James' World 2

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Where did all this come from? In every direction we care to observe, we find stars, galaxies, clouds of gas and dust, tenuous plasmas, and radiation spanning the gamut of wavelengths: from radio to infrared to visible light to gamma rays. No matter where or how we look at the universe, it’s full of matter and energy absolutely everywhere and at all times. And yet, it’s only natural to assume that it all came from somewhere. If you want to know the answer to the biggest question of all — the question of our cosmic origins — you have to pose the question to the universe itself, and listen to what it tells you.

Today, the universe as we see it is expanding, rarifying (getting less dense), and cooling. Although it’s tempting to simply extrapolate forward in time, when things will be even larger, less dense, and cooler, the laws of physics allow us to extrapolate backward just as easily. Long ago, the universe was smaller, denser, and hotter. How far back can we take this extrapolation? Mathematically, it’s tempting to go as far as possible: all the way back to infinitesimal sizes and infinite densities and temperatures, or what we know as a singularity. This idea, of a singular beginning to space, time, and the universe, was long known as the Big Bang.

But physically, when we looked closely enough, we found that the universe told a different story. Here’s how we know the Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe anymore.

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The modern cosmic picture of our universe’s history begins not with a singularity that we identify with the Big Bang, but rather with a period of cosmic inflation that stretches the universe to enormous scales, with uniform properties and spatial flatness. The end of inflation signifies the onset of the hot Big Bang. (Credit: Nicole Rager Fuller/National Science Foundation)

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Some of the most important decisions you will make in your lifetime will occur while you feel stressed and anxious. From medical decisions to financial and professional ones, we are often required to weigh up information under stressful conditions. Take for example expectant parents who need to make a series of important choices during pregnancy and labor – when many feel stressed. Do we become better or worse at processing and using information under such circumstances?

In 2018, my colleague Neil Garrett, now at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute in New Jersey, and I ventured from the safety of our lab to fire stations in the state of Colorado to investigate how the mind operates under high stress. Firefighters’ workdays vary quite a bit. Some days are pretty relaxed; they’ll spend part of their time washing the truck, cleaning equipment, cooking meals, and reading. Other days can be hectic, with numerous life-threatening incidents to attend to; they’ll enter burning homes to rescue trapped residents, and assist with medical emergencies. These ups and downs presented the perfect setting for an experiment on how people’s ability to use information changes when they feel under pressure.

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Bad News

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AcrossAcross China and Western Europe in July, the amount of rain that might typically fall over several months to a year came down within a matter of days, triggering floods that swept entire homes off their foundations. In June, the usually mild regions of Southwest Canada and the US’s Pacific Northwest saw temperatures that rivaled highs in California’s Death Valley desert. The severe heat was enough to buckle roads and melt power cables.

Yesterday, a landmark United Nations report helped put those kinds of extreme events into context. By burning fossil fuels and releasing planet-heating greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, humans are fueling more dangerous weather. Researchers have been able to connect the dots between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change for decades. But the new report showcases a big leap forward in climate science: being able to tie the climate crisis directly to extreme weather events like the June heatwave, which would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change according to recent studies.

The Verge spoke with Alex Ruane, one of the authors of the new report and a research physical scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He walks us through the phenomena that’s supercharging extreme weather events. And he explains why scientists have gotten so much better at seeing the “human footprint” in each weather disaster.

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A view of the Houston skyline after heavy rains broke during the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey August 29, 2017. Harvey, swirling for days off Texas and Louisiana, dumped more than 49 inches (124.5 centimeters) of rain on the region.Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

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If you’ve ever gazed at a  model of the solar system, you’ve likely noticed that the sun, planets, moons and asteroids sit roughly on the same plane. But why is that?

To answer this question, we have to travel to the very beginning of the solar system, about 4.5 billion years ago.

Back then, the solar system was just a massive, spinning cloud of dust and gas, Nader Haghighipour, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, told Live Science. That massive cloud measured 12,000 astronomical units (AU) across; 1 AU is the average distance between Earth and the sun, or about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). That cloud became so big, that even though it was just filled with dust and gas molecules, the cloud itself started to collapse and shrink under its own mass, Haghighipour said.

As the spinning cloud of dust and gas started to collapse, it also flattened. Imagine a pizza maker throwing a spinning slab of dough into the air. As it spins, the dough expands but becomes increasingly thin and flat. That’s what happened to the very early solar system.

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Artwork showing the planets orbiting the sun (from inner to outer): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. (Image credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library via Getty Images)

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Exploring strange new worlds. Understanding the origins of the universe. Searching for life in the galaxy. These are not the plot of a new science fiction movie, but the mission objectives of the James Webb Space Telescope, the long-awaited successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA is building and launching the Webb in partnership with the European Space Agency and Canada.

The launch, which will propel the Webb to nearly a million miles away, is now scheduled for December 18, 2021. When it fully deploys in space, the Webb will usher in a new age of astronomy, scientists say, and show humanity things it has never seen before.

“The Webb represents the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of astronomy,” says Sara Seager, a planetary scientist, and astrophysicist at MIT. “We’ve been waiting for this a very long time.”

Scientists started thinking about a follow-up even before the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990. After more than three decades in space, it’s unclear how much longer this boundary-breaking satellite will be able to scan and photograph the universe.

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The James Webb Space telescope under construction.NASA/Desiree Stover

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Black holes are great at sucking up matter. So great, in fact, that not even light can escape their grasp (hence the name).

But given their talent for consumption, why don’t black holes just keep expanding and expanding and simply swallow the Universe? In 2018, one of the world’s top physicists came up with a dazzling explanation.

Conveniently, the idea could also unite the two biggest theories in all of physics.

The researcher behind this explanation is none other than Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind, also known as one of the fathers of string theory.

He gave his two cents on the paradox in a series of papers, which basically suggest that black holes expand by increasing in complexity inwardly – a feature we just don’t see connected while watching from afar.

In other words, they expand in, not out. 

Weirder still, this hypothesis might have a parallel in the expansion of our own Universe, which also seems to be growing in a counterintuitive way.

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(GM Stock Films/iStock)

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