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Frenetic star-forming activity in the early Universe is linked to the most massive galaxies in today's cosmos, new research suggests. This "starbursting" activity when the Universe was just a few billion years old appears to have been clamped off by the growth of supermassive black holes. An international team gathered hints of the mysterious "dark matter" in early galaxies to confirm the link. The findings appear in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. ... Using the 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope in Chile, an international team led by Ryan Hickox of Dartmouth College studied the way distant galaxies from...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Scientists have found the biggest black holes known to exist — each one 10 billion times the size of our sun. A team led by an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley discovered the two gigantic black holes in clusters of galaxies 300 million light years away. That's relatively close on the galactic scale.

Parma, Italy – Effective today, the Earth’s destruction by mankind is eminent. That danger is coming directly from one of the top ten ways of destroying the Earth, getting sucked into a giant black hole. The method is problematic, but possible, considering the rapid increase in technology. NASA says that black holes are “evolutionary endpoints of stars at least 10 to 15 times as massive as the Sun.” According to NASA, black holes are formed when a star undergoes a supernova explosion.

If the Universe expands and contracts in cycles of Big Bangs and Crunches, some black holes may survive from one era to the next, according to a new analysis Black holes are regions of space in which gravity is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light. Conventionally, black holes form during a gravitational collapse, after a large supernova for example. But there is another class of objects called primordial black holes that cosmologists think must have formed in a different way. These are essentially leftovers from the hugely dense ball of stuff from which the universe expanded, some...

Images from NASA's Swift satellite were combined in this UV/optical/X-ray view of the explosion, which is known as GRB 110328A. The blast was detected in X-rays, which were collected on March 28. CREDIT: NASA/Swift/Stefan ImmlerA huge, powerful star explosion detonated in deep space last week — an ultra-bright conflagaration that has astronomers scratching their heads over exactly how it happened. The explosion may be the death cry of a star as it was ripped apart by a black hole, scientists said. High-energy radiation continues to brighten and fade from the March 28 blast's location, about 3.8 billion light-years from Earth...

This talk by Professor Hawking is a unique opportunity to see him in person and be immersed in his mind’s world. Stephen Hawking will give a free talk entitled “My Brief History” on Tuesday, January 18, at 8:00 p.m. in Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium. Stephen Hawking is the Director of Research in the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. Professor Hawking has given the world insights into the birth of the universe, the deaths of black holes, and the future of the human race. His worldwide bestseller A Brief...

The scientist who came up with a legendary particle that has haunted physicists for a generation said he was confident that a £4.4 billion quest to find if it really exists will pay off within a year. **Prof Peter Higgs profile **The Big Bang: atom-smashing could uncover truth **'Big Bang' machine could destroy the planet, says lawsuit There is a palpable rise in tension among scientists worldwide as they await the start in July of a vast new atom smasher at CERN, the international nuclear laboratory outside Geneva, which will radically reshape our view of the universe when it goes...

British scientist Peter Higgs, whose work is the cornerstone of modern physics, said Monday he is putting champagne on ice in the hope a new experiment confirms his theories on how the universe works. Higgs, a veteran professor at Edinburgh University, told journalists in a rare interview that he hopes a vast experiment in the tunnels deep underground the CERN laboratory on the Franco-Swiss border could finally prove the existence of an elusive and unstable particle to which he has lent his name. The so-called "Higgs Boson" has been dubbed the 'God Particle' because so many have searched for it...

European particle physics laboratory CERN is set to launch its gigantic experiment which hopes to throw light on the origins of the universe within a month, the laboratory's head said Tuesday. If things go according to plan, the greatest experiment in the history of particle physics could unveil a sub-atomic component, the Higgs Boson, known as "the God Particle." The "Higgs," named after the eminent British physicist, Peter Higgs, who first proposed it in 1964, would fill a gaping hole in the benchmark theory for understanding the physical cosmos. Other work on the so-called Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could explain...

Sounds set to be made by the subatomic ‘God’ particle at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have been simulated by scientists aiming to make the £6bn experiment more accessible. Finding the Higgs boson – also known as the God particle – is the primary aim of the LHC experiment because it will provide an insight into the nature of all matter. It is hoped the subatomic particle will emerge from the 27km circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border where beams of proton particles are being smashed together. LHC Sound, a collaboration of particle physicists, musicians and artists in London, has...

