Space Age marvels - near and far

Let's lift our heads from Earthly troubles for a bit. First something cosmic -- BBC World Service uses me pretty often, most recently on a program about moving the Earth.   A light take on a very – um – heavy topic that I explicate further here.

Is “dark energy” real? It’s based on the notion that cosmic expansion started accelerating again, some 5 to 10 billion years ago, as apparently evidenced by the distance and brightness profiles of Type 1a supernovae, which are our standard candles for immense distances. But what if those candles were not “standard” across those billions of years? Might the brightness of a typical S1a have varied, as the galaxies got older, and more ‘metal-rich’? Or even (perhaps) as space-time itself got more stretched out? (I feel it, even across my almost seven decades!) 

If so, then the new inferred distance/recession curves might eliminate the supposed acceleration and thus any need for dark energy.  (There are other metrics like the Cosmic Background Radiation and the baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO), but these are even more indirect.) What fascinating times. Fight for a brave, scientific civilization.

Soon the New Horizons spacecraft (with Pluto and and Ultima behind it) will take images of two "nearby" stars, Proxima Centauri and Wolf 359. When combined with Earth-based images made on the same dates, the result will be a record-setting parallax measurement yielding 3D images of these stars appearing (as points) to pop out of their backgrounds, giving very precise distance measurements.

Image from Inouye Solar Telescope

And coincidental with our re-release of my first novel - Sundiver… the new Inouye Solar Telescope based on Maui in Hawaii is taking the most detailed images of our Sun to date. Amazing pics of convection cells the size of Texas coupled with titanic magnetic fields and sources of the Solar Wind that sometimes surges as massive storms.  

== ...and only slightly less cosmic ==

On a broader scale,  a study published in The Astrophysical Journal  found that hundreds of galaxies were rotating in sync with the motions of galaxies that were tens of millions of light years away. It should be impossible that the galaxies separated by six megaparsecs [roughly 20 million light years] directly interact with each other. Perhaps the synchronized galaxies may be embedded along the same large-scale structure. “In 2014, a team observed curious alignments of supermassive black holes at the cores of quasars, which are ancient ultra-luminous galaxies, that stretch across billions of light years.” And yes, one notion is that this provides forther evidence for “we’re in a simulation.” Well, it’s one thought occurring to science fiction readers.

Amazing composite image of the Tycho Supernova, with the red and blue coloring used to give a 3D feel to it (retreating and advancing silicon and other stuff too).

While breathless reporters ask if Betelgeuse is about to go supernova (not huge odds in our lifetimes) a smaller spectacle seems assured in mere decades. V Sagittae is made up of an ordinary star orbiting around a white dwarf star, with the former’s matter slowly falling onto the latter. The astronomers’ mathematical model predicts this process to result in a merger between 2067 and 2099. “It’ll be “substantially brighter than the all-time brightest known nova just over a century ago, and the last time any ‘guest star’ appeared brighter was Kepler’s Supernova in the year 1604.”

China has finally booted up its “super-Arecibo” radio telescope. The completed FAST is about 2.5 times as sensitive as any other radio telescope on the planet, and is expected to have four times the range of the next largest dish. That is, till the Square Kilometer Array goes live.

Astronomers have discovered a 'void' with absolutely nothing in it. ‘The void, which is about 6 billion to 10 billion light years away, is nearly a billion light years across, is empty of both normal matter and dark matter. The finding challenges theories of large-scale structure formation in the universe.’

Speaking of which, here’s the coolest recent thing: a light echo of SN 1987A! Some of the light from the supernova from 1987 went a different direction, bounced off a gas cloud and got here almost 33 years late. Even cooler, we can do this proactively. We can calculate and find gas clouds that WILL reflect a known event to us, at some future time, and then catch some of the very earliest light curves from sudden events like supernovas. 

== And more coolstuff! ==

The first-ever direct image of a black hole's event horizon was a truly impressive feat though so-far low-resolution, confirming exactly the visual appearance (of an accreting singularity) predicted by Caltech Nobelist (and sci fi fan) Kip Thorne, for the movie “Interstellar.” This computer simulation is truly gorgeous. You’ll be glad you clicked.

A titanic, expanding beam of energy sprang from close to the supermassive black hole in the centre of the Milky Way just 3.5 million years ago, sending a cone-shaped burst of radiation through both poles of the Galaxy and out into deep space.

Hubble Spots a Ghoulish 'Face' in the Depths of Space. Well, two galaxies colliding. But kewl. Watch as it happens! (Be patient.)

The fastest eclipsing white dwarf binary yet known orbits in only 6.91 minutes, and is expected to be one of the strongest sources of gravitational waves detectable with LISA, the future space-based gravitational wave detector. “Closely orbiting white dwarfs are predicted to spiral together closer and faster, as the system loses energy by emitting gravitational waves. J1539’s orbit is so tight that its orbital period is predicted to become measurably shorter after only a few years.”

==The Sci Fi Beat ==

A  Kickstarter for SHAPERS OF WORLDS, an anthology featuring first-year guests of The Worldshapers podcast, offers stories by Seanan McGuire, David Weber, me, and many others.