& the Cold War Continues to heat up.
-Daniel aka Obsidian
This new nuclear-armed US bomb may be the most dangerous weapon in America's arsenal
By Jeremy Bender
July 28, 2015 2:07 PM
.
(Michael Jackson/US Navy) The B61-12 bomb will be integrated with the F-35. The
US just introduced a new type of bomb into its already extensive
arsenal, and it may just be the most alarming US weapon yet, Zachary
Keck writes for The National Interest. The new bomb is the
B61-12. On its surface, the bomb does not appear to be as dangerous as
other weapons in the US arsenal. Although the B61-12 is nuclear-armed,
it has a yield of 50 kilotons — tiny compared to the largest nuclear
bomb that the US possesses, which has a yield of 1,200 kilotons.
But as Keck notes, that difference in explosive power doesn't tell the entire story. "What makes the B61-12 bomb the most dangerous nuclear weapon in America’s arsenal is its usability," Keck writes. "This usability derives from a combination of its accuracy and low-yield." According
to the Federation of American Scientists, the B61-12 will be able to
strike within 30 meters of its target. This accuracy allows the bomb to
destroy targets that would have previously necessitated the use of a
larger but more indiscriminate weapon.
As a result of the bomb's relatively low yield, the weapon would
produce less nuclear fallout than earlier nuclear weapons, something
which would limit unintended casualties from a nuclear attack. But this lower fallout also lowers the cost and scope of a nuclear
strike — which could in turn increase the possibility that the bomb
would actually be used in a military engagement.
As it is, the B61-12 may actually expand the range of possible US
nuclear targets. In a 2014 conference organized by the Stimson Center,
retired US Air Force General Norton Schwartz said that
the B61-12's target set goes beyond that of previous gravity-guided
nuclear bombs in the US military. This effectively means that the
US could now consider the use of aircraft-delivered lower-yield nuclear
weapons in a wider range of scenarios.
The concern over the B61-12 — and the thing that could make it is the
most dangerous bomb in the US arsenal — is that such an accurate and
usable nuclear weapon could encourage military thinkers to start
imagining a wider variety of situations in which the use of nuclear
weapons would be acceptable.
Once the B61-12 is fully tested and deployed, it will be integrated into existing NATO forces and the F-35 in order to enhance the alliance's nuclear posture in Europe.
Scientists discovered the last lake on Mars, which might be preserving ancient life
By Jessica Orwig
August 11, 2015 5:51 PM
.
(ESO/M. Kornmesser) Illustration of what Mars would look like with water.
A trio
of scientists says they've identified the best place to look for
evidence of ancient life on Mars — one of the youngest lake-bearing
basins ever discovered.
Though Mars has no liquid water today, the Red Planet was submerged
under vast oceans billions of years ago. And where there's water,
there's the potential for life. Scientists suspected that after the oceans evaporated, that was it
for water — and life — on Mars. But a recent paper published in the
journal Geology says that's not the case. Mars had a second wave of surface water about 3.6 billion years
ago — 200 million years after scientists thought Mars had seen the last
of its liquid water. This water, the researchers report, was located in
a lake inside a basin near the Martian equator, about 100 miles from
where NASA's Opportunity rover rests today.
It is one of the youngest lakes and therefore possibly one of the
last liquid water sources to ever exist on Mars, the researchers
report.
The discovery is exciting for the prospect of ancient Martian life, explains lead author Brian Hynek who is a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at Colorado University-Boulder:
"Having a later stage of water on Mars is probably a good thing for
the potential for life on that planet because it gave life more time to
be conceived," Hynek told Business Insider. "There was life on
Earth when this lake was active so by that analogy, we can say there's
potential that Mars had microbial life and this was a great place where
it could have resided."
Getting around a tricky problem
.
(NASA/JPL-caltech/University of Arizona) Crater in Meridiani Planum, where the researchers found evidence for one of the youngest lakes ever discovered.
The
researchers are investigating the age and origin of hundreds of salt
deposits across Mars to map how much water existed on the surface.
"Just like on Earth, when salts are left somewhere, that probably
means that water was there," Hynek said. "So, these are indicators that
water was there in some form." Estimating the age of these salt deposits is tricky. The way
scientists determine the age of anything on Mars is by counting the
number and measuring the size of impact craters in that region. Then
they compare this information to similar regions on the Moon, whose age
we have a better handle on.
