Los Angeles: &nbsp;Marvel Studios and Stan Lee Universe have entered into a 20-year agreement to license the name and likeness of Stan Lee so that the late comic legend will continue to be part of pop culture. Lee, the beloved co-creator of&nbsp;Marvel characters Spider-Man, Avengers and Hulk who died in 2018 at the age of 95, became a fan favourite of new-age fans who would recognise him through his funny cameos in Fox’s X-Men and Sony’s Spider-Man franchises and later in the several Marvel Cinematic Universe films.According to The Hollywood Reporter, the deal will allow the studio to use Lee’s name and likeness in future feature films and television productions, as well as Disney theme parks, various “experiences” and merchandising. “It really ensures that Stan, through digital technology and archival footage and other forms, will live in the most important venues, the Marvel movies, and Disney theme parks. It’s a broad deal,” said Andy Heyward, chairman and CEO of Genius Brands. “The audience revered Stan, and if it’s done with taste and class, and respectful of who he was, (uses of his likeness) will be welcomed. He is a beloved personality, and long after you and I are gone, he will remain the essence of Marvel,” he added. However, this new deal does not necessarily spell the return of Lee cameos in movies, at least not in the way fans traditionally knew them. Lee’s last cameos were for Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame which released just months apart from each other in 2019. Apart from his name and likeness, the agreement allows Marvel to use Lee’s voice and signature in movies and television projects, as well as to use images, existing footage and existing audio recordings featuring him.The rights to use Lee’s name, voice, likeness and signature exclusively in theme parks, cruise lines and in-park merchandise were also included in the deal. Audiences and park goers could see Lee turn up as figures and toys, and on apparel and stationery. Stan Lee Universe is a venture between global kids media company Genius Brands International and POW! Entertainment, a media company co-founded by Lee along with Gill Champion and Arthur Lieberman, in July 2020. Lee filed a USD 1 billion lawsuit against POW! Entertainment in 2001 for allegedly forging his signature on legal documents, but later dropped the claim.—PTI

Marvel Studios and Stan Lee Universe have entered into a 20-year agreement to license the name and likeness of Stan Lee so that the late comic legend will continue to be part of pop culture.

Marvel Studios signs 20-year deal with Stan Lee Universe

Washington: The NASA and ESA's (European Space Agency) Hubble Space Telescope has reached a new milestone in recording the mystery of the Universe's expansion rate.In the last three decades, Hubble has calibrated more than 40 "milepost markers" of space and time to help scientists precisely measure the expansion rate of the universe, according to the NASA.The pursuit of the universe's expansion rate began in the 1920s and in 1998, it led to the discovery of "dark energy" - a mysterious repulsive force accelerating the universe's expansion.The NASA said that the astronomers scanning data from several telescopes, including Hubble, found a discrepancy between the expansion rate as measured in the local universe compared to independent observations from right after the big bang, which predict a different expansion value.Although the cause of this discrepancy remains a mystery, the Hubble data, encompassing a variety of cosmic objects that serve as distance markers, "support the idea that something weird is going on, possibly involving brand new physics", NASA said."You are getting the most precise measure of the expansion rate for the universe from the gold standard of telescopes and cosmic mile markers," said Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.The expansion rate of the universe was, however, predicted to be slower than what Hubble actually sees, the NASA said.Astronomers predict that it should be about 67.5 km per second per megaparsec, give or take 0.5 - but observations show it is around 73 km.Given the large Hubble sample size, there is only a one-in-a-million chance astronomers are wrong due to an unlucky draw, said Riess.Astronomers are at a loss for an explanation of the disconnect between the expansion rate of the local universe versus the primaeval universe, but the answer might involve additional physics of the universe, the team said. Scientists hope that with the new James Webb Space Telescope they may be more able to find answers. Webb telescope, which recently launched to space is set to send back its first observations soon. —IANS

 The NASA and ESA's (European Space Agency) Hubble Space Telescope has reached a new milestone in recording the mystery of the Universe's expansion rate.

