News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
What happens inside a black hole — and how does whatever goes on inside relate to the universe outside it? It’s a mystery that has evaded scientists for decades. It’s also a mystery that could also redefine how we think about the nature of the universe. In a paper published in the journal PRX Quantum … Read more
As humans, we know we are conscious because we experience and feel things. But we are still unable to explain exactly what consciousness is or where it comes from. “Consciousness — or better, conscious experience — is obviously a part of reality,” Johannes Kleiner, a mathematician and theoretical physicist at the Munich Center For Mathematical … Read more
An object 681 million light-years away might look like one glorious, exquisite mess, but there’s a lot more going on that a first glance indicates. The object showcased in a new Hubble image – called IC 2431 – is not one galaxy, but three, coming together in a massive galactic merger that will one day … Read more
Physicists have taken a step towards nailing down the mass of the neutrino, perhaps the most mysterious of all elementary particles. The team at the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino (KATRIN) experiment in Germany reports that neutrinos have a maximum mass of 0.8 electron volts. Researchers have long had indirect evidence that the particles should be lighter … Read more
We often refer to our expanding universe with one simple word: space. But where does space begin and, more importantly, what is it? Space is an almost perfect vacuum, nearly void of matter and with extremely low pressure. In space, sound doesn’t carry because there aren’t molecules close enough together to transmit sound between them. … Read more
A new telescope designed to peer into the twisted X-ray Universe has just sent back its first-ever imaging data. The Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), a joint project between NASA and the Italian Space Agency, fixed its gaze on one of the most famous explosions in the Milky Way: Cassiopeia A. Located 11,000 light-years … Read more
Quantum mechanics – the behavior of the Universe at the smallest of scales – continues to surprise us, with scientists now having been able to successfully create a quantum object called a domain wall in laboratory settings. For the first time, these walls can now be generated in the lab on demand, occurring when … Read more
The ongoing interaction between two galaxies 320 million light-years away has been captured in a gorgeous Hubble image. They’re collectively known as Arp 282 in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, and they consist of a large barred spiral galaxy named NGC 169, about 140,000 light-years across, and a much smaller polar-ring galaxy named IC … Read more
Decaying isotopes of hydrogen have just given us the smallest measurement yet of the mass of a neutrino. By measuring the energy distribution of electrons released during the beta decay of tritium, physicists have determined that the upper limit for the mass of the electron antineutrino is just 0.8 electronvolts. That’s 1.6 × 10–36 kilograms … Read more
Looking up into the night sky, you might wonder just how many stars are in the universe. It’s challenging enough for an amateur astronomer to count the number of naked-eye stars that are visible and, with bigger telescopes, more stars become visible, making counting a lengthy process. So how do astronomers figure out how many … Read more