But wind has eroded the regions where these salt deposits are located, which makes it hard to estimate their age. This
latest paper is the first time anyone has ever calculated with any
confidence the age of one of these salt deposits, Hynek said.
Using images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which
has been orbiting Mars since 2006, the team studied the terrain and
geography around the basin. They found evidence to suggest that at one
point, the lake grew large enough to spill over the rim of the basin,
carving channels in its wake.
The researchers traced these channels to neighboring volcanic
plains hundreds of miles away that are about 3.6 billion years old.
Because the water channels over-cut the volcanic plains, they must be
younger. That means the lake must also be younger than 3.6 billion
years.
Life locked in salt
.
(Promking at en.wikipedia) Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah are similar to the salt deposits on Mars.
Right
now, there are no plans to visit this basin in search for the potential
for life. But Hynek hopes that this latest paper will make the basin a
more popular touch down point for the NASA Mars rover scheduled to
launch in 2020. Hynek has a pretty good idea of where he'd look first. "I think you'd want to target the salt deposits," he told Business
Insider. "As the water evaporates away a lot of organic matter and a lot
of microbial evidence gets encased in salts and is preserved for long
time periods."
Though there was liquid water in the basin, there are still other
factors that would ultimately determine whether life could have existed
there, Hynek cautions. The lake's salinity, acidity, oxygen levels, and
available nutrients for food are all important.
The lake had a relatively low salt content, which would have made it
ideal for life, Hynek said. However, the other three factors are hard to
measure without sending a rover there to scoop up the soil and analyze
what's in it. So far, this single lake is the
only evidence for water on Mars around 3.6 billion years ago. Hynek
plans to continue studying these salt deposits to see if there's more
evidence of water on a younger Mars.
You have to watch the "wording" in this article. Anyway, it takes time to acclimate the audience to novel concepts. -Daniel aka Obsidian
One of the F-35's most expensive features was made possible by flying saucers
By Jeremy Bender
August 11, 2015 11:27 AM
.
(Lockheed Martin) An F-35B using its central lifting fan. The
US Air Force's push to develop operational flying saucers 60 years ago
laid the conceptual groundwork for one of the variants of Lockheed
Martin's F-35, MIT Technology Review reports.
The F-35 comes in three variants, with key mechanical
differences for the Air Force, Marines, and Navy - the F-35A, F-35B, and
F-35C respectively. Of the three models, the F-35B is the most technologically different. Unlike the F-35A and F-35C, the Marines needed their variant to be
capable of conducting short take-off and vertical landing
(STOVL) operations.
This request necessitated that the F-35B be given a lifting fan. And,
as Desire Francine G. Fedrigo, Ricardo Gobato, Alekssander Gobato note in a paper at the Cornell University Library, the F-35B's lifting fan has its conceptual roots in flying saucers.
Between 1954 and 1961, the US Air Force spent $10 million attempting
to develop a flying saucer that became known as an Avrocar. The Avrocar
was a vertical and/or short take-off and landing (V/STOL) saucer that was powered by one giant central fan.
.
An Avrocar during flight testing. Despite its seven years of development, the Air Force
failed to make the Avrocar into a mission capable vehicle that could
potentially replace helicopters.
MIT Technology Review notes that the aircraft was "hot
and almost unbearably uncomfortable for the pilot. And it demonstrated
various idiosyncrasies such as taking five seconds to turn 90 degrees to
the left but 11 seconds to turn the same amount to the right,
presumably because of its central rotating fan." However, despite the Avrocars' failings, the technology did
point researchers towards the feasibility of developing and embedding a
central lift fan turbine within an aircraft for variations of vertical
take-off and landing (VTOL) technology.
.
(US Air Force) "The concept of a lift fan, driven by a turbojet engine
is not dead, and lives today as a key component of Lockheed X-35 Joint
Strike Fighter contender," Fedrigo notes, adding that the conceptual framework of the Avrocar helped General Electric's own development of a booster fan propulsion system.
Whereas
the Avrocar's development ultimately failed, though, GE's "Vertifan"
went on to prove the concept of successful lifting fan technology. This
in turn lead to a DARPA sponsored development challenge that gave birth
to lifting fans being used in the F-35B. The F-35B was declared ready for combat by the Marine Corps on July 31.
& the Cold War Continues to heat up.
-Daniel aka Obsidian
This new nuclear-armed US bomb may be the most dangerous weapon in America's arsenal
By Jeremy Bender
July 28, 2015 2:07 PM
.