New Hubble Data Suggest Mysterious Expansion Rate Of Universe

Mumbai: May 21 holds a special place in actor Sushmita Sen's life as she was crowned Miss Universe 28 years ago on the same date. Recalling the glorious moment, Sushmita, on Saturday, took to Twitter and penned a heartfelt note. "Beautiful is a feeling. Happy 28 years of INDIA winning Miss Universe for the very first time!!Time flies...Beauty remains!!!#Love #Pride #Motherland #MissUniverse1994 #INDIA. Mahal Kita #Philippines," she wrote.Alongside the nostalgic note, Sushmita dropped a stunning picture of herself in a red outfit. She also shared a string of fans' congratulatory messages on her Instagram handle.The beauty-queen-turned-actor competed against contestants from 77 countries around the world and became the first Indian woman to clinch the Miss Universe title in 1994. That same year, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was crowned Miss World 1994.—ANI

May 21 holds a special place in actor Sushmita Sen's life as she was crowned Miss Universe 28 years ago on the same date.

Sushmita Sen celebrates 28 years of her Miss Universe win

Toronto: An international team of scientists has released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, enabling astronomers to map the star-forming regions of the universe and learn how the earliest, most distant galaxies originated.To image an expansive patch of sky, the researchers led by those at the University of Toronto employed a new technique with Hubble known as Drift And SHift (DASH). DASH creates an image that is eight times larger than Hubble's standard field of view by capturing multiple shots that are then stitched together into one master mosaic, similar to taking a panoramic picture on a smartphone.DASH also takes images faster than the typical technique, snapping eight pictures per Hubble's orbit instead of one picture, achieving in 250 hours what would previously have taken 2,000 hours, explained the team in the paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal. The high-resolution survey named 3D-DASH will allow researchers to find rare objects and targets for follow-up observations with the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during its decades-long mission."Since its launch more than 30 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope has led a renaissance in the study of how&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sentinelassam.com/science-and-technology/scientists-reveal-44-million-galaxies-in-new-map-580567" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(255, 100, 0);">galaxies&nbsp;</a>have changed in the last 10-billion years of the universe," said Lamiya Mowla, from the University of Toronto. "The 3D-DASH programme extends Hubble's legacy in wide-area imaging so we can begin to unravel the mysteries of the galaxies beyond our own."For the first time, 3D-DASH provides researchers with a complete near-infrared survey of the entire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sentinelassam.com/international/new-dark-energy-may-explain-why-universe-is-expanding-555700" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(255, 100, 0);">COSMOS&nbsp;</a>field, one of the richest data fields for extragalactic studies beyond the Milky Way.3D-DASH covers a total area almost six times the size of the moon in the sky as seen from Earth. This record is likely to remain unbroken by Hubble's successor JWST, which is instead built for sensitive, close-up images to capture fine detail of a small area. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency.—IANS

An international team of scientists has released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, enabling astronomers to map the star-forming regions of the universe and learn how the earliest, most distant galaxies originated.

Hubble spots largest near-infrared image to find universe's rarest galaxies

Washington: In a new study, two University of Chicago astrophysicists laid out a method for using pairs of colliding black holes to measure how fast the universe is expanding, and thus understand how the universe evolved, what it is made out of, and where it's going.
In particular, the scientists think the new technique, which they call a "spectral siren," may be able to tell us about the otherwise elusive "teenage" years of the universe. The findings of the study were published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
A cosmic ruler
A major ongoing scientific debate is exactly how fast the universe is expanding--a number called the Hubble constant. The different methods available so far yield slightly different answers, and scientists are eager to find alternate ways to measure this rate. Checking the accuracy of this number is especially important because it affects our understanding of fundamental questions like the age, history and makeup of the universe.
The new study offers a way to make this calculation, using special detectors that pick up the cosmic echoes of black hole collisions.
Occasionally, two black holes will slam into each other--an event so powerful that it literally creates a ripple in space-time that travels across the universe. Here on Earth, the U.S. Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Italian Observatory Virgo can pick up those ripples, which are called gravitational waves.
Over the past few years, LIGO and Virgo have collected the readings from almost 100 pairs of black holes colliding. The signal from each collision contains information about how massive the black holes were. But the signal has been traveling across space, and during that time the universe has expanded, which changes the properties of the signal. "For example, if you took a black hole and put it earlier in the universe, the signal would change and it would look like a bigger black hole than it really is," explained UChicago astrophysicist Daniel Holz, one of the two authors on the paper.
If scientists can figure out a way to measure how that signal changed, they can calculate the expansion rate of the universe. The problem is calibration: How do they know how much it changed from the original?
In their new paper, Holz and first author Jose Maria Ezquiaga suggest that they can use our newfound knowledge about the whole population of black holes as a calibration tool. For example, current evidence suggests that most of the detected black holes have between five and 40 times the mass of our sun.
"So we measure the masses of the nearby black holes and understand their features, and then we look further away and see how much those further ones appear to have shifted," said Ezquiaga, a NASA Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow and Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics Fellow working with Holz at UChicago. "And this gives you a measure of the expansion of the universe."
The authors dub it the "spectral siren" method, a new approach to the 'standard siren' method which Holz and collaborators have been pioneering. (The name is a reference to the 'standard candle' methods also used in astronomy.)
The scientists are excited because in the future, as LIGO's capabilities expand, the method may provide a unique window into the "teenage" years of the universe--about 10 billion years ago--that are hard to study with other methods.
Researchers can use the cosmic microwave background to look at the very earliest moments of the universe, and they can look around at galaxies near our own galaxy to study the universe's more recent history. But the in-between period is harder to reach, and it's an area of special scientific interest.
"It's around that time that we switched from dark matter being the predominant force in the universe to dark energy taking over, and we are very interested in studying this critical transition," said Ezquiaga.
The other advantage of this method, the authors said, is that there are fewer uncertainties created by gaps in our scientific knowledge. "By using the entire population of black holes, the method can calibrate itself, directly identifying and correcting for errors," Holz said. The other methods used to calculate the Hubble constant rely on our current understanding of the physics of stars and galaxies, which involves a lot of complicated physics and astrophysics. This means the measurements might be thrown off quite a bit if there's something we don't yet know.
By contrast, this new black hole method relies almost purely on Einstein's theory of gravity, which is well-studied and has stood up against all the ways scientists have tried to test it so far. The more readings they have from all black holes, the more accurate this calibration will be. "We need preferably thousands of these signals, which we should have in a few years, and even more in the next decade or two," said Holz. "At that point it would be an incredibly powerful method to learn about the universe." —ANI