More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang. Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter...

  MEDIA CONTACT: Jonathan Sherwood (585) 273-4726   June 9, 2004 Top Quark Measurements Give ?God Particle? New Lease on Life Researchers from the University of Rochester have helped measure the elusive top quark with unparalleled precision, and the surprising results affect everything from the Higgs boson, nicknamed the ?God particle,? to the makeup of the dark matter that comprises 90 percent of the universe. The scientists developed a new method to analyze data from particle accelerator collisions at Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory, which is far more accurate than previous methods and has the potential to change the dynamics...

"Recent results from the Dzero experiment at the Tevatron particle accelerator suggest that those looking for a single Higgs boson particle should be looking for five particles, and the data gathered may point to new laws beyond the Standard Model. 'The DZero results showed much more significant "asymmetry" of matter and anti-matter — beyond what could be explained by the Standard Model. Bogdan Dobrescu, Adam Martin and Patrick J Fox from Fermilab say this large asymmetry effect can be accounted for by the existence of multiple Higgs bosons. They say the data point to five Higgs bosons with similar masses...

<p>Physicists from all over the world are racing to prove the existence of a particle that's surmised to be at the heart of the matter. Literally.</p> <p>Dubbed the "God particle" by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman, the Higgs boson is a controversial particle believed to bestow mass on all other particles.</p>

5 Things You Need to Know About the Large Hadron Collider Now Study up with new mysteries from the celebrity particle collider before it doesn't destroy the world on Wednesday, then talk physics with the interactive chat widget below—and stay tuned for on-the-scene reporting in the morning! A a large dipole magnet is lowered into the tunnel to complete the basic installation of the more than 1700 magnets that make up the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which measures 27 km in circumference. The largest particle accelerator in history will take another step on Wednesday toward living up to its own...

The man behind the world’s biggest scientific experiment, which critics claim could cause the end of the world, is a Welsh miner’s son who has admitted blowing things up as a child. Dr Lyn Evans, who has been dubbed Evans the Atom, will this week switch on a giant particle accelerator designed to unlock the secrets of the Big Bang. But the 63-year-old physicist revealed yesterday that his passion for science was fuelled by the relatively small bangs he had created with his chemistry set at his council house in Aberdare in the Welsh valleys.

GENEVA (Reuters) - British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago. Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson," which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year."The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told...

The "standard model" of physics views particles as infinitesimal points, some of which carry basic forces. In spite of the fact that it fails to include gravity and becomes gibberish at high energies, the time-tested theory is the best tool scientists have for explaining physics. "You hear people complain about how good the standard model is," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago. "It's an incomplete model, and yet we can't find flaws in it." Turner explained that discovering a mass-inducing particle, called the Higgs boson, remains the next big test for the standard model. If discovered,...

For anyone not initially aware, The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is a particle accelerator located along the French/Swiss Border, being the Largest Man-made machine ever (also the most expensive), it's biggest item for debate has been it's potential risk (even with a low liklihood for such events, catastrophic risk is still there). The risk to Put it mildly ranges anywhere from Miniature Black Hole creation(which broken down comes down to the verity of Hawking Radiation, and estimated accretion rates, both based purely from theory), The creation of matter destroying strange matter with a positive charge, or a myriad of other...

Atlas holds key to scientists' map of Universe By Mark Henderson A vast cavern is the stage for tests to find the 'God particle' SCIENTISTS have taken a step closer to finding the “God particle” that is thought to shape the Universe. In a concrete cavern 130ft deep and bigger than the nave of Canterbury Cathedral, they will mimic the high-energy conditions that existed fractions of a second after the Big Bang to study a beam of energy a quarter of the thickness of a human hair. The vast Atlas cavern, which was completed last week at Cern, the European...

Could the elusive Higgs boson finally be in sight? Earlier this summer, physicist Tommaso Dorigo of the University of Padua wrote about talk of a tentative hint of the Higgs at the Tevatron, a particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. "It reached my ear, from two different, possibly independent sources, that an experiment at the Tevatron is about to release some evidence of a light Higgs boson signal. Some say a three-sigma effect, others do not make explicit claims but talk of a unexpected result," wrote Dorigo. The blog post was low on detail but...