(Michael Jackson/US Navy) The B61-12 bomb will be integrated with the F-35. The
US just introduced a new type of bomb into its already extensive
arsenal, and it may just be the most alarming US weapon yet, Zachary
Keck writes for The National Interest. The new bomb is the B61-12. On its surface, the bomb does not
appear to be as dangerous as other weapons in the US arsenal. Although
the B61-12 is nuclear-armed, it has a yield of 50 kilotons — tiny
compared to the largest nuclear bomb that the US possesses, which has a
yield of 1,200 kilotons.
But as Keck notes, that difference in explosive power doesn't tell the entire story. "What makes the B61-12 bomb the most dangerous nuclear weapon in America’s arsenal is its usability," Keck writes. "This usability derives from a combination of its accuracy and low-yield." According
to the Federation of American Scientists, the B61-12 will be able to
strike within 30 meters of its target. This accuracy allows the bomb to
destroy targets that would have previously necessitated the use of a
larger but more indiscriminate weapon.
As a result of the bomb's relatively low yield, the weapon would
produce less nuclear fallout than earlier nuclear weapons, something
which would limit unintended casualties from a nuclear attack. But this lower fallout also lowers the cost and scope of a nuclear
strike — which could in turn increase the possibility that the bomb
would actually be used in a military engagement. As it is, the B61-12 may actually expand the range of possible US
nuclear targets. In a 2014 conference organized by the Stimson Center,
retired US Air Force General Norton Schwartz said that
the B61-12's target set goes beyond that of previous gravity-guided
nuclear bombs in the US military. This effectively means that the
US could now consider the use of aircraft-delivered lower-yield nuclear
weapons in a wider range of scenarios.
The concern over the B61-12 —
and the thing that could make it is the most dangerous bomb in the US
arsenal — is that such an accurate and usable nuclear weapon could
encourage military thinkers to start imagining a wider variety of
situations in which the use of nuclear weapons would be acceptable.
Once the B61-12 is fully tested and deployed, it will be integrated into existing NATO forces and the F-35 in order to enhance the alliance's nuclear posture in Europe.
At the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, archaeologists uncovered
a 10,000-year-old man-made monolith that they believe is evidence of a
prehistoric civilization. The rock monument's colossal size (12 meters,
or about 39 feet in height) suggests that quite a few people would have
been needed to move it — something that would have been difficult if, as
previously suspected, the inhabitants had been hunter-gatherers living
relatively solitary lifestyles.
The find, which is actually the second of its type, has led
archaeologists to suspect that civilization may have "already been
shifting towards our modern way of life" earlier than previously
thought, according to Evoanth.
Together, the two monoliths (the other one was found in the Middle
East) suggest that different groups in different parts of the world were
beginning to develop a modern way of life simultaneously.
"What was it that was driving so many people, so far apart in the same direction?" asks Evoanth. We can't be sure, but it seems the scientists are one step closer to finding out. Becca Stanek
Texas, on July 15. The men had a
deadly plot to lure government forces into a trap, federal officials say, and
were amassing a stockpile fit for war. There were Kevlar helmets and body
armor, pipe bombs and handmade grenades, large amounts of gunpowder and dozens
of rounds of ammunition for a military-grade sniper rifle.
Federal officials say three North
Carolina men — Walter Eugene Litteral, 50; Christopher James Barker, 41; and
Christopher Todd Campbell, 30 — spent months compiling their cache, much of it
purchased through a military surplus store owner who became so concerned about
the plot that the person became the FBI’s informant. The men were arrested Saturday and
charged with conspiracy and amassing weaponry allegedly to combat what they
believe is the government’s plan to impose martial law through (among other
things) the controversial multi-state military exercise known as Jade Helm.
In January, the informant relocated
the military surplus store to Gaston County, N.C. — a location that was just a
few doors down from where Campbell operated a tattoo parlor. Almost immediately, Campbell told
the informant of his “anti-government” views, according to federal court
documents.
A month later, Campbell introduced
the informant to Litteral. The two men told the informant that they believed
“that the federal government intended to use the armed forces to impose martial
law in the United States, which they and others would resist with violent
force,” the court documents said. Specifically, they told the
informant that the Jade Helm exercises planned in five states were a cover for
the government’s plot to impose martial law. The exercises were scheduled to be
conducted from July 15 to Sept. 15, and Litteral made it clear that he needed
the military-grade items no later than the 15th of July.
