^{By Dr. Inés Urdaneta / Physicist at Resonance Science Foundation}

After a two years analysis on the emission spectra from a 2016 X-ray transient outburst in the black hole system U4 1630-47, obtained by three different independent space missions; Chandra/HEG, AstroSat and MAXI, the leader of the project Dr. Mayukh Pahari and collaborators could determine the spinning and mass of the BH. The estimated spinning rate is 92-95% the speed of light, with a mass of 5-10 M (million solar masses).

Fig 1 below shows the initial signals detected by the MAXI missions. These spectra are further analyzed, decomposed and fitted in order to obtain the final results published here.

Fig.1: 2016 X-ray outburst of 4U 1630–47 as observed by MAXI and Swift/BAT.

With the independent modeling of the broadband data spectra obtained by the three missions, and using the Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations on fitted spectral parameters, they find a range of the black hole spin parameter depicted...

By Dr. Amira Val Baker, Resonance Science Foundation Astrophysicist

The expansion of the universe, as characterized by the Hubble constant, now has a new variable to add to the equation – the light from quasars!

The Hubble constant has long been a topic of debate with early measurements implying values of 625 km/s/Mpc and 500 km/s/Mpc. The latter value was found in 1928, by Edwin Hubble, through his observational studies of the recession velocities of galaxies. Hubble found that the recession velocity of galaxies increased with increasing distance at a proportional rate, now known as the Hubble constant. Since then, the techniques for determining the Hubble constant have undergone much improvement, yet a discrepancy still exists between the different measuring techniques.

The recession velocities of standard candles in the form of Supernovae Type 1a, give a value of 73.48 km/s/Mpc with 2.3% precision. Read more here  and here. However, the alternative method for measuring...

By Dr. Amira Val Baker, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist

The Earth’s magnetic field appears to be shifting and geologists don’t know why.

Like most spinning systems, such as stars and planets, the Earth’s magnetic field is assumed to be generated through the motion of electrically conducting fluids – such as a liquid iron core as is thought to be the case for the Earth. All being well, in a perfect idealized ‘physics’ world, the magnetic field would align with the axis of spin. However, the reality is that the Earth’s magnetic field is aligned at an 11-degree angle to the spin axis, hovering somewhere over Canada. The exact location is variable and over the last 180 years the magnetic north pole has been migrating northwestward with movements of up to 25 miles per year.

Variation of the poles is normal and, in some cases, can result in complete reversal of the poles. This can be seen in the magnetic fingerprints stored in...

Article by Dr. Olivier Alirol, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist

Black Holes are the most powerful objects known in the Universe. And yet their physic remains to be discovered. For example, collapsing matter may not disappear at their center. It could bounce inside and, energy and information that fell into the black hole could emerge from the white hole. Hawking suggested once using these objects as a worldwide power plant. “A mountain-sized black hole would give off X-rays and gamma rays at a rate of about 10 million megawatts, enough to power the world’s electricity supply. It wouldn’t be easy, however, to harness a mini black hole. You couldn’t keep it in a power station, because it would drop through the floor and end up at the center of the Earth.” Black Holes are surprising singularities which are windows onto physics beyond Einstein and there is still no complete answers on how they really work.

One important question is about how...

Image from original paper: it depicts the virtual simulation of Sag. A* for an observer placed very close to it.

^{Article by: Dr. Inés Urdaneta, Physicist at Resonance Science Foundation}

As mentioned in a previous article, the Event Horizon Telescope is an international collaboration aiming to obtain the first real image of the event horizon (EH) of a black hole using a set of antennas scattered around the globe. EHT has been monitoring and collecting data from the supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) at the core of the Milky Way galaxy, known as Sagittarius A*, and results are expected very soon, probably 2019.

Now, for the first time, the virtual reality simulation of Sagittarius A* has been achieved by a group of scientists at Radbound University and collaborators from the Institute of theoretical Physics, in Germany, and the Mullard Space Science laboratory, at the University College London. In their article “Observing Supermassive Black Holes in virtual...

Article by Dr. Amira Val Baker, Astrophysicist, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist

Image ©Pearson Education

Galactic halos – comprising of the theorized dark matter halo– show an interesting characteristic in the constant nature of their volume density.

Galaxies come in all shapes and sizes with the most common and well-studied being similar to our Milky way galaxy and known as disc or spiral galaxies. A well-known problem in physics is the observed rotation velocities of stars with respect to the distance from their galactic centre. These rotation curves, as they are known, intriguingly do not appear as expected – that is they appear flat instead of falling off and decreasing with distance. Read more here.

In the cold dark matter model of the universe these flat rotation curves are attributed to dark matter, hence the name ‘dark matter’ haloes.

In an effort to better understand this, scientists have been comparing the...

^{By Dr. Inés Urdaneta / Physicist at Resonance Science Foundation}

Up to 2016, the biggest telescopes were composed of an array of antennas located in a particular site, like the one at Atacama Desert, in Chile. called ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/ Submillimeter Array). Its construction dates from 2004 and consists of sixty-six 8-to-12-meter diameter antennas aiming to receive millimeter wavelengths. Among others things, ALMA is capable of performing deep space detections, what allows to obtain information about the first stars and galaxies that emerged billions of years ago at huge distances from us. Due to the universe expansion, most of these objects’ emissions have stretched out to the millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths.

Using a technique known as interferometry – or interference pattern between the signals received by each antenna, to recompose a complete unique image- the 66 antennas at ALMA work together as though they were a single...

Article by Dr. Amira Val Baker, Astrophysicist, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist

A star that formed at the time of the early universe has just been identified, and its unique characteristics may reveal new insights to star formation.

Stars are theorized to have formed in the collapsing dust of a nebulae, with the star forming in the centre of rotation and the planets forming in the corresponding protostellar disk. It has also been hypothesized that low-mass stars and brown dwarfs could also be formed from gravitational instabilities in the extended protostellar disc. Computer simulations to explore this idea suggest such a possibility. However, as yet they have been unable to run the simulations long enough to verify that the fragments would survive disk migration. Now the discovery of a very old star may just be able to prove that they would survive.

In a paper recently published in the Astrophysical Journal, a team led by Kevin Schlaufman report the discovery of a...

Article by Dr. Amira Val Baker, Astrophysicist, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist

Planet formation is not yet understood and to complicate matters Mercury is an anomaly – now a new ambitious mission hopes to resolve the mysteries and shed light on planet formation.

Planets and stars are theorized to have formed in the collapsing dust of a nebulae, with the star forming in the centre of rotation and the planets forming in the corresponding disk. The planetary characteristics are thus thought to be dependent on their size and distance from the central star. For example, gaseous planets – such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – are believed to have first formed as rocky planets and it was their greater size and position that allowed them to accrete and maintain a gaseous envelope.

However, although not completely understood (read more here), this understanding is based on the observed and inferred characteristics of the planets. However,...

by Dr. Olivier Alirol, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist

Identifying the shape of massive astronomical object is not a simple task. Even with recent observations of gravitational waves the mass and angular momentum of the object remain known with large uncertainty. Moreover, it exists exotic objects, as wormholes who can mimic the shape of black holes for example. The gravitational spectrum of wormholes has a wide range of interpretations. A current challenge addressed by researcher R. A. Konoplya consists of mathematically describing wormholes in order to be able to eventually identify them in the space.

According to current theory a wormhole is a theoretical passage through space-time that could create shortcuts in the universe. The original wormhole solution was discovered by Einstein and Rosen (ER) in 1935 and later John Wheeler has shown their importance in quantum gravity. It was then discovered that it was possible to construct “traversable” wormhole...