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Fewer galaxies + "Super Earth" is super old + Bumblebee gravity + Finding wormholes

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How dark is space? Universe’s glow shows there are fewer galaxies than we thought, say scientists
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecarter...d7956a4808

EXCERPT: . . . “The Universe is dark, but not as dark as we thought,” said Lauer. Having measured the Universe’s glow, Lauer and his colleagues subtracted known sources such as the stars in the Milky Way and reflections from interstellar dust only to find that some light remained unaccounted for.

So what’s the source? Options include:
  • Dwarf galaxies in the nearby Universe that haven’t yet been detected.
  • The diffuse halos of stars that surround galaxies might be brighter than expected.
  • There are many rogue, intergalactic stars spread throughout the cosmos.
  • There are many more faint, distant galaxies than theories suggest.
  • However, perhaps the most surprisingly find is that the background glow of the Universe is too weak to support current theories of how many unseen galaxies there really are.
It was previously estimated by the Hubble Space Telescope that there were two trillion+ galaxies out there, mostly beyond its view, but these new calculations suggest that there may be only hundreds of billions. “Take all the galaxies Hubble can see, double that number, and that’s what we see—but nothing more,” said Lauer... (MORE - details)


Astronomers find an astonishing "Super-Earth" that's nearly as old as the universe
https://www.sciencealert.com/an-astonish...e-universe

INTRO: It turns out that planets can live a very long time indeed. Around one of the galaxy's oldest stars, an orange dwarf named TOI-561 just 280 light-years away, astronomers have found three orbiting exoplanets - one of which is a rocky world 1.5 times the size of Earth, whipping around the star on a breakneck 10.5-hour orbit.

Obviously an exoplanet so close to its star isn't likely to be habitable, even if it is rocky like Earth, Venus and Mars. It would have a temperature of 2,480 Kelvin, tidally locked with a magma ocean on the permanent day side.

But the TOI-561 system, planets and all, is one of the oldest ever seen, at an estimated age of around 10 billion years. That's more than twice as old as the Solar System, nearly as old as the Universe itself, and evidence that rocky exoplanets can remain stable for a very long time.

"TOI-561 b is one of the oldest rocky planets yet discovered," said astronomer Lauren Weiss of the University of Hawai'i. "Its existence shows that the universe has been forming rocky planets almost since its inception 14 billion years ago." (MORE)


'Bumblebee gravity' could explain why the universe is expanding so quickly
https://www.livescience.com/bumblebee-gr...nergy.html

INTRO: Physicists have long assumed that the universe is pretty much the same in any direction, and now they've found a new way to test that hypothesis: by examining the shadow of a black hole.

If that shadow is a wee bit smaller than existing physics theories predict, it could help prove a far-out notion called bumblebee gravity, which describes what would happen if the seemingly perfect symmetry of the universe isn't so perfect after all.

If scientists can find a black hole with such an undersized shadow, it would open the door to a brand-new understanding of gravity — and perhaps explain why the universe is expanding ever faster. But to understand how this bumblebee idea could fly, let's dig into some fundamental physics... (MORE)


Wormholes may be lurking in the universe – and new studies are proposing ways of finding them
https://theconversation.com/wormholes-ma...hem-153020

EXCERPTS: . . . Some wormholes may be “traversable”, meaning humans may be able to travel through them. For that though, they would need to be sufficiently large and kept open against the force of gravity, which tries to close them. To push spacetime outward in this way would require huge amounts of “negative energy”.

Sounds like sci-fi? We know that negative energy exists, small amounts have already been produced in the lab. We also know that negative energy is behind the universe’s accelerated expansion. So nature may have found a way to make wormholes.

[...] Unlike a black hole, a wormhole may “leak” some gravity from the objects located on the other side. This spooky gravitational action would add a tiny kick to the motions of stars near the galactic centre. According to this study, the specific effect should be measurable in observations in the near future, once the sensitivity of our instruments gets a little bit more advanced.

Coincidentally, yet another recent study has reported the discovery of some “odd radio circles” in the sky. These circles are strange because they are enormous and yet not associated with any visible object. For now, they defy any conventional explanation, so wormholes have been advanced as a possible cause... (MORE - details)
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