Operation Jade Helm 15,
a training exercise for Army Special Operations Forces, has spawned
consternation and anti-government conspiracy theories. The exercises are taking
place in Texas, along with Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, according to the Army. By April, months before the training
operation was scheduled, the purchases from the military surplus
store began — all of them paid for in cash, according to court
documents. There were plans, the documents
allege, to make pipe bombs, explosive tennis balls covered in nails and coffee
cans filled with ball bearings that would be detonated with a shot from a
sniper rifle.
And by mid-June, those plans were
beginning to crystallize.
According to the documents, Litteral
was heavily armed with both legally and illegally obtained weapons. If
government agents came looking for him at his home, Litteral allegedly told the
informant in a phone conversation, he would be ready. “Lemme tell you something, I gonna
have my f——- house rigged up; these motherf—— come try to come in my house,
it’s gonna go off,” he said, according to the documents.
The documents indicated that
Litteral told another person in a phone conversation: “I got a f—— .45 beside
my bed. I got a .45 and a 9-mil in my truck. I’ve got a 9-mil and a .380, or a
.380 in her car. Safe full of weapons. You know what? Every time I open up this
damn safe, I mean I’ve got, I’ve got at least 30 weapons that I can see and
some tucked all the way in the back back.”
The plan involved testing the
explosives on land in Shelby, N.C. But the ambush against U.S. forces
would take place on Litteral and Campbell’s a 99-acre camp in Clover, S.C. “According to [Campbell], he and
Litteral intend to booby-trap the camp and draw government’s forces into the
camp and kill them,” the warrant states. On June 30, according to documents,
Campbell told the informant that he feared that the government would soon
declare martial law, saying: “S— is gonna go down soon.”
In mid-July, Litteral attempted to
buy a rifle for Barker, the third arrestee named in the conspiracy. Barker had
been convicted of a felony and would not have been permitted to purchase a
weapon.
But the purchase at the gun store
was held up, first by a required three-day background check. Unbeknownst to
Litteral, it was then held up even longer at the FBI’s request.
In a conversation on July 29,
according to the documents, Litteral told Campbell that the delay infuriated
him:
LITTERAL: “it would be good for trip but like I was telling
him with the pipe bombs I’m making we need a fuse we need a fuse because these
things if we put one here we’re gone.” Three days later, federal agents
made a move, raiding two homes along with Campbell’s tattoo parlor and
ultimately arresting all three of the men.
The men now face charges of
conspiracy to violate laws governing firearms and explosive devices, which
carry a prison sentence of up to five years and a $250,000 fine. Campbell
separately faces an additional charge of receiving, possessing or making a
firearm —which by definition includes a destructive device — which carries a
maximum penalty of up to 10 years and a $10,000 fine, according to the FBI.
Here the 3 places raided by FBI over weekend — 2 homes, 1
tattoo parlor. All within 4 miles apart. 3 men arrested
pic.twitter.com/BRhN5ZLXxy
Something new to consider. So, if this article upsets you, just consider that you & I are not really real anyway. Lol
-Daniel aka Obsidian
Are Humans Really Part Of A Game For Robots? Scientists Claim The Universe Could Be FAKE
August 5, 2015 7:59 AM
.
Everything
you know may just be part of a Matrix-style simulation, according to
physicists who claim that we could all be part of a giant GAME. A
new theory has suggested that our entire lives and memories may not be
real, instead being part of a computer programme played by advanced
robots.
The so-called ‘simulation argument’ has been theorised for
several years, with noted academics including Oxford University
philosopher Nick Bostrom, suggesting that the plot of The Matrix could
be closer to real life than we think
In the sci-fi classic, humans
are bred in vats that are fed with simulations that make them believe
they are living an ordinary life.
Scientists say that we could all
be living in the future, and our life in 2015 is nothing more than a
series of numbers in a computer programme. It may sound like
science fiction but scientists believe they may actually be able to
PROVE that what you know isn’t what you know.
.
Marvin
Minsky, one of the founders of artificial intelligence (AI) thinks that
there may be tell-tale signs if the programmer of our mass simulation
“has made some slips”. He said that some laws of physics that
“aren’t quite right” could be the start of being able to prove that the
universe is a simulation. Silas Beane, from the University of
Bonn, suggested several years ago that if humans were to build a
small-sale simulation of the universe we would be able to identify any
constraints. These constraints would include a cut-off in the
spectrum of high energy particles - exactly the kind of cut off in the
energy of cosmic rays.
