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

Those enigmatic black holes that lead to places unknown may not be what we thought they were – or at least that’s what some scientists think.

Since first proposed in 1784 by John Mitchell and their prediction in 1915 by Einstein’s theory of general relativity, evidence supporting the idea of black holes has continued to be found.

Described as infinitely dense points in space time – where not even light can escape – the presence of a black hole is thus inferred from the gravitational effects on the surrounding material. But what if something else – other than a black hole – could produce these same effects?

Such a question was addressed in two recent papers by a team of scientists at the University of Hawaii. They consider the consequences of replacing all black holes with a class of objects with ‘dark energy’ interiors known as Generic Objects of Dark...

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

Image from ESA

Stars were thought to be the principal and most important component for life to thrive… till now. Researchers from Harvard university explain that radiation coming from Black holes could do the same!

Habitable zones in outer space have been defined with respect to stars (suns), as regions where the stars radiation and energy are suitable for emergence of life. Closer or farther away from this source of energy, temperature would be too cold or too hot in order for liquid water to exist in a planet´s surface. The zones were liquid water and biological opportunity can happen are known as “Goldilocks zone”.

A new study published in The Astrophysical Journal have found such zones around supermassive black holes as well. This is quite surprising, since the surroundings of a black hole, consisting on swirling disks of gas and dust called Active Galactic Nuclei -AGN-, emit...

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 by Johanna Deinert, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist

A study published late September depicts the mean rotation rate of the Sun as a function of velocity vs. radius at different latitudes. The subsurface boundary shear and the angular velocity gradient gives rise to a latitudinal migration of a toroidal field dynamic with a cycle of 22 Years, and the magnetic field as a primary driver of torsional oscillations on the surface.

”All manifestations of solar activity, from spectral irradiance variations to solar storms and geomagnetic disturbances, are caused by the magnetic fields generated by a dynamo mechanism operating in the convection zone deep below the visible surface of the Sun. Despite substantial modeling and simulation efforts, our understanding of how the magnetic field is generated, transported to the surface and forms the solar activity cycles is very poor." – Alexander G. Kosovichev and Valery V. Pipin

Torsional...

^{Image Via NASA/FQtQ Jolene Creighton}

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

This could be the first time you have heard about a white hole (WH). Meanwhile, we have been hearing for quite some time about “black holes” (BH) as regions in outer space where nothing — not even light — could escape. Such cosmological entities, roughly represented by a singularity or point of infinite energy/mass/information density and an event horizon defining the “size” of the BH, are increasingly subjects of study. In addition, the possibility of detecting gravitational signatures as the ones detected two years ago, coming allegedly from the collision and merging of two black holes, have increased their interest even more. So, what about WH?

The obscure regions of space called BH have, at least theoretically, a counterpart mathematical description, which would imply an opposite behavior; a region of space where nothing — not...

Gamma-ray bursts are some of the highest-energy explosions ever detected, shining brighter than a million trillion times the output of Earth's sun, according to NASA.

A new study, published Aug. 13 in The Astrophysical Journal, has found that high-energy black hole gamma-ray bursts are time-reversed, meaning the brilliant light wave is spit out one way and then sent out again in the opposite order.

It is titled “Smoke and Mirrors,” but a new discovery from College of Charleston astrophysicist Jon Hakkila may be anything but smoke and mirrors.

Hakkila and student researchers have discovered a peculiarity in the light curves of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) that may provide a breakthrough in understanding the conditions that produce these events. GRBs are the intrinsically brightest explosions known in the universe. They last from seconds to minutes, and originate during the formation of a black hole accompanying a beamed supernova or...

Article by Rafi Letzer

We are not living in the first universe. There were other universes, in other eons, before ours, a group of physicists has said. Like ours, these universes were full of black holes. And we can detect traces of those long-dead black holes in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — the radioactive remnant of our universe's violent birth.

At least, that's the somewhat eccentric view of the group of theorists, including the prominent Oxford University mathematical physicist Roger Penrose (also an important Stephen Hawking collaborator). Penrose and his acolytes argue for a modified version of the Big Bang.

In Penrose and similarly-inclined physicists' history of space and time (which they call conformal cyclic cosmology, or CCC), universes bubble up, expand and die in sequence, with black holes from each leaving traces in the universes that follow. And in a new paper released Aug. 6 in the preprint journal arXiv—apparent...

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

Cosmic rays can mean any high energy from the cosmos and were only referred to as rays for historical reasons – in that they thought cosmic rays were electromagnetic radiation. However generally cosmic rays refer to high energy particles with mass whereas high energy in the form of gamma rays and/or X-rays are photons. These cosmic particles were discovered in 1912 by Victor Hess when he ascended to 5300 meters above sea level in a hot air balloon and detected significantly increased levels of ionization in the atmosphere.

Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) are extremely energetic sub-atomic particles with energies of the order 100 PeV (that is 100,000 trillion electron volts). Their origin has long remained a mystery. However, an intriguing coincidence in the energy generation rates of UHECRs, cosmic neutrinos and gamma rays are comparable – indicating a unified picture....

Article by William Brown, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist

It is often assumed that a structure’s surface can be appropriately represented as a two-dimensional area, completely flat and devoid of any depth. However, in reality, two-dimensional surfaces do not exist in nature, if zoomed in sufficiently even the most seemingly flat surface has 3-dimensional structure. This can pose a problem when physics that have been formulated with two-dimensions are re-examined using a more realistic 3D model.

Just such a situation arose when astronomer Martin Asplund forewent the usual 2D model of the Sun’s surface, and instead used a supercomputer to model it as 3-dimensional surface. Asplund was hoping to formulate a more accurate model for analyzing spectral and seismological data to better understand the Sun’s interior.

Since the interior cannot be directly observed, sound and light emissions emanating from the Sun’s surface are a window into the...