The Great Matrix of Being
The four dimensions in the Great Matrix of Being give us four ways of measuring reality — by time, by scale, by energy density flow, and by thresholds of emergent complexity. All phenomena can be located within this Matrix.
-
-
Four Reasons You Shouldn’t Exist
You’re almost unfathomably lucky to exist, in almost every conceivable way. Don’t take it the wrong way. You, me, and even the most calming manatee are nothing but impurities in an otherwise beautifully simple universe. We’re lucky life began on Earth at all, of course, and that something as complex as humans evolved. It was…
-
Big Bang Light Reveals Minimum Lifetime of Photons
The notion of the speed of light as the cosmic speed limit is based on the assumption that particles of light, called photons, have no mass. But astrophysical observations cannot rule out the slim chance that photons do have a tiny bit of mass—a prospect with wide ramifications in physics. For instance, if photons weigh…
-
Lopsided Map of the Cosmos Offers New Clues to the Universe’s Origins
If our universe slammed into a neighboring one during a growth spurt in its first second, the collision would have left a mark. And Matthew Kleban thinks he sees it in the most detailed snapshot yet taken of the dawn of the universe. The satellite image, released by astronomers in March, confirmed what an earlier…
-
NASA Joins ESA Hunt for Dark Energy and Matter
NASA and the European Space Agency announced that the two organizations have partnered on the ESA’s Euclid mission. This mission, a space telescope that launches in 2020, is designed to further astronomers’ understanding of the roles dark matter and dark energy played in the evolution of the universe. “NASA is very proud to contribute to…
-
No Explanation for Pulsar With Split Personality
A pulsar that randomly and without warning dramatically changes its pattern of radio wave and X-ray emissions has surprised a team of astronomers, who wrote that it “challenges all proposed pulsar emission theories.” Pulsars are spinning stars the size of a small city, with a mass roughly comparable to our Sun. They have a strong…
-
Fermi Telescope May Turn Focus to Dark Matter
The Universe’s highest-energy light could finally yield clues to the nature of the “dark matter” that makes up some 85% of the Universe’s mass. The Fermi space telescope, designed to catch gamma rays, has seen hints of evidence for dark matter in high-energy gamma rays seen at the galaxy’s centre. The Fermi team is now…
-
Astronomers Measure Nearby Universe’s ‘Cosmic Fog’
Researchers from the Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet have carried out the first measurement of the intensity of the diffuse extragalactic background light in the nearby Universe, a fog of photons that has filled the Universe ever since its formation. Using some of the brightest gamma-ray sources in the southern hemisphere, the study was carried out using measurements…
-
A Supercomputer Fit to Dominate the Cosmos
It may not be self-aware (yet) but this computing monster is ready to take over the world. Well, at least a telescope in Chile. Say hello to the correlator for the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submilimeter Array, or ALMA. The correlator is the computer that runs at the backend of an array of radio telescopes called an…
-
The Biggest Thing in the Universe Is Really, Really Big
A newly discovered galactic structure is so large that it means one of our basic assumptions about the nature of the universe could be wrong.