Via the wonders of RSS syndication and a number of iPad virtual magazine apps (e.g. Flipboard, Zite, Pulse, and a few others) the net of information I cast has been expanding a lot in the least year. The wonderful thing about this method of gathering news is that I encompass an increasing amount of information in a wider array of areas. A great example of this would be the science (and particularly Astronomy and Cosmology) news I have here.
The first article has some real importance is that astrophysicists how have the beginnings of a model of how much matter is in the universe. Obviously they have had models for years, but with this latest information, the needs for some of the more exotic forms of mass and energy become interesting…but not as crucial to make the tally sheets balance…
Student finds universe’s missing mass
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4358/aussie-student-find-missing-mass
SYDNEY: A 22-year-old Australian university student has solved a problem which has puzzled astrophysicists for decades, discovering part of the so-called ‘missing mass’ of the universe during her summer break.
Undergraduate student Amelia Fraser-McKelvie made the breakthrough during a holiday internship with a team at Monash University in Melbourne, locating the mystery material within vast structures in the intergalactic medium called filaments.
Ordinary mass – just missing
Monash astrophysicist Kevin Pimbblet explained that scientists had previously detected matter that was present in the early history of the universe but that could not now be located.
"There is missing mass, ordinary mass not dark mass … It’s missing to the present day," said Pimbblet.
"We don’t know where it went. Now we do know where it went because that’s what Amelia found."
Fraser-McKelvie, an aerospace engineering and science student, was able to confirm after a targeted X-ray search for the mystery mass that it had moved to the filaments of galaxies, which stretch across enormous expanses of space.
The following links contain some great graphics (I have a paltry image below…) of what the local universe looks like.
Astronomers Unveil Most Complete 3-D Map of Local Universe
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110527082038.htm
Astronomers have unveiled the most complete 3-D map of the local universe (out to a distance of 380 million light-years) ever created. Taking more than 10 years to complete, the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) also is notable for extending closer to the Galactic plane than previous surveys — a region that’s generally obscured by dust.
New 3D map shows the universe in greatest detail yet
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/05/new-3d-map-shows-the-universe.html
The most detailed view ever assembled of our universe is now available… and it’s even in 3D.
Covering 95 per cent of the sky in the infrared part of the spectrum, the 2MASS Redshift Survey (2MRS) map shows the distribution of galaxies and dark matter that make up the local universe up to 380 million light years away.
The map also shows more distant objects. The purple areas denote galaxies closest to Earth, whist the red areas are the furthest, lying about 1 billion light years from Earth.
This final article is interesting, and may be a bit of a misnomer…perhaps the better question might have been: “What is the cosmological object which has had the greatest impact upon modern cosmology?” Of course, as with so many pieces of internet journalism, my quest9ion might not be as poetic (albeit a bit more salient to the answer given…).
What’s the most important object in cosmology?
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/05/whats-the-most-important-objec.html
What’s the most important object in the history of cosmology? It may be a variable star in a nearby galaxy that has played a crucial role in opening our eyes to the true size of the universe.
On Sunday, David Soderblom of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, will make a case for the star’s importance at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Boston.
The star appears on a photographic plate exposed by Edwin Hubble on the night of 6 October 1923 with the 2.5-metre telescope at Mount Wilson, better known as the 100-inch telescope. It helped him to establish the cosmic distance scale that brought about an astronomical revolution.
Earlier astronomers had recognized hazy objects they called nebulae – Latin for "clouds" – and found that many of them contained what looked like stars, some of which varied in brightness. They also had discovered that one class of variable stars, called cepheids, cycled between bright and dim over a fixed period that depended on their overall brightness. In the autumn of 1923, Hubble began systematic observations of the Andromeda nebula looking for novae – stars that grew dramatically brighter during outbursts – which had already been spotted there.
"The first good plate in the program, made with the 100-inch reflector, led to the discovery of two ordinary novae and a faint, eighteenth magnitude object which was at first presumed to be another nova," he wrote in his landmark book, The Realm of the Nebulae. Looking at other plates, he found the third star was "a typical Cepheid with a period of about a month.” He calculated that its faint magnitude on the plate meant the object was a star and that it – and the rest of the nebula – must be about 900,000 light years away.