.
This would be the start of proving that our universe is not what it seems - and that it is part of a giant construct. These
theories are not the first time that humans have debated whether we are
actually real - French philosopher Rene Descartes theorised that
nothing we perceive is true except our consciousness being aware of
itself and its doubts - which is how the phrase ‘I think, therefore I
am’ came about.
However, some believe that thoughts can also be part of a simulation or programme that is being controlled by robots or aliens. So
if you’re having a bad day today, it could just be some advanced robot
in the year 2300 having a bit of a fun with the character on his
PlayStation 29.
At the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, archaeologists uncovered
a 10,000-year-old man-made monolith that they believe is evidence of a
prehistoric civilization. The rock monument's colossal size (12 meters,
or about 39 feet in height) suggests that quite a few people would have
been needed to move it — something that would have been difficult if, as
previously suspected, the inhabitants had been hunter-gatherers living
relatively solitary lifestyles.
The find, which is actually the second of its type, has led
archaeologists to suspect that civilization may have "already been
shifting towards our modern way of life" earlier than previously
thought, according to Evoanth.
Together, the two monoliths (the other one was found in the Middle
East) suggest that different groups in different parts of the world were
beginning to develop a modern way of life simultaneously.
"What was it that was driving so many people, so far apart in the same direction?" asks Evoanth. We can't be sure, but it seems the scientists are one step closer to finding out. Becca Stanek
We shouldn't get our panties all up in a bunch over this disclosure. It
is known that the ruling elite have, for centuries, practiced deforming
their skulls (such as in the picture), to distinguish themselves from
their subjects & to emulate the appearance of the space beings they
called "gods." However, this might prove to be an interesting discovery.
There have been others in Central & South America. -Daniel aka Obsidian
Skeleton With ‘Alien’ Skull Discovered In Russia
July 28, 2015 9:28 AM
.
UFO watchers are in a tizz over the discovery of an ancient skeleton with an elongated skull that resembles an ALIEN. The
humanoid skeleton was unearthed from a site known as Russia’s
Stonehenge and it is being heralded as proof that aliens visited Earth
thousands of years ago.
However, archaeologists don’t share the
same view as alien hunters, insisting that the skeleton belonged to a
female from a tribe that used to bind the head to make it grow out of
shape.
.
Researcher Maria Makurova told Russian news agency TASS: “We have found a well preserved skeleton. “I
would not exclude the possibility that the skeleton belongs to a woman
from the Sarmati trible that lived in the territories of what is now
modern day Ukraine, Kazakhstan and southern Russia. "Her skull was elongated because the tribe did so by tying up the heads of their children with rope.
.
“It was clearly a tradition in the tribe.” But
believers in life on other planets claim that if this was the case, it
was simply a way of mimicking the elongated skulls of the alien
visitors.
Makurova said that archeologists were still working on
theories as to why the tribe had the skull-lengthening tradition, but
had so far not come up with a reason.
.
Scientists
who exposed the photographs say they believe that the body, that was
discovered at Arkaim, did not date back as far as the age of the site,
that originated in 4,000 BC. They believe the bones in fact date back to around 200-300 AD - making them less than 2,000-year-old. The Akraim archaeological site was discovered in 1987.
Sometimes it's good to present reports from the Koch Brother's funded pseudo-scientist's think tank's "findings" for debate. -Daniel aka Obsidian
Earth heading for 'mini ice age' in just 15 years, scientists say
By Doug G. Ware
| July 11, 2015 at 5:34 PM
Ice piles up along the a breakwater in Chicago on January 7,
2014. Solar scientists predict that the Earth will enter a "mini ice
age" around 2030 due to decreased activity by the sun, which will bring
with it frigid cold winters. The last time the Earth experienced a
similar situation occurred between 1645 and 1715. File photo by Brian
Kersey/UPI
| License Photo
LLANDUDNO, Wales, July 11 (UPI) --
Solar scientists, armed with the best data yet regarding the activities
of the sun, say the Earth is headed for a "mini ice age" in just 15
years -- something that hasn't happened for three centuries.
Professor Valentina Zharkova, of the University of Northumbria,
presented the findings at the National Astronomy Meeting in Wales this
week, Britain's Independent reported Saturday.
