#cosmology

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100 years ago on this day, November 23, 1924, Edwin Hubble, then a thirty-five-year-old astronomer, had his findings first published in The New York Times, that there are distant stellar systems, that is, other “Island Universes”, beyond our own.

https://www.nytimes.com/1924/11/23/archives/finds-spiral-nebulae-are-stellar-systems-dr-hubbell-confirms-view.html

a facsimile of an article published November 23, 1924, in The New York Times

Cosmography archives

1987: A Survey of the Boötes Void

by Robert Kirshner and co-authors
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987ApJ...314..493K/abstract

"In Figure 5 we present a stereoscopic view of the sample [...]. This figure may be viewed by placing an index card upright between the two plots and putting the bridge of the nose against its end. After some moments of eye adjustment, the reader will get either a head-ache or a stereo view of the Bootes region."

What an excellent breakfast read, so far. Are we alone in the universe? Unlikely. Microbial life, likely exists. Are there other intelligent beings? Possible or even likely, it seems - but we will also likely never know, such is the immense, expanding size of the universe.

Purely based on our evolving understanding of science and the age of the universe, other civilisations may have come or gone or not be highly evolved yet. And most likely, enormously so far away from us, it is impossible to meet them.

Incredible, when we try to think about it all.🤔

Early career researchers in computational early universe physics, come and work in Helsinki! 💕

This year we are hiring up to four postdoctoral researchers! We have a friendly, supportive group and we do some cool early universe physics with computers.

Our advert is here:
https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/29096

I'm happy to answer any questions! And please do reach out to past and current group members to ask about their experiences working here, their views matter far more than mine.

For what it's worth, I arrived here after my doctorate 13 years ago and except for two excursions (to Stavanger and Nottingham) never really left. It's very nice here.

Part of Physicum (the building in part occupied by the Department of Physics at the University of Helsinki) and the yard in front, with five Pride flags from the flagpoles. This is an old picture that I took several years ago; if I recall correctly, Progress Pride flags are now flown but I was on parental leave at the time of Pride this year.

FREE community , please BOOST!

TONIGHT
Everybody welcome, just turn up!

🌒Tues Nov 5, 18:30 🌓 (London UK)
with
LIVE @UCLanthropology
And on ZOOM

'Wild Service--the Human Right to Roam'

LIVE in the Daryll Forde Room, 2nd Floor of the UCL Anthropology Dept, 14 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW

ZOOM ID 384 186 2174 passcode Wawilak

Harry Jenkinson will present the concept of Wild Service: a philosophy of reciprocity with our fellow species, made possible through increased human access to nature.

Humans are a nomadic species. For over 95% of our history, we have lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers, with nomadism central to understandings of ecological balance. But when we are politically and culturally restricted from nature, we become unable to take care of it. The Right to Roam movement, to which Harry belongs, calls for public access to the English countryside, 92% of which is inaccessible. …

Black and white graphic by Right to Roam illustrator Nick Hayes shows a human profile against leaves, fronds and tendrils in the background. A bird/blackbird? has landed singing on the human' s forefinger. One branch seems to grow out of the human mouth
Black and white graphic by Right to Roam illustrator Nick Hayes shows a human profile against leaves, fronds and tendrils in the background. A bird/blackbird? has landed singing on the human' s forefinger. One branch seems to grow out of the human mouth
Black and white graphic by Right to Roam illustrator Nick Hayes shows a human profile against leaves, fronds and tendrils in the background. A bird/blackbird? has landed singing on the human' s forefinger. One branch seems to grow out of the human mouth
Black and white graphic by Right to Roam illustrator Nick Hayes shows a human profile against leaves, fronds and tendrils in the background. A bird/blackbird? has landed singing on the human' s forefinger. One branch seems to grow out of the human mouth
Black and white graphic by Right to Roam illustrator Nick Hayes shows a human profile against leaves, fronds and tendrils in the background. A bird/blackbird? has landed singing on the human' s forefinger. One branch seems to grow out of the human mouth
Black and white graphic by Right to Roam illustrator Nick Hayes shows a human profile against leaves, fronds and tendrils in the background. A bird/blackbird? has landed singing on the human' s forefinger. One branch seems to grow out of the human mouth
Black and white graphic by Right to Roam illustrator Nick Hayes shows a human profile against leaves, fronds and tendrils in the background. A bird/blackbird? has landed singing on the human' s forefinger. One branch seems to grow out of the human mouth

Stars behaving absurdly

For centuries, the only way in which to illuminate the mysteries of black holes was through the power of mathematics.

As celestial entities go, black holes are, paradoxically, both commonplace and extraordinary. They could be seen as commonplace due to their general ubiquity.

By Steve Nadis and Shing-Tung Yau via @aeonmag

https://aeon.co/essays/mathematics-is-the-only-way-we-have-of-peering-into-a-black-hole?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=fe59a6d476-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_10_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-fe59a6d476-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

A 3,000-light-year-long jet of plasma blasting from the M87 galaxy’s 6.5-billion-solar-mass central black hole, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, September 2024. Courtesy NASA/ESA/STSCI

After arrival around L2, immediately started to produce first images. Both instruments on board worked perfectly. But there were some issues: some straylight in the VIS instrument required survey replanning, sometimes solar X-rays needed to be flagged, and a fix was required for initial guiding problems of the spacecraft.

All this was quickly fixed.

More images and explanations, : https://www.euclid-ec.org/euclid-anniversary

Small guiding problem: the telescope moves while taking pictures. Credits: ESA / Euclid Consortium / TAS-I
Alarming straylight on the VIS instrument in certain pointing orientations. Credits: ESA
X-ray flares from the Sun printed the telescope's insides on VIS. Credits: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA

An End to the Upside Down Cosmos: Rethinking the Big Bang, Heliocentrism, the Lights in the Sky…and Where We Live by Mark Gober, 2024

Scientists tell us that 96 percent of the universe is unexplained dark matter and dark energy. Also, they admit that no unifying “theory of everything” exists in physics. This shaky foundation is the basis of modern thinking about the cosmos and Earth’s place in it. Something big seems to be missing.

@bookstodon


Thus, we’re left with no choice but to question the “consensus” cosmological model. Are we really flying through space on a spinning ball within an expanding universe, while free-falling around the Sun—all as a consequence of a “Big Bang” that supposedly occurred 13.8 billion years ago? And do we really occupy no special place in the cosmos, while living out random and fundamentally meaningless existences? Or are there problems with this scientific worldview? Mark Gober’s An End to the Upside Down Cosmos deconstructs these commonly held beliefs, revealing their many shocking flaws and inconsistencies. Although he doesn’t claim to provide definitive answers, sometimes arriving at what’s not true is just as valuable. A word of caution: you may never think about your existence—or where you live—in the same way after reading this book!