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Comments of the Week #104: from black hole jets to our motion through the Universe [Starts With A Bang]

Sunday, April 3, 2016 15:17
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(Before It's News)

“All the evidence, experimental and even a little theoretical, seems to indicate that it is the energy content which is involved in gravitation, and therefore, since matter and antimatter both represent positive energies, gravitation makes no distinction.” -Richard Feynman

It was a big last week at Starts With A Bang, and you might not realize it but next week is shaping up to be even bigger! If you missed anything, here’s what we took a look at:

That’s quite a collection, but there’s more! For those of you who love podcasts, thanks to our Patreon supporters (some of you included!) I’m pleased to share with you our sixth podcast: on the most distant galaxy (so far) in the Universe!

Plus, for those of you who enjoy television appearances, I gave a big recap of some of the biggest news in space, science and the Universe this past week on Portland, OR’s local television station, KGW.

I’m getting very excited about my public talk at OMSI on April 18th and then my big appearance at Balticon 50 this upcoming Memorial Day weekend in Baltimore, MD. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see some of you, and perhaps meet a few of you for the first time! Now that you’ve gotten the information, let’s take a trip into our Comments Of The Week!

Large scale projection through the Illustris volume at z=0, centered on the most massive cluster, 15 Mpc/h deep. Shows dark matter density overlaid with the gas velocity field. Image credit: Illustris Collaboration / Illustris Simulation, via http://www.illustris-project.org/media/.

Large scale projection through the Illustris volume at z=0, centered on the most massive cluster, 15 Mpc/h deep. Shows dark matter density overlaid with the gas velocity field. Image credit: Illustris Collaboration / Illustris Simulation, via http://www.illustris-project.org/media/.

From Alan L. on dark matter and whether it’s displaced by normal matter: “‘the idea that dark matter is displaced by normal matter runs counter to the evidence that dark matter appears where normal matter does.’
Except, apparently, in the vicinity of the world’s ever expanding collection of increasingly sensitive dark matter detectors.”

The dark matter detectors you refer to — all of them — rely on three very specific assumptions:

  1. That dark matter has a substantially non-zero interaction cross-section with normal matter through either the weak or electromagnetic interactions,
  2. That dark matter is of a particular variety and a particular mass,
  3. And that the combination of the cross-section and scattering amplitude means we’ll have an event rate above the background of neutrinos, neutrons, cosmic rays and so on.
Image credit: Xenon-100 Collaboration (2012), via http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.5988. The lowest curve rules out WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle) cross-sections and dark matter masses for anything located above it.

Image credit: Xenon-100 Collaboration (2012), via http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.5988. The lowest curve rules out WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle) cross-sections and dark matter masses for anything located above it.

The fact that there’s a null result from all such detectors designed in this way likely tells us that whatever the cross-section of dark matter is, it’s below what these detectors can detect. It may indicate that dark matter isn’t the class of matter these detectors are looking for. The idea that dark matter is displaced by normal matter has no evidence for it, and is just another “let’s make an unmotivated assumption with no way to test it” (i.e., a bad idea) that we can’t rule out. It’s important to keep it in mind, but keep it waaaaay in the back of your mind, where it belongs.

The effect of El Niño on monthly temperature, where red indicates a boost and blue indicates a dampening (averaging over the full year gives the 0.09C figure). Image credit: Dr Thomas Cropper, University of Sheffield. Adapted from Foster & Rahmstorf (2011) using NASA Gistemp data up to 2015.

The effect of El Niño on monthly temperature, where red indicates a boost and blue indicates a dampening (averaging over the full year gives the 0.09C figure). Image credit: Dr Thomas Cropper, University of Sheffield. Adapted from Foster & Rahmstorf (2011) using NASA Gistemp data up to 2015.

From Denier on global warming and El Niño: “You seriously believe the El Niño conditions only contributed 0.1° C? Seriously?!?”

Well, yes, in the sense that one “believes” the conclusions that scientists who are experts in the field draw. According to the best reconstructions I’ve seen, the figure is 0.07 +/- 0.03° C, with the warming effects only really impacting the September/October temperatures and onwards. But that’s me “parroting” what the actual scientists said, and I consulted a number of those scientists when I wrote my article in the first place. They signed off on it and told me I had it correct, but if you doubt their scruples and their work, then your doubt will trickle down to my writings as well. According to NASA’s GISS, the mean influence of El Niño is 0.09° C for the 2015 year (within the errors of aggregate estimates), but based on how El Niño worked in 1983, 1987/8, and 1997/8, we can expect the El Niño contribution to be sustained and larger for the present year: 2016.

