Samantha Rae @astro-rae - Tumblr Blog

Daisy, the daisy 😊

Universe’s largest structure caught in the act of forming

“The Universe forms a vast cosmic web where filaments interconnect, with matter flowing along them into a nexus. At the centers of these intersections, the most massive galaxy clusters form. Over time, more clusters fall in, creating the largest structures of all. The Hubble Space Telescope recently observed one of them, MACS J0717, revealing four separate clusters in the collision process.”

When it comes to the largest bound cosmic structures, it doesn’t get any bigger than galaxy clusters. Unless, that it, you consider when multiple galaxy clusters merge together. Located at the intersections of cosmic dark matter filaments, smaller clusters flow into the larger clusters located at such a nexus. When we get very lucky, colliding clusters can be seen. Recently, scientists have located a cosmic smash-up between four such clusters in the large structure MACS J0717.5+3745. One of the clusters within is moving so quickly – 3,000 km/s – that the light within it gets shifted thanks to the speed of the electrons within it. X-ray, radio and optical/IR data combine to reveal a treasure trove of information, including active galaxies, a separation between normal and dark matter and even information about the inflows along the cosmic filaments.

This may be the messiest galaxy cluster ever found, but it’s also the most instrumental in understanding the formation of the Universe’s largest structures. Catch it on today’s Mostly Mute Monday!

hifructosemag

Huang Po Hsun’s vibrant, bombastic paintings move between the familiar and the utterly otherworldly. These works, primarily acrylic on canvas, can feel like underwater carnivals or bubbling abstractions. More on HiFructose.com.

I'm in love with this short film music video from Porter Robinson and A1 pictures. All of the feels 💜✨

#porter robinson #shelter #a1 pictures #music

philosophybits

Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?

Eleanor Roosevelt (via philosophybits)

#women's day

culturenlifestyle

Awesome 3D-Printed Miniature Solar Systems That Fit On Your Desk Table

London-based boutique Little Planet Factory makes adorable miniature 3d-printed plants and moons, which you can use as decor for your desk or even to play with. They have collections of moons, solitary planets to even entire solar systems.

Find the solar system in their Etsy shop.

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astro-rae

WANT!

steampunktendencies

The abbey’s library of Maria Laach

Diving into this book that arrived in my mailbox earlier this afternoon. I've been told by multiple people to read it and the reviews are stellar. See you in 403 pages ;)

#bookworm #thegirlwithallthegifts #mrcarey #geekgirl #geekgoddess #booksaremyescape

the-physics-connection

A little creepy, but very awesome. This organ uses the information it gets from light, to turn the darkness of the universe into beautiful colorful vision!

Person: is that an organic chemistry book?

Me: damn right it is. I only read the finest, free range, hormone-free science textbooks out there.

startswithabang

Recent Claims Invalid: Emergent Gravity Might Deliver A Universe Without Dark Matter

“The real challenge for emergent gravity, I think, is not galactic rotation curves. That is the one domain where we already know that modified gravity – at last some variants thereof – work well. The real challenge is to also explain structure formation in the early universe, or any gravitational phenomena on larger (tens of millions of light years or more) scales.”

When it comes to galaxies, clusters of galaxies or the largest-scales on the Universe, dark matter is absolutely required. There’s no way to explain colliding galaxy clusters, correlations between different galaxies, the filamentary structure of the Universe or the fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background without it. But it isn’t just dark matter that hopes to solve these problems, and there’s a new contender in town: emergent gravity. 20 years ago, Ted Jacobson proposed, after noting similarities between gravitation and thermodynamics, that gravity might be an emergent phenomenon. Erik Verlinde has run with it, producing a formalism to get dark matter and dark energy-like effects out of a Universe where a new kind of entropy exists. Recently, it’s made predictions for galactic rotation curves, and with marginal successes, may be poised to test those larger scales.

But can emergent gravity really challenge dark matter for explaining the full suite of astronomical phenomena in the Universe? Sabine Hossenfelder has the story!

fyp-science

Art is based on very clear, mathematical principles like proportion and harmony. At the same time, physicists need to be inventive, to have ideas, to have some fantasy.

Fabiola Gianotti (via fyp-science)