Researchers, saying they understand solar cycles better than ever,
predict that the sun's normal activity will decrease by 60 percent
around 2030 -- triggering the "mini ice age" that could last for a
decade. The last time the Earth was hit by such a lull in solar activity
happened 300 years ago, during the Maunder Minimum, which lasted from
1645 to 1715.
Scientists say there are magnetic waves in the sun's interior
that fluctuate between the body's northern and southern hemispheres,
resulting in various solar conditions over a period of 10 to 12 years.
Based on that data, researchers say they are now better able to
anticipate the sun's activity -- which has led to the Zharkova team's
prediction. "Combining both [magnetic] waves together and comparing to real
data for the current solar cycle, we found that our predictions showed
an accuracy of 97 percent," Zharkova said.
If the "mini ice age" does indeed arrive, scientists say it will be accompanied by bitter cold winters -- frigid enough to cause rivers, like the Thames in London, to freeze over.
& i thought they were referring to Gov. Chris Cristie's presidential announcement.
-Daniel aka Obsidian
A nearby black hole just erupted for the first time in 26 years and scientists are ecstatic
By Jessica Orwig
June 30, 2015 6:07 PM
View gallery
.
Lurking
8,000 light years from Earth is a black hole 12 times more massive than
our sun. It's been peacefully sleeping for 26 years. But on June 15, astronomers detected something signaling that it had woken up. Now, scientists around the world are using highly sophisticated
instruments to learn as much as they can about this mysterious beast of
nature before the black hole returns to its slumber, which will be soon.
Black holes are very dense, massive objects in space that have an
immensely powerful gravitational field that traps anything and
everything that comes too close, including light. But on occasion
they'll spit out material as well as suck it in. On June 15, one of NASA's satellites picked up a torrent of x-rays all coming from a single source: the black hole.
"Relative to the lifetime of space observatories, these black hole
eruptions are quite rare," said Neil Gehrels, the principal investigator
for Swift, the NASA satellite that first identified the eruption in a NASA press release.
"So when we see one of them flare up, we try to throw everything we
have at it, monitoring across the spectrum, from radio waves to gamma
rays."
A deadly companion
This black hole is just one half of a two-body system called V404
Cygni. Its partner is a star slightly smaller than our sun, and it's
been nourishing the black hole for at least 77 years. The x-rays that
astronomers observed on June 15 were the heated guts from the companion
star that had spiraled into the mouth of the black hole.
When black holes in binary systems, like V404 Cygni, feed, they do so
by gravitationally attracting a single thread of gas from the star. The
black hole is 12 times more massive than its companion and therefore
has a much stronger gravitational grip which slowly pulls gas from the
star as the star orbits around it, like in the animation below:
.
As the gas gets pulled in, it orbits around the black hole, forming a
disc. The closer the gas gets to the black hole, the stronger
gravitational force it feels and so the faster it moves, heating up to
searing-hot temperatures. When the gas reaches temperatures of more than
1.7 million degrees Fahrenheit,
it emits a jet of high-energy particles, which satellites like NASA's
Swift instrument then detect — albeit 8,000 years later because of the
time it takes light to travel from the V404 Cygni to Earth.
But there isn't always a steady stream of gas falling into the black
hole, which is why it takes such long naps in between feedings. That disc has two regions: and inner, hot region, and an outer
cool region. You need a lot of gas to provide enough pressure and push
to cross this barrier, which takes time to generate. Once the black hole
has consumed all of the gas in the inner region, which it does in a few
days, it has to wait for more. But scientists don't understand the
details of how much gas is necessary or exactly how long it takes to
build up.
That's why this event is so exciting because it gives
astronomers a chance to better understand the mechanism that's driving
these eruptions.
A once-in-a-professional-lifetime opportunity
.
(European Southern Observatory on Flickr) V404 Cygni's black hole has erupted before.
However, when astronomers first saw the outbursts more than 77
years ago, in 1938, they didn't have half of the instruments that are
around today. The black hole erupted again in 1956, and then again in
1989.
While the eruption of 1989 was studied with a handful of instruments,
the outburst wasn't studied in half the detail compared to this year's
event. Outbursts like this usually only last for a few weeks
to months, so astronomers have culminated a total of nine instruments in
space and on the ground to study the black hole in all wavelengths,
from very low energy like radio waves to the most energetic like gamma
rays, before time runs out.
Some of the instruments they're using include the Chandra X-ray
Observatory, the European Space Agency's INTEGRAL satellite, Japan's
MAXI, and the 10.4-meter Gran Telescope Canarias operated by Spain in
the Canary Islands.