Initial results from high-energy proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider offer first glimpse of physics at new energy frontier.In December, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest particle accelerator, shattered the world record for highest energy particle collisions. This week, team led by researchers from MIT, CERN and the KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics in Budapest, Hungary, completed work on the first scientific paper analyzing the results of those collisions. Its findings show that the collisions produced an unexpectedly high number of particles called mesons — a factor that will have to be taken into account...

The CMS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has completed a search for microscopic black holes produced in high-energy proton-proton collisions. No evidence for their production was found and their production has been excluded up to a black hole mass of 3.5-4.5 TeV (1012 electron volts) in a variety of theoretical models. Microscopic black holes are predicted to exist in some theoretical models that attempt to unify General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics by postulating the existence of extra “curled-up” dimensions, in addition to the three familiar spatial dimensions. At the high energies of the Large Hadron Collider, such theories...

The science blog Cosmic Variance has a great rundown of what the LHC could find. At the top of this list is the Higgs boson, which is the only particle in the Standard Model (the theory that describes the fundamental interactions between the particles that make up all matter), that hasn't yet been detected. The site thinks there is a 95 percent chance the LHC finds this particle, and that could lead to a much better understanding of how our universe works. Other notable possibilities on Cosmic Variance's list include finding extra dimensions (these could be so-called "warped" hidden dimensions...

Enormous black holes, some of the most powerful sources of radiation in the universe, apparently switch on after galaxies collide, researchers have found. The centers of as many as a tenth of all galaxies generate more energy than can be explained by stars, with some of these "active galactic nuclei" releasing more radiation than the entire Milky Way galaxy combined, but from a space no larger than our solar system. Astronomers suspect this energy is released when matter falls into giant, supermassive black holes that are up to billions of times the mass of our sun at these galaxies'...

It is said that you can’t debate the insane. That must have been Hallmark’s strategy. After three years on the market, the greeting card giant Hallmark quickly pulled a graduation card after half-baked claims were made by the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP that the card is racist. Starring the Hallmark-designed characters Hoops and Yoyo, the controversial card contains a small speaker from which the cartoon cat and rabbit exclaim: “This graduate is going to run the world, run the universe and run everything after that. Yeah, whatever that is. And you black holes? You’re so ominous.” A few...

Astronomers have detected the deepest note ever generated in the cosmos, a B-flat flying through space like a ripple on an invisible pond. No human will actually hear the note, because it is 57 octaves below the keys in the middle of a piano. The detection was made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and announced at a press conference today. The note strikes an important chord with astronomers, who say it may help them understand how the universe's largest structures, called galaxy clusters, evolve. The sound waves appear to be heating gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster, some 250 million...

After 20 years in the making, the first physics results have come out of CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Physicists from the University of Birmingham played a key role in analyzing these collisions and producing the first results from the 27 km circular atom smasher near Geneva.

Enlarge ImageBoom! After being hit with laser beams, a small plastic pellet (sunlike object) emits x-rays, some of which bombard a pellet of silicon (blue and purple). Credit: Adapted from S. Fujioka et al., Nature Physics, Advance Online Publication A team of researchers has created conditions analogous to those found outside of a black hole by blasting a plastic pellet with high-energy laser beams. The advance should sharpen insights into the behavior of matter and energy in extreme conditions. Astronomers can't observe black holes directly because their immense gravity won't let light escape. Instead, they have focused on what...

IT IS the ultimate cosmic villain: space and time come to an abrupt end in its presence and the laws of physics break down. Now it seems a "naked" black hole may yet emerge in our universe, after spinning away its event horizon.

Enlarge ImageOutlier. Astronomers think they have found an intermediate-mass black hole (bright blue object) just outside a distant galaxy. Credit: Heidi Sagerud Heavyweight and lightweight black holes abound in the universe, but nobody has detected a middleweight--and some scientists argue they don't exist. Now, astronomers say they have found the first conclusive evidence for one of these elusive objects at the fringe of a distant galaxy. Estimated to be at least 500 times more massive than the sun, the discovery could plug a large gap in the cosmic menagerie, though it leaves unanswered questions about this type of black...

(PhysOrg.com) -- A pair of astronomers from Texas and Germany have used a telescope at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory together with Hubble Space Telescope and many other telescopes around the world to uncover new evidence that the largest, most massive galaxies in the universe and the supermassive black holes at their hearts grew together over time."They evolved in lockstep," said The University of Texas at Austin's John Kormendy, who co-authored the research with Ralf Bender of Germany's Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and Ludwig Maximilians University Observatory. The results are puiblished in this week's issue of Astrophysical...