In a new study, two University of Chicago astrophysicists laid out a method for using pairs of colliding black holes to measure how fast the universe is expanding, and thus understand how the universe evolved, what it is made out of, and where it's going.

Study: Black Hole Collisions Can Help In Understanding The Rate Of Universe's Expansion

 In a new study, two University of Chicago astrophysicists laid out a method for using pairs of colliding black holes to measure how fast the universe is expanding, and thus understand how the universe evolved, what it is made out of, and where it's going.

Dehradun / Gurgaon: Kaveesha Verma from Haridwar in Uttarakhand was declared the winner of the premium beauty pageant Glam Guidance Miss India Universe 2022, getting the better of participants from several other states.
Sushama, a contestant from Delhi, was declared the winner of Glam Guidance Mrs India Universe 2022 at the pageant organised at The Bristol Gurgaon. Contestants from across the country took part in the pageant and showcased their talent before the judges and the audience.
"All the finalists underwent training by Glam Guidance for three days. They were trained in finer aspects of catwalk, grooming, choreography, image consulting, anxiety management, physical fitness, etc. There was little to separate the finalists, but ultimately there can only be one winner. We take this opportunity to congratulate the winners of the Glam Guidance Miss/Mrs India Universe 2022. We are confident that their careers in the world of beauty and glamour will truly take off with such a wonderful performance," said Glam Guidance Founder Girish Kumar. Glam Guidance Miss/Mrs India Universe 2022 is a national competition that tests contestants as per international standards. Besides Girish Kumar, the jury comprised Major General Vikram Dev Dogra, celebrity guest Dr Chinu Kwatra, Mrs India 2020 winner Dr Neha Singh, and famous fashion designer Anu Shivdasani.
Harshikha Rawat from Mumbai was the first runner-up in the Glam Guidance Miss India Universe 2022 competition, while Pranjali Govindrao Pendam from Wardha, Maharashtra, was the second runner-up.
Prabhjot Kaur from Firozpur, Punjab, was the first runner-up in the Glam Guidance Mrs India Universe 2022 category, and Ankita Parihar from Agra was the second runner-up.
The participants were also bestowed other awards at the beauty pageant. In the Miss category, Vaishnavi from Agra was awarded the crown for Best Performance. Neelam Manjhi from Ahmednagar, Maharashtra was named Miss Congeniality, Harshita Rai from Mau in UP Miss Vivacious, Ramza Khan from Uttarakhand Most Stylish, Shivani Naharwal from Gurugram, Haryana Miss Fashion Icon, and Kusum from Panipat Miss Body Beautiful.
In the Mrs category, Abha Sharma from Bangalore was named Mrs Fashion Icon, Harshita Patnekar from Goa Mrs Vivacious, Priyanka Singh from Bokaro Steel city Mrs Congeniality, Dipiya Jain from Indore Mrs Body Beautiful, Harmeet Kaur from New Delhi Mrs Most Stylish, and Nivida Goel from Delhi Mrs Best Performance. The UK International Beauty School was the makeover partner for the beauty pageant, organised by Glam Guidance in association with The Perfect Hub, Delhi, helmed by Mohit Bansal. Brand Mitti by Sreeja Chaudhary provided handmade jewellery to all finalists.
The Peper Studio by noted fashion designer Anu Shivdasani rocked the show when finalists walked the ramp in her ethnic wear designs. Emcee Moon from Bangalore and Bhavna Singh from Uttar Pradesh did the free flow anchoring in the show. Celebrity fashion designer Sonu Malaliya's amazing western outfits shone during the show. The choreography training was provided by PS Geet, the owner of Groom and Glam. Major General Vikram Dev Dogra groomed the finalists and enhanced their confidence by sharing tips to manage anxiety. The winners and subtitle winners were crowned by Major General Vikram Dev Dogra and celebrity guest Dr. Chinu Kwatra.
Celebrity Photographers Parth Bhatia, Gurpreet Singh and Mudit Sachdeva were present for photography and videography. A well-known yoga practitioner and makeup artist, Monika Handa, provided yoga and physical fitness training along with makeup training to the contestants. Aditi Gupta had a crucial role in grooming the finalists. —ANI

