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 we look 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 to find out the answer.

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 backwards 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.

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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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Our planet, along with the rest of the solar system and some nearby stars, may be trapped inside a giant magnetic tunnel — and astronomers don’t know why. 

A tube of vast magnetized tendrils, 1,000 light-years long and invisible to the naked eye, may encircle the solar system, astronomers propose in a new paper. Jennifer West, an astronomer at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, made the proposal after an investigation into the North Polar Spur and the Fan Region — two of the brightest radio-emitting gas structures in our galactic neighborhood — revealed that the two structures might be linked even though they are located on different sides of the sky.

“If we were to look up in the sky, we would see this tunnel-like structure in just about every direction we looked — that is, if we had eyes that could see radio light,” West said in a statement. 

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The proposed giant tunnel is hundred of light-years wide, making it big enough to encompass Earth, our solar system, and even nearby stars. (Image credit: Eduard Muzhevskyi via Getty Images)

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A short update on the projected launch date of the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope came out of NASA on Monday, and it wasn’t exactly a heart-warming missive.

The large, space-based telescope’s “no earlier than” launch date will slip from December 18 to at least December 22 after an “incident” occurred during processing operations at the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. That is where the telescope will launch on an Ariane 5 rocket provided by the European Space Agency.

“Technicians were preparing to attach Webb to the launch vehicle adapter, which is used to integrate the observatory with the upper stage of the Ariane 5 rocket,” NASA said in a blog post. “A sudden, unplanned release of a clamp band—which secures Webb to the launch vehicle adapter—caused a vibration throughout the observatory.”

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Technician standing near some of the segments of the James Webb Space Telescope primary mirror.

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Physically speaking, our Universe seems uncannily perfect. It stands to reason that if it wasn’t, life as we know it – and planets, atoms, everything else really – wouldn’t exist.

Now, three physicists from the US, France, and Korea have put forward a new explanation for why life, the Universe, and everything in it has had such a prime opportunity to exist at all.

For some reason, the amount of energy – or more precisely, the mass it equates – and the Universe’s accelerating expansion are so neatly balanced, there’s been ample opportunity for a few interesting things to unfold over the past 13 billion years or so.

A few magnitudes either way, and the overwhelming gravity would have glued the expansion of spacetime together better than a mouthful of taffy… or been so weak, the rapidly expanding Universe would have left little of interest in its wake.   

Such an apparent near-perfect balance might be a consequence of something called fine-tuning, a process in physics where the features of a system necessarily match or cancel out with such precision. If it didn’t, the system just wouldn’t look the way it does.

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(Supoj Buranaprapapong/Moment/Getty Images

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The first-known interstellar object in our solar system, known as ‘Oumuamua, continues to defy scientific explanation. Now, one of the latest explanations for what the cigar-shaped interloper is made of — a “nitrogen iceberg” — has also been shot down. 

In a recent attempt to explain ‘Oumuamua, researchers described it as a nitrogen iceberg. But astrophysicists at Harvard say that’s impossible, and explain why in a new paper published Nov. 5 in the journal New Astronomy. 

In October 2017, when astronomers first caught sight of ‘Oumuamua zipping through our solar system, it was making its exit at nearly 57,000 mph (92,000 km/h) — way too fast to have originated in our solar system. 

As the flat, wonky-shaped object passed the sun, tumbling end-over-end, it accelerated at a pace that couldn’t be explained by the gravitational pull of the sun. And astronomers couldn’t find any visible evidence of a propellant, such as water vapor or gases escaping the object and thrusting it forward. 

Not only are scientists unsure what propelled ‘Oumuamua on its slingshot visit into and out of our solar system, they also don’t know what it is made of. 

But in March, Arizona State University astrophysicists Alan Jackson and Steven Desch said they had figured it out. The team published two papers announcing that ‘Oumuamua was most likely a chunk of nitrogen ice that popped off a Pluto-like planet somewhere outside our solar system, Live Science previously reported. 

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The interloper ‘Oumuamua continues to puzzle astronomers and astrophysicists. (Image credit: Bjorn Bakstad via Getty Images)

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La Niña will be joining us for the winter again, according to federal forecasters.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center released its official winter outlook on Thursday and confirmed that La Niña conditions will be in place from December to February.

It’s not a total surprise: NOAA announced earlier this month that La Niña conditions had already developed, with an 87% chance they would remain in place during that three-month period. Now it’s forecasting wetter-than-average conditions across portions of the northern U.S., namely the Pacific Northwest, northern Rockies, Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and western Alaska.

La Niña (translated from Spanish as “little girl”) is not a storm, but a climate pattern that occurs in the Pacific Ocean every few years and can impact weather around the world.

The U.S. is expected to feel its effects on temperature and precipitation, which could, in turn, have consequences for things such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and droughts.

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