ERIK MARTIN WILLÈN: February 2024

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Stellar Beads on a String - UNIVERSE

Galaxy cluster SDSS J1531+3414

X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/O. Omoruyi et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/G. Tremblay et al.; Radio: ASTRON/LOFAR; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

Astronomers have discovered one of the most powerful eruptions from a black hole ever recorded in the system known as SDSS J1531+3414 (SDSS J1531 for short). As explained in our press release, this mega-explosion billions of years ago may help explain the formation of a striking pattern of star clusters around two massive galaxies, resembling “beads on a string.”

SDSS J1531 is a massive galaxy cluster containing hundreds of individual galaxies and huge reservoirs of hot gas and dark matter. At the center of SDSS J1531, which is located about 3.8 billion light-years away, two of the cluster’s largest galaxies are colliding with each other.

Astronomers used several telescopes to study SDSS J1531 including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), a radio telescope. This composite image shows SDSS J1531 in X-rays from Chandra (blue and purple) that have been combined with radio data from LOFAR (dark pink) as well as an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope (appearing as yellow and white). The inset gives a close-in view of the center of SDSS J1531 in optical light, showing the two large galaxies and a set of 19 large clusters of stars, called superclusters, stretching across the middle. The image shows these star clusters are arranged in an ‘S’ formation that resembles beads on a string.

The multiwavelength data provides signs of an ancient, titanic eruption in SDSS J1531, which a team of researchers think was responsible for creation of the 19 star clusters. Their argument is that an extremely powerful jet from the supermassive black holes in the center of one of the large galaxies pushed the surrounding hot gas away from the black hole, creating a gigantic cavity. The evidence for a cavity comes from “wings” of bright X-ray emission, seen with Chandra, tracing dense gas near the center of SDSS J1531. These wings are the edge of the cavity and the less dense gas in between is part of the cavity. LOFAR shows radio waves from the remains of the jet’s energetic particles filling in the giant cavity. These features are highlighted in a labeled version of the image.

Multiwavelength Image of SDSS J1531, Labeled

X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/O. Omoruyi et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/G. Tremblay et al.; Radio: ASTRON/LOFAR; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

The astronomers also discovered cold and warm gas located near the opening of the cavity, detected with the Atacama Large Millimeter and submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Gemini North Telescope, respectively. A separate graphic shows the optical image with the cold gas added in green (left), and the warm gas added in red (right). The team argues that some of the hot gas pushed away from the black hole eventually cooled to form the cold and warm gas shown. The team thinks tidal effects from the two merging galaxies compressed the gas along curved paths, leading to the star clusters forming in the “beads on a string” pattern.

Cold and warm gas located near the opening of the cavity.

Optical/Halpha: NASA/ESA/STScI; Radio: ESO/NAOJ/NRAO

A paper led by Osase Omoruyi of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) describing these results has recently been published in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online here. The authors of the paper are Grant Tremblay (CfA), Francoise Combes (Paris Observatory, France), Timothy Davis (Cardiff University, UK), Michael Gladders (University of Chicago), Alexey Vikhlinin (CfA), Paul Nulsen (CfA), Preeti Kharb (National Centre for Radio Astrophysics — Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, India ), Stefi Baum (University of Manitoba, Canada), Christopher O’Dea (University of Manitoba, Canada), Keren Sharon (University of Michigan), Bryan Terrazas (Columbia University), Rebecca Nevin (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory), Aimee Schechter (University of Colorado Boulder), John ZuHone (CfA), Michael McDonald (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Hakon Dahle (University of Oslo, Norway), Matthew B. Bayliss (University of Cincinnati), Thomas Connor (CfA), Michael Florian (University of Arizona), Jane Rigby (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), and Sravani Vaddi (Arecibo Observatory)

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission/chandra-x-ray-observatory/

Visual Description:

This is an image of a cluster of galaxies called SDSS J1531+3414 in X-ray, optical, and radio light. The overall scene resembles a colorful display of lights as if viewed through a wet, glass window.

Blurry orange dots of different sizes are scattered across a black background. These orange dots are entire galaxies. Near the center of the image, two central galaxies appear as bright, white dots. Star clusters, resembling beads on a string in shades of electric blue, sweep over the galaxy on the left, through the space in between the galaxy pair, and then lightly coil beneath both galaxies. Clouds of blue, X-ray light, and dark pink, radio light, surround the two galaxies.

The blue cloud spreads out for thousands of light-years toward the region above the central galaxies. The dark pink cloud, somewhat resembling the shape of an upside down spinning top toy, stretches far below the two galaxies and slightly toward our left. This dark pink cloud represents the remains of a powerful jet, produced by a supermassive black hole within one of the two central galaxies. In the upper right corner of the image, another dark pink cloud is present. This cloud may be the relic of a counter-jet from the same black hole outburst.

Source: Stellar Beads on a String - NASA

Application of ultrasound found to greatly speed up motility of human sperm

Effect of ultrasound on live immotile grade C sperm. Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk2864

A team of engineers at Monash University in Australia has found that exposing human sperm to ultrasound can cause them to swim faster. In their study, published in the journal Science Advances, the group exposed human semen samples to ultrasonic waves and measured changes in sperm motility.

Prior research has shown that low sperm motility (or none at all) can lead to difficulties for males attempting to impregnate a female partner. To improve the odds, treatments including drugs have been used to speed up the sperm, but these also cause problems such as damage to sperm DNA.

