar."
They noticed the mysterious alignment in the long axes of bipolar planetary nebulae.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)From the article:
"This really is a surprising find and, if it holds true, a very important one," said Bryan Rees of the University of Manchester, co-author of the paper to appear in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "Many of these ghostly butterflies appear to have their long axes aligned along the plane of our galaxy. By using images from both Hubble and the NTT we could get a really good view of these objects, so we could study them in great detail."
The other two populations of planetary nebulae appear to be randomly oriented in relation to the galactic disk.
SNIP...
"The alignment we're seeing for these bipolar nebulae indicates something bizarre about star systems within the central bulge," said Rees. "For them to line up in the way we see, the star systems that formed these nebulae would have to be rotating perpendicular to the interstellar clouds from which they formed, which is very strange."
Interestingly, bipolar planetary nebulae do not appear to have a preferential orientation in our galactic neighborhood many thousands of light-years from the galactic core. The alignment effect only seems to act near the center of the Milky Way.
CONTINUED...
http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/weird-planetary-nebula-alignment-discovery-hubble-eso-130904.htm
The more astronomers look, the more we all realize how much there is to learn.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)If gravity can drag, and make waves, it can spin too, you would think.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)On a cosmic scale: Quasars align.
On a galactic scale: Bipolar Planetary Nebulae align.
On a personal scale: We like to hang with Democrats.
It is amazing how the things appear from the energy soup and how quickly the universe expands after the Big Bang.
Like Pacific Islanders who can cross immense distances, telling where they are in the ocean based on the wave patterns -- which are formed and impacted by land masses, islands, weather, tides and currents.
Perhaps one day there'll be a gravity telescope to see those signs, bemildred!
bemildred
(90,061 posts)If the gravitational equivalent of spin exists, than gravitational polarity would as well.
And negative gravity could be interesting.
But this is getting crazy.
roamer65
(36,747 posts)the more we realize what we don't know.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)though. I've read that a serious problem for those who want to explore the frontiers of knowledge is that it can now take years and years of learning to reach them. One result is that specialties are becoming far more narrow than they once were.
In any case, thanks for the reminder of the incredible wonders out there, Octafish.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Checkmate, atheists!
Just wanted to get that in there.