"It is definitely a 'once in a professional lifetime' opportunity," said Erik Kuulkers, the INTEGRAL project scientist in the NASA press release.
Some physicists actually believe that the universe we live in might be a hologram.
The idea isn't that the universe is some sort of fake simulation out of The Matrix,
but rather that even though we appear to live in a three-dimensional
universe, it might only have two dimensions. It's called the holographic principle.
The thinking goes like this: Some distant two-dimensional surface
contains all the data needed to fully describe our world — and much like
in a hologram, this data is projected to appear in three dimensions.
Like the characters on a TV screen, we live on a flat surface that
happens to look like it has depth.The laws of physics seem to make more sense when written in two dimensions than in three
It might sound absurd. But if when physicists assume it's true in
their calculations, all sorts of big physics problems — such as the
nature of black holes and the reconciling of gravity and quantum
mechanics — become much simpler to solve. In short, the laws of physics
seem to make more sense when written in two dimensions than in three.
"It's not considered some wild speculation among most theoretical physicists," says Leonard Susskind,
the Stanford physicist who first formally defined the idea decades
ago. "It's become a working, everyday tool to solve problems in
physics."
But there's an important distinction to be made here. There's no
direct evidence that our universe actually is a two-dimensional
hologram. These calculations aren't the same as a mathematical proof. Rather, they're intriguing suggestions that our universe could be a hologram. And as of yet, not all physicists believe we have a good way of testing the idea experimentally.
Where did the idea that the universe might be a hologram come from?
The idea originally came out of a pair of paradoxes concerning black holes.
1) The black hole information loss problem
In 1974, Stephen Hawking famously discoveredthat
black holes, contrary to what had long been thought, actually emit
slight amounts of radiation over time. Eventually, as this energy bleeds
away from the event horizon — the black hole's outer edge — the black
hole should completely disappear.
An illustration of radiation escaping from a black hole. (Communicate Science)
However, this idea prompted what's known as the black hole information loss problem.
It's long been thought that physical information can't be destroyed:
All particles either retain their original form or, if they change, that
change impacts other particles, so the first set of particles' original
state could be inferred at the end.
As an analogy, think of a stack of documents that are fed through a
shredder. Even though they're cut into tiny pieces, the information
present on the pieces of paper still exists. It's been cut into tiny
pieces, but it hasn't disappeared, and given enough time, the documents
could be reassembled so that you'd know what was written on them
originally. In essence, the same thing was thought to be true with
particles.
But there was a problem: If a black hole disappears, then the
information present in any object that may have been sucked into it
seemingly disappears, too.
One solution, proposed by Susskind and Dutch physicist Gerard 't Hooft
in the mid-'90s, was that when an object gets pulled into a black hole,
it leaves behind some sort of 2D imprint encoded on the event horizon.
Later, when radiation leaves the black hole, it picks up the imprint of
this data. In this way, the information isn't really destroyed.
And their calculations showed that on just the 2D surface of a black
hole, you could store enough information to completely describe any
seemingly 3D objects inside it.
"The analogy that both of us independently were thinking about was
that of a hologram — a two-dimensional piece of film which can encode
all the information in a three-dimensional region of space," Susskind
says.
The entropy problem: There was also the related
problem of calculating the amount of entropy in a black hole — that is,
the amount of disorder and randomness among its particles. In the '70s, Jacob Bekenstein had calculated that their entropy is capped, and that the cap is proportional to the 2D area of a black hole's event horizon.
"For ordinary matter systems, the entropy is proportional to the volume, not the area," says Juan Maldacena,
an Argentinian physicist involved in studying the holographic
principle. Eventually, he and others saw that this, too, pointed to the
idea that what looked like a 3D object — a black hole — might be best
understood using only two dimensions.
How did this idea go from black holes to the entire universe?
None of this was proof that black holes were holograms. But early on,
Susskind says, physicists recognized that looking at the entire
universe as a two-dimensional object that only looks three-dimensional
might help solve some deeper problems in theoretical physics. And the
math works just as well whether you're talking about a black hole, a
planet, or an entire universe.