To get around the problem, fertility doctors collect sperm from a donor and inject them directly into the uterus. In this new effort, the research team found a possible alternative—applying an ultrasound device to a woman's abdomen after intercourse to speed the sperm on their journey through the vagina and cervix and into the uterus.

Noting that prior research had shown that exposure to ultrasonic waves can impact sperm motility, the research team ran trials to determine if such reports were true, and if so, how much of an impact could be expected.

The researchers collected 50 semen samples from men with both normal sperm motility and motility problems, separating them into groups based on motility speed. The team isolated the sperm cells, and then exposed them to 800 milliwatts of ultrasonic waves for 20 seconds. Each of the samples was tested both before and after exposure.

Experimental setup of the droplet acoustofluidic platform used for studying the effect of ultrasound on single sperm. Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk2864

The researchers found that exposing sperm to ultrasonic waves resulted in a dramatic increase in motility—the largest was a 266% increase. They also found that some sperm that were not motile at all could be jolted into swimming with a dose of ultrasound waves.

They theorize that the speed-up is due to the energy in the ultrasonic waves replacing deficits in sperm cell mitochondrial energy. They acknowledge that more work is required to ensure that ultrasonic waves do not damage the sperm cells or the reproductive cells in the female host, but suggest that the approach appears promising.

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Source: Application of ultrasound found to greatly speed up motility of human sperm (phys.org)

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Monday, February 26, 2024

NASA’s New Horizons Detects Dusty Hints of Extended Kuiper Belt - UNIVERSE

New observations from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft hint that the Kuiper Belt – the vast, distant outer zone of our solar system populated by hundreds of thousands of icy, rocky planetary building blocks – might stretch much farther out than we thought.

Artist’s concept of a collision between two objects in the distant Kuiper Belt. Such collisions are a major source of dust in the belt, along with particles kicked up from Kuiper Belt objects being peppered by microscopic dust impactors from outside of the solar system. Credit: Dan Durda, FIAAA

Speeding through the outer edges of the Kuiper Belt, almost 60 times farther from the Sun than Earth, the New Horizons Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (SDC) instrument is detecting higher than expected levels of dust – the tiny frozen remnants of collisions between larger Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) and particles kicked up from KBOs being peppered by microscopic dust impactors from outside of the solar system.

The readings defy scientific models that the KBO population and density of dust should start to decline a billion miles inside that distance and contribute to a growing body of evidence that suggests the outer edge of the main Kuiper Belt could extend billions of miles farther than current estimates – or that there could even be a second belt beyond the one we already know.

The results appear in the Feb. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“New Horizons is making the first direct measurements of interplanetary dust far beyond Neptune and Pluto, so every observation could lead to a discovery,” said Alex Doner, lead author of the paper and a physics graduate student at the University of Colorado Boulder who serves as SDC lead. “The idea that we might have detected an extended Kuiper Belt — with a whole new population of objects colliding and producing more dust – offers another clue in solving the mysteries of the solar system’s most distant regions.”

Designed and built by students at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder under the guidance of professional engineers, SDC has detected microscopic dust grains produced by collisions among asteroids, comets and Kuiper Belt objects all along New Horizons’ 5-billion-mile, 18-year journey across our solar system – which after launch in 2006 included historic flybys of Pluto in 2015 and the KBO Arrokoth in 2019. The first science instrument on a NASA planetary mission to be designed, built and “flown” by students, the SDC counts and measures the sizes of dust particles, producing information on the collision rates of such bodies in the outer solar system.

The latest, surprising results were compiled over three years as New Horizons traveled from 45 to 55 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun – with one AU being the distance between Earth and Sun, about 93 million miles or 140 million kilometers.

These readings come as New Horizons scientists, using observatories like the Japanese Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, have also discovered a number KBOs far beyond the traditional outer edge of the Kuiper Belt. This outer edge (where the density of objects starts to decline) was thought to be at about 50 AU, but new evidence suggests the belt may extend to 80 AU, or farther.

As telescope observations continue, Doner said, scientists are looking at other possible reasons for the high SDC dust readings. One possibility, perhaps less likely, is radiation pressure and other factors pushing dust created in the inner Kuiper Belt out past 50 AU. New Horizons could also have encountered shorter-lived ice particles that cannot reach the inner parts of the solar system and were not yet accounted for in the current models of the Kuiper Belt.

“These new scientific results from New Horizons may be the first time that any spacecraft has discovered a new population of bodies in our solar system,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. “I can’t wait to see how much farther out these elevated Kuiper Belt dust levels go.”

Now into its second extended mission, New Horizons is expected to have sufficient propellant and power to operate through the 2040s, at distances beyond 100 AU from the Sun. That far out, mission scientists say, the SDC could potentially even record the spacecraft’s transition into a region where interstellar particles dominate the dust environment. With complementary telescopic observations of the Kuiper Belt from Earth, New Horizons, as the only spacecraft operating in and collecting new information about the Kuiper Belt, has a unique opportunity to learn more about KBOs, dust sources and expanse of the belt, and interstellar dust and the dust disks around other stars.

The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio and Boulder, Colorado, directs the mission via Principal Investigator Alan Stern and leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of NASA’s New Frontiers program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Source: NASA’s New Horizons Detects Dusty Hints of Extended Kuiper Belt - NASA