 Kaveesha Verma from Haridwar in Uttarakhand was declared the winner of the premium beauty pageant Glam Guidance Miss India Universe 2022, getting the better of participants from several other states.

Kaveesha Verma And Sushama Win In Premium Beauty Pageant Glam Guidance Miss/Mrs India Universe 2022 In Their Categories

Washington: Stars are the machines that sculpt the universe, yet scientists don't fully know how they form. To understand the frenzied 'baby boom' of star birth that occurred early in the universe's history, researchers turned to the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
This nearby galaxy has a simpler chemical composition than the Milky Way, making it similar to the galaxies found in the younger universe, when heavier elements were more scarce. This allows it to serve as a proxy for the early universe.
Two separate studies -- the first with the Hubble Space Telescope, and the second with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope -- recently came to the same conclusion. Using different methods, the independent teams found young stars spiraling into the center of a massive star cluster called NGC 346 in the Small Magellanic Cloud. This river-like motion of gas and stars is an efficient way to fuel star birth, researchers say. The teams' results show that the process of star formation in the Small Magellanic Cloud is similar to that in our own Milky Way.
Nature likes spirals -- from the whirlpool of a hurricane, to pinwheel-shaped protoplanetary disks around newborn stars, to the vast realms of spiral galaxies across our universe. Now astronomers are bemused to find young stars that are spiraling into the center of a massive cluster of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
The outer arm of the spiral in this huge, oddly shaped stellar nursery called NGC 346 may be feeding star formation in a river-like motion of gas and stars. This is an efficient way to fuel star birth, researchers say.
The Small Magellanic Cloud has a simpler chemical composition than the Milky Way, making it similar to the galaxies found in the younger universe, when heavier elements were more scarce. Because of this, the stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud burn hotter and so run out of their fuel faster than in our Milky Way.
Though a proxy for the early universe, at 200,000 light-years away the Small Magellanic Cloud is also one of our closest galactic neighbors.
Learning how stars form in the Small Magellanic Cloud offers a new twist on how a firestorm of star birth may have occurred early in the universe's history, when it was undergoing a "baby boom" about 2 to 3 billion years after the big bang (the universe is now 13.8 billion years old).
The new results find that the process of star formation there is similar to that in our own Milky Way. Only 150 light-years in diameter, NGC 346 boasts the mass of 50,000 Suns. Its intriguing shape and rapid star formation rate has puzzled astronomers. It took the combined power of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to unravel the behavior of this mysterious-looking stellar nesting ground.
"Stars are the machines that sculpt the universe. We would not have life without stars, and yet we don't fully understand how they form," explained study leader Elena Sabbi of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "We have several models that make predictions, and some of these predictions are contradictory. We want to determine what is regulating the process of star formation, because these are the laws that we need to also understand what we see in the early universe."
Researchers determined the motion of the stars in NGC 346 in two different ways. Using Hubble, Sabbi and her team measured the changes of the stars' positions over 11 years. The stars in this region are moving at an average velocity of 2,000 miles per hour, which means that in 11 years they move 200 million miles. This is about 2 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
But this cluster is relatively far away, inside a neighboring galaxy. This means the amount of observed motion is very small and therefore difficult to measure. These extraordinarily precise observations were possible only because of Hubble's exquisite resolution and high sensitivity. Also, Hubble's three-decade-long history of observations provides a baseline for astronomers to follow minute celestial motions over time.
The second team, led by Peter Zeidler of AURA/STScI for the European Space Agency, used the ground-based VLT's Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument to measure radial velocity, which determines whether an object is approaching or receding from an observer.
"What was really amazing is that we used two completely different methods with different facilities and basically came to the same conclusion, independent of each other," said Zeidler. "With Hubble, you can see the stars, but with MUSE we can also see the gas motion in the third dimension, and it confirms the theory that everything is spiraling inwards."
But why a spiral?
"A spiral is really the good, natural way to feed star formation from the outside toward the center of the cluster," explained Zeidler. "It's the most efficient way that stars and gas fueling more star formation can move towards the center."
Half of the Hubble data for this study of NGC 346 is archival. The first observations were taken 11 years ago. They were recently repeated to trace the motion of the stars over time. Given the telescope's longevity, the Hubble data archive now contains more than 32 years of astronomical data powering unprecedented, long-term studies.
"The Hubble archive is really a gold mine," said Sabbi. "There are so many interesting star-forming regions that Hubble has observed over the years. Given that Hubble is performing so well, we can actually repeat these observations. This can really advance our understanding of star formation." —ANI

