Paul M. Sutter, Author at Universe Today

August 27, 2024August 21, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

The Hardest Bias in Astronomy

An artist's illustration of a chaotic young solar system. Image Credit: Tobias Stierli, flaeck / PlanetS

A nasty sort of bias called Malmquist bias affects almost every astronomical survey, and the only solution is to…keep doing surveys.

August 26, 2024August 21, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

Life Needs Black Holes to Survive

Illustration of an active quasar. New research shows that SMBHs eat rapidly enough to trigger them. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Life is rare, and it requires exactly the right environmental mix to establish itself. And there’s one surprising contributor to that perfect mix: gigantic black holes.

August 25, 2024August 21, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

By eye, it’s impossible to pick out the exact boundaries of the superclusters, which are among the largest structures in the universe. But that’s because they are not defined by their edges, but by the common motion of their components.

August 24, 2024August 20, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

Is Science Slowing Down?

This Fine Guidance Sensor test image was acquired in parallel with NIRCam imaging of the star HD147980 over a period of eight days at the beginning of May. This engineering image represents a total of 32 hours of exposure time at several overlapping pointings of the Guider 2 channel. The observations were not optimized for detection of faint objects, but nevertheless the image captures extremely faint objects and is, for now, the deepest image of the infrared sky. The unfiltered wavelength response of the guider, from 0.6 to 5 micrometers, helps provide this extreme sensitivity. The image is mono-chromatic and is displayed in false color with white-yellow-orange-red representing the progression from brightest to dimmest. The bright star (at 9.3 magnitude) on the right hand edge is 2MASS 16235798+2826079. There are only a handful of stars in this image – distinguished by their diffraction spikes. The rest of the objects are thousands of faint galaxies, some in the nearby universe, but many, many more in the distant universe. Credit: NASA, CSA, and FGS team.

Paradoxically, even though we produce more scientific output than ever before – each year, researchers around the world publish millions of academic papers – the pace of scientific discovery is slowing down.

August 23, 2024August 20, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

The Universe is on the Move

Figure of the heavenly bodies - Illuminated illustration of the Ptolemaic geocentric conception of the Universe by Portuguese cosmographer and cartographer Bartolomeu Velho (?-1568). From his work Cosmographia, made in France, 1568. Credit: Bibilotèque nationale de France, Paris

Our universe is defined by the way it moves, and one way to describe the history of science is through our increasing awareness of the restlessness of the cosmos.

August 22, 2024August 20, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

The Knowledge We Don’t Yet Have

We have gained so much powerful knowledge in the past few hundred years. But there’s still so much that we don’t know.

August 21, 2024August 20, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

Could We Ever Harness Quantum Vacuum Energy?

Illustration depicting quantum entanglement between particles. Credit: ATLAS Experiment

The fabric of spacetime is roiling with vibrating quantum fields, known as the vacuum energy. It’s right there, everywhere we look. Could we ever get anything out of it?

August 20, 2024August 20, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

The Secrets Hiding in the Vacuum

Quantum entanglement visualized. Credit: Discovery News.

Empty space is nothing but. According to the weird rules of quantum mechanics, it’s actually filled with an endless amount of energy, known appropriately enough as vacuum energy.

January 30, 2024January 23, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

The Seeming Impossibility of Life

This is an artist's illustration showing the timeline of the early universe showing some key time periods. On the left is the early day of the Universe, where the intense heat prevented much from happening. After that is the release of the CMB once the Universe cooled a little. After that, in yellow, is the Neutral Universe, the time before stars formed. The hydrogen atoms in the Neutral Universe should have given off radio waves that we can detect here on Earth. Image Credit: ESA – C. Carreau — This is an artist's illustration showing the timeline of the early universe showing some key time periods. On the left is the early day of the Universe, where the intense heat prevented much from happening. After that is the release of the CMB once the Universe cooled a little. After that, in yellow, is the neutral Universe, the time before stars formed. The hydrogen atoms in the neutral Universe should have given off radio waves that we can detect here on Earth. Image Credit: ESA – C. Carreau

The number of near misses, false starts, and legitimate disasters that have befallen our species since the day we took our first upright steps all those generations ago is too large to count and could honestly take up this entire book. I’ll give us humans this much, though: we’re survivors, through and through.

January 29, 2024January 23, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

Is the Habitable Zone Really Habitable?

Solar flares pose a major hazard to electronics and infrastructure in Low Earth Orbit, but they may have played a role in kick-starting life on Earth. Credit: NASA/SDO/J. Major

The water that life knows and needs, the water that makes a world habitable, the water that acts as the universal solvent for all the myriad and fantastically complicated chemical reactions that make us different than the dirt and rocks, can only come in one form: liquid.

Author: Paul M. Sutter