Large scale projection through the Illustris volume at z=0, centered on the most massive cluster, 15 Mpc/h deep. Shows dark matter density overlaid with the gas velocity field. Image credit: Illustris Collaboration / Illustris Simulation, via http://www.illustris-project.org/media/.

Large scale projection through the Illustris volume at z=0, centered on the most massive cluster, 15 Mpc/h deep. Shows dark matter density overlaid with the gas velocity field. Image credit: Illustris Collaboration / Illustris Simulation, via http://www.illustris-project.org/media/.

From Omega Centauri, dissatisfied with spherical heating from linear jets: “That was unsatisfying. The gas responds primarily because it get heated, and one would expect the heating would need to be spherically symmetric in order for the “explosion” to be spherically symmetric. Now I think it should be intuitively obvious that the jet will simply blast through the gas, so whatever else happens we have holes punched out by the jets. Then the problem becomes one of explaining why the rest of the energy is deposited in the gas in a roughly spherical manner.”

I want to show you a different simulation: one of a supernova conflagration event beginning from an off-axis point in the core.

Do you notice how it goes from a one-dimensional “jet” aligned on an axis to — from about 0:30 to 0:50 — subsuming the entire surface of the star? What you’re seeing is an example of heat transport, as propagated by gas and normal matter. Think about it as Huygens’ would have: you have a jet, and at every point along the way, it radiates energy spherically outward. Everything that sphere collides with radiates energy spherically outwards as well. Even if you start with the most aspherical initial conditions of all — a line — you wind up with a spherical distribution in the end.

Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Which is what we see in the X-ray and gamma-ray part of the spectrum, even around our own Milky Way!

Image credit: NASA/ESA/JHU/R.Sankrit & W.Blair, of an optical/IR/X-ray composite of the 1604 supernova remnant.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/JHU/R.Sankrit & W.Blair, of an optical/IR/X-ray composite of the 1604 supernova remnant.

From Denier on Kepler’s supernova(e): “For some reason I didn’t realize the star Kepler caught going supernova wasn’t in the Milky Way.”

That’s because there is a big difference between “Kepler’s supernova” above, which occurred in 1604 and was attributed to Johannes Kepler, the day’s top astronomer, and the supernova that Kepler (the spacecraft) spotted in its field of view.

What’s really amazing about this latter discovery is that it’s only because we were looking through a telescope, taking data continuously for point sources, and measuring the light coming from all of them that we were able to identify this supernova immediately. Supernovae can be incredibly bright — an absolute magnitude of -19 means an event a billion light-years away can rise to 18th magnitude, visible with a good amateur telescope from the ground — and Kepler saw two of them over its mission lifetime: one 700 million light years away and one 1.2 billion light years distant. The spectacular new discovery we get out of a wide-field survey like this is that we see a “flash” of the supernova shockwave for the first time!

Image credit: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel.

Image credit: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel.

We’ve never seen an initial flash like this, but what’s worth noting is that it gets an additional ~8 times brighter than this flash gets it to, which tells us that supernovae are practically instantaneous for the nuclear explosion, but when it comes to the light, they aren’t these instantaneous processes we think of. Pretty interesting!

Image credit: S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA); B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), of the protoplanetary disk around TW Hydrae. Annotations by E. Siegel.

Image credit: S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA); B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), of the protoplanetary disk around TW Hydrae. Annotations by E. Siegel.

From Michael Kelsey on the discovery and new measurement of the protoplanetary disk around TW Hydrae: “In addition to the ESO version (10 Mar 2016), the “as submitted” paper from 30 Mar 2016 is up on arXiv, http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.09352

The biggest takeaway from the paper — and anyone who wants to read it, it’s free and complete in the link Michael provided — is not that there’s an “Earth-like” planet in there, as many people have (erroneously) reported. The big thing you want to look for is gaps and empty spaces in the dusty disk around the star. In addition to the ones I’ve highlighted (which may be planets, planetesimals or merely illusive phantasms), there’s pretty good evidence for a number of features at ~6, 13, 23, 38 and 43 A.U., in addition to a definite lack of dust altogether below 1 A.U.

Image credit: S. Andrews et al. (2016), via http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.09352v1.pdf.