Stars are the machines that sculpt the universe, yet scientists don't fully know how they form. To understand the frenzied 'baby boom' of star birth that occurred early in the universe's history, researchers turned to the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

Hubble Findings May Provide Insights Into Formation Of Universe

Washington: Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers have identified the most distant globular clusters ever discovered. These dense groups of millions of stars may be relics that contain the first and oldest stars in the universe.
The early analysis of Webb's First Deep Field image, which depicts some of the universe's earliest galaxies, is published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"JWST was built to find the first stars and the first galaxies and to help us understand the origins of complexity in the universe, such as the chemical elements and the building blocks of life," says Lamiya Mowla, Dunlap Fellow at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and co-lead author of the study. "This discovery in Webb's First Deep Field is already providing a detailed look at the earliest phase of star formation, confirming the incredible power of JWST." In the finely detailed Webb's First Deep Field image, the researchers zeroed in on what they've dubbed "the Sparkler galaxy," which is nine billion light years away. This galaxy got its name for the compact objects appearing as small yellow-red dots surrounding it, referred to by the researchers as "sparkles." The team posited that these sparkles could either be young clusters actively forming stars -- born three billion years after the Big Bang at the peak of star formation -- or old globular clusters. Globular clusters are ancient collections of stars from a galaxy's infancy and contain clues about its earliest phases of formation and growth.
From their initial analysis of 12 of these compact objects, the researchers determined that five of them are not only globular clusters but among the oldest ones known.
"Looking at the first images from JWST and discovering old globular clusters around distant galaxies was an incredible moment, one that wasn't possible with previous Hubble Space Telescope imaging," says Kartheik G. Iyer, Dunlap Fellow at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and co-lead author of the study. "Since we could observe the sparkles across a range of wavelengths, we could model them and better understand their physical properties, like how old they are and how many stars they contain. We hope the knowledge that globular clusters can be observed at from such great distances with JWST will spur further science and searches for similar objects."
The Milky Way galaxy has about 150 globular clusters, and how and when exactly these dense clumps of stars formed is not well understood. Astronomers know that globular clusters can be extremely old, but it is incredibly challenging to measure their ages. Using very distant globular clusters to age-date the first stars in distant galaxies has not been done before and is only possible with JWST. "These newly identified clusters were formed close to the first time it was even possible to form stars," says Mowla. "Because the Sparkler galaxy is much farther away than our own Milky Way, it is easier to determine the ages of its globular clusters. We are observing the Sparkler as it was nine billion years ago, when the universe was only four-and-a-half billion years old, looking at something that happened a long time ago. Think of it as guessing a person's age based on their appearance -- it's easy to tell the difference between a 5- and 10-year-old, but hard to tell the difference between a 50- and 55-year-old."
Until now, astronomers could not see the surrounding compact objects of the Sparkler galaxy with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This changed with JWST's increased resolution and sensitivity, unveiling the tiny dots surrounding the galaxy for the first time in Webb's First Deep Field image. The Sparkler galaxy is special because it is magnified by a factor of 100 due to an effect called gravitational lensing -- where the SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster in the foreground distorts what is behind it, much like a giant magnifying glass. Moreover, gravitational lensing produces three separate images of the Sparkler, allowing astronomers to study the galaxy in greater detail.
"Our study of the Sparkler highlights the tremendous power in combining the unique capabilities of JWST with the natural magnification afforded by gravitational lensing," says CANUCS team lead Chris Willott from the National Research Council's Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre. "The team is excited about more discoveries to come when JWST turns its eye on the CANUCS galaxy clusters next month."
The researchers combined new data from JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) with HST archival data. NIRCam detects faint objects using longer and redder wavelengths to observe past what is visible to the human eye and even HST. Both magnifications due to the lensing by the galaxy cluster and the high resolution of JWST are what made observing compact objects possible. The Canadian-made Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument on the JWST provided independent confirmation that the objects are old globular clusters because the researchers did not observe oxygen emission lines -- emissions with measurable spectra given off by young clusters that are actively forming stars. NIRISS also helped unravel the geometry of the triply lensed images of the Sparkler. "JWST's made-in-Canada NIRISS instrument was vital in helping us understand how the three images of the Sparkler and its globular clusters are connected," says Marcin Sawicki, Canada Research Chair in Astronomy, professor at Saint Mary's University and study co-author. "Seeing several of the Sparkler's globular clusters imaged three times made it clear that they are orbiting around the Sparkler galaxy rather than being simply in front of it by chance."
JWST will observe the CANUCS fields starting in October 2022, leveraging JWST data to examine five massive clusters of galaxies, around which the researchers expect to find more such systems. Future studies will also model the galaxy cluster to understand the lensing effect and execute more robust analyses to explain the star formation histories. —ANI