In 1998, Maldacena demonstrated that a hypothetical universe could be a hologram. His particular hypothetical universe was in what's called anti-de Sitter space (which, to simplify things, has a curved shape over huge distances, as opposed to our universe, which is believed to be flat):
Anti-de Sitter space (left) curves in on itself. Our universe (right) is believed to be flat. (The Physics Mill) What's more, by viewing this universe in two dimensions, he found a way to make the increasingly popular idea of string theory
— a broad framework in which the basic building blocks of the universe
are one-dimensional strings, rather than particles — jibe neatly with
the well-established laws of particle physics.
And even more importantly, by doing so, he united two hugely
important, disparate concepts in physics under one theoretical
framework. "The holographic principle connected the theory of gravity to
theories of particle physics," Maldacena says.
Combining these two fundamental ideas into a single coherent theory (often called quantum gravity)
remains one of the holy grails of physics. So the holographic principle
making it possible in this hypothetical universe was a big deal. Of course, all of this is stillquite different from saying that our actual universe — not this weird hypothetical one — is a hologram.
But could our universe actually be a hologram — or does the idea only apply to hypothetical ones?
That's still a matter of active debate. But there's been some recent
theoretical work that suggests the holographic principle might work for
our universe too — including a high-profile paper by Austrian and Indian physicists that came out this past May.
Like Maldacena, they also sought to use the principle to find a
similarity between the disparate fields of quantum physics and
gravitational theory. In our universe, these two theories typically
don't align: They predict different results regarding the behavior of
any given particle. But in the new paper, the physicists calculated how these theories would predict the degree of entanglement
— the bizarre quantum phenomenon in which the states of two tiny
particles can become correlated so that a change to one particle can
affect the other, even if they're far away. They found that by viewing
one particular model of a flat universe as a hologram, they could indeed
get the results of both theories to match up.
Still, even though this was a bit closer to our universe than the one
Maldacena had worked with, it was just one particular type of flat
space, and their calculations didn't take time into account — just the
other three spatial dimensions. What's more, even if this did apply
directly to our universe, it'd only show that it's possible it could be a hologram. It wouldn't be hard evidence.
How could we prove that the universe is a hologram?
Fermilab's Holometer, used in tests that some say could find evidence for the holographic principle. (Fermilab)
The best type of proof would start with some testable prediction made
by holographic theory. Experimental physicists could then gather
evidence to see if it matches the prediction. For instance, the theory
of the Big Bang predicted that we might find some form of remnant energy
emanating throughout the universe as a result of the violent expansion
13.8 billion years ago — and in the 1960s, astronomers found exactly
that, in the form of the cosmic microwave background.
At the moment, there's no universally agreed-upon test that would
provide firm evidence for the idea. Still, some physicists believe that
the holographic principle predicts there's a limit to how much
information spacetime can contain, because our seemingly 3D spacetime is
encoded by limited amounts of 2D information. As Fermilab's Craig Hogan
recently put it to Motherboard,
"The basic effect is that reality has a limited amount of information,
like a Netflix movie when Comcast is not giving you enough bandwidth. So
things are a little blurry and jittery."
Hogan and others are using an instrument called a Holomoter
to look for this sort of blurriness. It relies on powerful lasers to
see whether — at super-small, submicroscopic levels — there's a fundamental limit
in the amount of information present in spacetime itself. If there is,
they say, it could be evidence that we're living in a hologram.
Still, other physicists, including Susskind, reject the premise of this experiment and say it can't provide any evidence for the holographic principle.
Let's say we prove the universe is a hologram. What would that mean for my everyday life?
Everyday life in a holographic universe. (Shutterstock.com)
In one strict sense, it'd mean little. The same laws of physics
you've been living with for your entire life would seem to remain
exactly the same. Your house, dog, car, and body would keep appearing as
three-dimensional objects, just like they always have.
But in a deeper sense, this discovery would revolutionize our existence on a profound level.
It doesn't matter much for your day-to-day life that the universe was
formed 13.8 billion years in a sudden, violent expansion from a single
point of matter. But the discovery of the Big Bang is instrumental for
our current understanding of the history of the universe and our place
within the cosmos.
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Likewise, the bizarre principles of quantum mechanics
— like entanglement, in which two distant particles somehow affect each
other — don't really change your daily life either. You can't see atoms
and don't notice them doing this. But these principles are another
basic truth that tells us something utterly unexpected about the
fundamental nature of the universe.
Proving the holographic principle would be much the same. Living our
normal lives, we probably won't think much about the peculiar,
counterintuitive fact that we live in a hologram. But the discovery
would serve as an important step toward fully understanding the laws of
physics — which dictate every action you've ever taken.