Image credit: S. Andrews et al. (2016), via http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.09352v1.pdf.

The empty spot may indicate a planet or many planets; it may indicate a rocky planet or a series of rocky planets or a series of super-Earths or a mix of rockies and super-Earths (but not gas giants; they would show up on their own). But the coolest thing that we learn from this is that planet-containing inner Solar Systems are common even from the earliest times! Now, it’s time to get to higher-resolution on this so we can find more of them farther away, and figure out what’s happening in here!

Image credit: Cosmography of the Local Universe/Cosmic Flows Project — Courtois, Helene M. et al. Astron.J. 146 (2013) 69 arXiv:1306.0091 [astro-ph.CO].

Image credit: Cosmography of the Local Universe/Cosmic Flows Project — Courtois, Helene M. et al. Astron.J. 146 (2013) 69 arXiv:1306.0091 [astro-ph.CO].

From See Noevo on how fast Earth moves through the Universe: “I guess the answer is: many different speeds.
The earth’s speed
– orbiting the sun,
– revolving in our galaxy,
– moving in the local groups,
– and inflating into a bigger universe.
What is our speed for the last?”

By “inflating into a bigger Universe” you clearly mean relative to the rest-frame of the cosmological expansion, which you clarified in a later comment. What’s odd about asking this is that every question you asked is answered in the article. But in case you missed it:

  • 30 km/s,
  • 220 km/s,
  • our Milky Way moves towards Andromeda (relatively) at 300 km/s,
  • our local group moves through space at a total of ~627 km/s,
  • and we move, all total, relative to the CMB at ~368 km/s.

Image credit: The pre-launch Planck Sky Model: a model of sky emission at submillimetre to centimetre wavelengths — Delabrouille, J. et al.Astron.Astrophys. 553 (2013) A96 arXiv:1207.3675 [astro-ph.CO].

Image credit: The pre-launch Planck Sky Model: a model of sky emission at submillimetre to centimetre wavelengths — Delabrouille, J. et al. Astron.Astrophys. 553 (2013) A96 arXiv:1207.3675 [astro-ph.CO].

The determination of the velocity of the local group requires measurements of all the other quantities in 3D space, by the way. They all have uncertainties, the largest being the uncertainty of the Sun’s motion around the galactic center, which is on the order of ~20-25 km/s. But the total figure, from the CMB, has an uncertainty of only ~2 km/s.

Image credit: The Millenium Simulation, V. Springel et al., of the cosmic web of dark matter and the large-scale structure it forms.

Image credit: The Millenium Simulation, V. Springel et al., of the cosmic web of dark matter and the large-scale structure it forms.

And finally, one more from our buddy See Noevo in the general category of misunderstood things about the Universe: “I understand that the *FLRW metric* assumes the universe is *isotropic.* If that’s so, it doesn’t make sense to me, because, obviously, the universe *does* look *different depending on where you are in the universe*.”

Yes, the FLRW metric does assume the Universe is isotropic.

No, isotropic does not mean “the Universe looks the same from all locations.” That’s what “homogeneous” means, which the FLRW metric also requires. Isotropic means the same in all directions.

But the Universe does not look different on large scales depending either on where you are or what direction you look in. The large-scale density contrast is tiny, on the order of ~0.003%.

The Universe does look different when you look back in time, but that is because of — wait for it — the fact that the Universe has only been around for a finite amount of time, and because given enough time and physical laws, physical systems evolve. So, See Noevo, i.e., see no evolution, I understand that you come at this from an ignorant viewpoint: without the knowledge to decide what’s correct and what’s incorrect. I (and many other commenters here, including Michael, whom you wrongly deride) am providing you with that information that you’re seeking, and it gives you the information you need to make those determinations for yourself. You can stick to your guns, but if you do, you move from the point of view of ignorance to one that has only ever been accurately described by the wise words of Dale Gribble.

Image credit: Busted Tees.

Image credit: Busted Tees, and King Of The Hill.

Do better than that. You know you can, I know you can, and everyone here knows you can. Come on; it’s time to take the years of information you’ve been provided, put them together and solve this puzzle for yourself.

Thanks for a great week, everyone, and I’ll see you back here tomorrow, where we’ll kick off with a spectacular exclusive: an interview with the executive director of LIGO!



Source: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2016/04/03/comments-of-the-week-104-from-black-hole-jets-to-our-motion-through-the-universe/

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