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers have identified the most distant globular clusters ever discovered. These dense groups of millions of stars may be relics that contain the first and oldest stars in the universe.

Researchers Discover A Galaxy Sparkling With The Universe's Oldest Star Clusters

Washington: A supernova is a stellar explosion, which occurs when the lives of some really massive stars come to an end. In this violent epilogue, the star expels the material from its outer layers by means of a shock wave, allowing us to see the various elements it was composed of.
The research team developed a model of the gravitational field of the galaxy that acted as a lens, and that way it was possible to determine that the light from these three images travelled along three different paths, differing in distance by a few days. This accounts for the three colours obtained in the images because a variation in the colour emitted takes place as the gas in the supernova expands and cools. The higher the temperature is, the bluer the light emitted will be, and as the temperature falls, the light emitted tends towards red. So the blue image is a photograph of the supernova a few hours after the stellar explosion, while the green and red images correspond to 2 and 8 days, respectively, after the explosion.
This information enabled the radius of the star that exploded to be determined; it was a red super-giant with a radius equal to 500 times that of the Sun, and exploded 11.5 billion years ago, long before the Earth was born, specifically at the moment when our Galaxy is thought to have formed. The images of this supernova captured by the Hubble Space Telescope are highly magnified by the gravitational field of a nearby galaxy that acts as a lens and allows us to see much further in distance and in time than all local supernovae in nearby galaxies.
The study of the explosions of these red super-giant stars tallies with the current understanding of how the heavier atomic elements were created inside stars and during supernova explosions: elements forged inside stars are released in these supernova explosions to become the next generation of gas and material from which solar systems and life as we know it are created. Without these explosions, the gas in today's galaxies would only include the hydrogen and helium that formed during the Big Bang and would not support complex life that requires other heavier chemical elements. Moreover, this supernova observed through a gravitational lens demonstrates that an event taking place in the distant Universe can be witnessed several times, so in principle, we could focus our instruments in advance to get a detailed view of the eruption of a star turning into a supernova. —ANI

A supernova is a stellar explosion, which occurs when the lives of some really massive stars come to an end. In this violent epilogue, the star expels the material from its outer layers by means of a shock wave, allowing us to see the various elements it was composed of.