Still worried that the Large Hadron Collider will create a black hole that will destroy the Earth when it's finally switched on this summer? Um, well, you may have a point. Three physicists have reexamined the math surrounding the creation of microscopic black holes in the Switzerland-based LHC, the world's largest particle collider, and determined that they won't simply evaporate in a millisecond as had previously been predicted. Rather, Roberto Casadio of the University of Bologna in Italy and Sergio Fabi and Benjamin Harms of the University of Alabama say mini black holes could exist for much longer — perhaps...

A simulated Black Hole with the Milky Way in the backgroundThere is a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy, a study has confirmed. German astronomers tracked the movement of 28 stars circling the centre of the Milky Way, using the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The black hole is four million times heavier than our Sun, according to the paper in The Astrophysical Journal. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so great that nothing - including light - can escape them. According to Dr Robert Massy, of the Royal Astronomical Society, the results suggest that galaxies...

ST. LOUIS — As if in a cosmic hug, the spiral arms of some galaxies wrap around themselves more tightly than others. The key to the bear hug: Galaxies holding heftier black holes at their centers also have more tightly wound spiral arms, an astronomer announced today. The finding gives astronomers a way to weigh so-called supermassive black holes, which can have masses of millions to billions that of the sun, and are thought to reside at the centers of galaxies. "This is a really easy way to determine the masses of these super-massive black holes at the centers of...

CHICAGO (AFP) - Hundreds of rogue black holes may be roaming around the Milky Way waiting to engulf stars and planets that cross their path, US astronomers said Wednesday. The astronomers believe these "intermediate mass" black holes are invisible except in rare circumstances and have been spawned by mergers of black holes within globular clusters -- swarms of stars held together by their mutual gravity. These black holes are unlikely to pose a threat to Earth, but may engulf nebulae, stars and planets that stray into their paths, the researchers said. "These rogue black holes are extremely unlikely to do...

Black holes are weird. Well, duh, right? But they do something that surprises most people: besides hoovering down almost everything nearby, they can also eject material as well. And by eject, I mean send it out screaming at nearly the speed of light and heated to a bazillion degrees. Picture from Chandra of the active galaxy pair 3C321 The image above is from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and it’s all about this scary scenario. Let’s take a walk down the gravity well, shall we? Basically, as matter swirls down into the maw of the hole, it forms a flattened disk...

Black holes often are thought of as just endless pits in space and time that destroy everything they pull toward them. But new findings confirm the reverse is true, too: Black holes can drive extraordinarily powerful winds that push out and force star formation and shape the fate of a galaxy. Supermassive black holes are suspected to lurk in the hearts of many—if not all—large galaxies. These holes drag gas inward, which accrues in rapidly spinning, glowing disks. Astronomers have long thought that such "accretion disks" give off mighty winds that shape the host galaxies, profoundly influencing how they grow....

Fears over factoids Recent TV programmes have claimed that the Earth could be destroyed by black holes created in particle accelerators and that helium-3 from the Moon could be used for fusion energy. Frank Close warns that these "factoids" must be stamped out before they become accepted as facts. Did you know that when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) comes online at CERN next spring, it could end up creating mini black holes that destroy the Earth? This is not something from a Dan Brown novel, but from a TV documentary broadcast as part of the BBC's Horizon series in...

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - The International Space Nomenclature Council today adopted the term 'emplacements de hauts gravité super' - or 'super high gravity locations' - as the official replacement name for black holes. Originally named in reference to the fact that light cannot escape their intense gravity, the term 'black hole' was increasingly criticized as being insensitive to African-Americans and African-Europeans...

Like gluttonous piranhas, supermassive black holes in young galaxy clusters gorge on bountiful gas until little fuel is left, and then they fade away, a new study suggests.Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers tallied the number of rapidly growing supermassive black holes, called active galactic nuclei, or AGN, in two populations of galaxy clusters. One group consisted of young-looking clusters located very far from Earth, and the other consisted of an older group located closer to us. The results of the survey, detailed in the July 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, showed that the more distant, younger clusters...