Supernova In Distant Space Allows Us To Understand The Origin Of Elements In The Universe: Research

Washington: Astronomers have developed the most extensive inventory to date of the galaxies where short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) originate. Using several highly sensitive instruments and sophisticated galaxy modeling, the researchers pinpointed the galactic homes of 84 SGRBs and probed the characteristics of 69 of the identified host galaxies.
Using several highly sensitive instruments and sophisticated galaxy modeling, the researchers pinpointed the galactic homes of 84 SGRBs and probed the characteristics of 69 of the identified host galaxies. Among their findings, they discovered that about 85% of the studied SGRBs come from young, actively star-forming galaxies.
The astronomers also found that more SGRBs occurred at earlier times, when the universe was much younger -- and with greater distances from their host galaxies' centers -- than previously known. Surprisingly, several SGRBs were spotted far outside their host galaxies -- as if they were "kicked out," a finding that raises questions as to how they were able to travel so far away.
"This is the largest catalog of SGRB host galaxies to ever exist, so weexpect it to be the gold standard for many years to come," said Anya Nugent, a Northwestern graduate student who led the study focused on modeling host galaxies. "Building this catalog and finally having enough host galaxies to see patterns and draw significant conclusions is exactly what the field needed to push our understanding of these fantastic events and what happens to stars after they die."
When two neutron stars collide, they generate momentary flashes of intense gamma-ray light, known as SGRBs. While the gamma rays last mere seconds, the optical light can continue for hours before fading below detection levels (an event called an afterglow). SGRBs are some of the most luminous explosions in the universe with, at most, a dozen detected and pinpointed each year. They currently represent the only way to study and understand a large population of merging neutron star systems.
Since NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory first discovered an SGRB afterglow in 2005, astronomers have spent the last 17 years trying to understand which galaxies produce these powerful bursts. Stars within a galaxy can give insight into the environmental conditions needed to produce SGRBs and can connect the mysterious bursts to their neutron-star merger origins. So far, only one SGRB (GRB 170817A) has a confirmed neutron-star merger origin -- as it was detected just seconds after gravitational wave detectors observed the binary neutron-star merger (GW170817).
"In a decade, the next generation of gravitational wave observatories will be able to detect neutron star mergers out to the same distances as we do SGRBs today," Fong said. "Thus, our catalog will serve as a benchmark for comparison to future detections of neutron star mergers."
"The catalog can really make impacts beyond just a single class of transients like SGRBs," said Yuxin "Vic" Dong, study co-author and astrophysics Ph.D. student at Northwestern. "With the wealth of data and results presented in the catalog, I believe a variety of research projects will make use of it, maybe even in ways we have yet not thought of." —ANI

 Astronomers have developed the most extensive inventory to date of the galaxies where short gamma-ray bursts (SGRBs) originate. 

Research: Short Gamma-Ray Bursts Traced Farther Into Distant Universe

Washington: The NASA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an unusual galaxy merger in the ancient universe.
The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of particularly peculiar galaxies spread throughout the southern sky, and includes a collection of subtly interacting galaxies as well as more spectacular colliding galaxies. "Arp-Madore 417-391", which lies around 670 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus in the southern celestial hemisphere, is one such galactic collision.
The two galaxies were distorted by gravity and twisted into a colossal ring, leaving their cores nestled side by side, said NASA.
Hubble used its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to capture this scene – the instrument is optimised to hunt for galaxies and galaxy clusters in the ancient universe.
"Hubble's ACS has been contributing to scientific discovery for 20 years, and throughout its lifetime it has been involved in everything from mapping the distribution of dark matter to studying the evolution of galaxy clusters," NASA added.
This image comes from a selection of Hubble observations designed to create a list of intriguing targets for follow-up observations with the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as other ground-based telescopes.
Astronomers chose a list of previously unobserved galaxies for Hubble to inspect between other scheduled observations.
Over time, this lets astronomers build up a menagerie of interesting galaxies while using Hubble's limited observing time as efficiently as possible, said NASA. —IANS

The NASA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an unusual galaxy merger in the ancient universe.