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - The International Space Nomenclature Council today adopted the term 'emplacements de hauts gravité super' - or 'super high gravity locations' - as the official replacement name for black holes. Originally named in reference to the fact that light cannot escape their intense gravity, the term 'black hole' was increasingly criticized as being insensitive to African-Americans and African-Europeans. "We're glad the council finally took action on this issue." said Isaiah Herman, Chairman of the National African-American Coalition of People. "The unimaginable destructive power of these super high gravity locations was giving the word 'black' a negative connotation throughout...

"Nothing there," is what Case Western Reserve University physicists concluded about black holes after spending a year working on complex formulas to calculate the formation of new black holes. In nearly 13 printed pages with a host of calculations, the research may solve the information loss paradox that has perplexed physicists for the past 40 years.Case physicists Tanmay Vachaspati, Dejan Stojkovic and Lawrence M. Krauss report in the article, "Observation of Incipient Black Holes and the Information Loss Problem,” that has been accepted for publication by Physical Review D. "It's complicated and very complex," noted the researchers, regarding both the...

A giant cloud of superheated gas 6 million light years wide might be formed by the collective sigh of several supermassive black holes, scientists say. The plasma cloud, detailed in April 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal, might be the source of mysterious cosmic rays that permeate our universe. “One of the most exciting aspects of the discovery is the new questions it poses,” said study leader Philipp Kronberg of Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico. “For example, what kind of mechanism could create a cloud of such enormous dimensions that does not coincide with any single galaxy or galaxy...

In a cosmic game of pinball, black holes fling high-energy protons into space, where they zigzag around at near light-speeds before smashing into low-energy protons, finds a new study. Then the collisions send bursts of gamma rays flying out from the center of our galaxy, which explains for the first time the mechanism for the high-energy jets first spotted in 2004. This proton-slinging could explain more than this cataclysmic light show deep in our galaxy. The scientists suggest other black holes in the universe could rely on the pinball mechanism to produce enormous jets of light. “Our galaxy's central supermassive...

It seems that Abell 400, a galaxy cluster that has long enchanted astronomers, is provoking a new round of speculations, with little regard for the separation of fact and fiction. The picture above combines X-ray and radio images of the galaxy cluster Abell 400. According to the press release from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the composite "shows radio jets immersed in a vast cloud of multimillion degree X-ray emitting gas that pervades the cluster." "The jets emanate from the vicinity of two supermassive black holes (bright spots in the image)…. The peculiar dumbbell structure of this galaxy is thought to...

A controversial alternative to black hole theory has been bolstered by observations of an object in the distant universe, researchers say. If their interpretation is correct, it might mean black holes do not exist and are in fact bizarre and compact balls of plasma called MECOs. Rudolph Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, led a team that observed a quasar situated 9 billion light years from Earth. A quasar is a very bright, compact object, whose radiation is usually thought to be generated by a giant black hole devouring its surrounding matter. A rare cosmological...

A space telescope scheduled for launch in 2007 will be sensitive enough to detect theoretical miniature black holes lurking within our solar system, scientists say. By doing so, it could test an exotic five-dimensional theory of gravity that competes with Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. That is, of course, if the tiny black holes actually exist. The idea, recently detailed online in the journal Physical Review D, is being proposed by Charles Keeton, a physicist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and Arlie Petters of Duke University in North Carolina. Branes The Randall-Sundrum braneworld model, named after the scientists...

WASHINGTON - With gasoline hitting $3 per gallon, scientists have just found the most energy-efficient engines in the universe — black holes, those whirling super-dense centers of galaxies that suck in nearly everything. The jets of energy spurting out of older ultra-efficient black holes also seem to be playing a crucial role as zoning cops in large galaxies, preventing too many stars from sprouting. That explains why there aren't as many burgeoning galaxies chock full of stars as previously expected, said scientists citing results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory that were released Monday. For the first time, scientists measured both...

Three cosmic enigmas, one audacious answer 09 March 2006 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Zeeya Merali DARK energy and dark matter, two of the greatest mysteries confronting physicists, may be two sides of the same coin. A new and as yet undiscovered kind of star could explain both phenomena and, in turn, remove black holes from the lexicon of cosmology. The audacious idea comes from George Chapline, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, and Nobel laureate Robert Laughlin of Stanford University and their colleagues. Last week at the 22nd Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting in Santa Barbara,...