Hubble Captures Unusual Galaxy Merger In Ancient Universe

Washington: Spiral galaxies represent one of the most spectacular features in our universe. Among them, spiral galaxies in the distant universe contain significant information about their origin and evolution. However, we have had a limited understanding of these galaxies due to them being too distant to study in detail.
"While these galaxies were already detected among the previous observations using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, their limited spatial resolution and/or sensitivity did not allow us to study their detailed shapes and properties," explains Junior Researcher Yoshinobu Fudamoto from Waseda University in Japan, who has been researching galaxies' evolution.
Now, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken things to the next level. In its very first imaging of the galaxy cluster, SMACS J0723.3-7327, JWST has managed to capture infrared images of a population of red spiral galaxies at an unprecedented resolution, revealing their morphology in detail!
Against this backdrop, in a recent article published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on 21 October 2022, a team of researchers comprising Junior Researcher Yoshinobu Fudamoto, Prof. Akio K. Inoue, and Dr. Yuma Sugahara from Waseda University, Japan, has revealed surprising insights into these red spiral galaxies. Among the several red spiral galaxies detected, the researchers focused on the two most extremely red galaxies, RS13 and RS14. Using spectral energy distribution (SED) analysis, the researchers measured the distribution of energy over wide wavelength range for these galaxies. The SED analysis revealed that these red spiral galaxies belong to the early universe from a period known as the "cosmic noon" (8-10 billion years ago), which followed the Big Bang and the "cosmic dawn." Remarkably, these are among the farthest known spiral galaxies till date.
Rare, red spiral galaxies account for only 2% of the galaxies in the local universe. This discovery of red spiral galaxies in the early universe, from the JWST observation covering only an insignificant fraction of space, suggests that such spiral galaxies existed in large numbers in the early universe. The researchers further discovered that one of the red spiral galaxies, RS14, is a "passive" (not forming stars) spiral galaxy, contrary to the intuitive expectation that galaxies in the early universe would be actively forming stars. This detection of a passive spiral galaxy in the JWST's limited field of view is particularly surprising, since it suggests that such passive spiral galaxies could also exist in large numbers in the early universe. Overall, the findings of this study significantly enhances our knowledge about red spiral galaxies, and the universe as a whole. "Our study showed for the first time that passive spiral galaxies could be abundant in the early universe. While this paper is a pilot study about spiral galaxies in the early universe, confirming and expanding upon this study would largely influence our understanding of the formation and evolution of galactic morphologies," concludes Fudamoto. —ANI

Spiral galaxies represent one of the most spectacular features in our universe. Among them, spiral galaxies in the distant universe contain significant information about their origin and evolution. However, we have had a limited understanding of these galaxies due to them being too distant to study in detail.

Scientists Discover Rare Red Spiral Galaxy Population From Early Universe

Washington: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal for the first time galaxies with stellar bars, elongated features of stars stretching from the centres of galaxies into their outer disks, at a time when the universe was a mere 25 per cent of its present age. The finding of so-called barred galaxies, similar to our Milky Way, this early in the universe will require astrophysicists to refine their theories of galaxy evolution.
Prior to JWST, images from the Hubble Space Telescope had never detected bars at such young epochs. In a Hubble image, one galaxy, EGS-23205, is little more than a disk-shaped smudge, but in the corresponding JWST image taken this past summer, it's a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear stellar bar.
"I took one look at these data, and I said, 'We are dropping everything else!'" said Shardha Jogee, professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin. "The bars hardly visible in Hubble data just popped out in the JWST image, showing the tremendous power of JWST to see the underlying structure in galaxies," she said, describing data from the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science Survey (CEERS), led by UT Austin professor, Steven Finkelstein.
The team identified another barred galaxy, EGS-24268, also from about 11 billion years ago, which makes two barred galaxies existing farther back in time than any previously discovered. In an article accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, they highlight these two galaxies and show examples of four other barred galaxies from more than 8 billion years ago. "For this study, we are looking at a new regime where no one had used this kind of data or done this kind of quantitative analysis before," said Yuchen "Kay" Guo, a graduate student who led the analysis, "so everything is new. It's like going into a forest that nobody has ever gone into." Bars play an important role in galaxy evolution by funneling gas into the central regions, boosting star formation.
"Bars solve the supply chain problem in galaxies," Jogee said. "Just like we need to bring raw material from the harbor to inland factories that make new products, a bar powerfully transports gas into the central region where the gas is rapidly converted into new stars at a rate typically 10 to 100 times faster than in the rest of the galaxy."
Bars also help to grow supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies by channeling the gas part of the way.
The discovery of bars during such early epochs shakes up galaxy evolution scenarios in several ways. "This discovery of early bars means galaxy evolution models now have a new pathway via bars to accelerate the production of new stars at early epochs," Jogee said.
And the very existence of these early bars challenges theoretical models as they need to get the galaxy physics right in order to predict the correct abundance of bars. The team will be testing different models in their next papers. JWST can unveil structures in distant galaxies better than Hubble for two reasons: First, its larger mirror gives it more light-gathering ability, allowing it to see farther and with higher resolution. Second, it can see through dust better as it observes at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble. —ANI

 NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal for the first time galaxies with stellar bars, elongated features of stars stretching from the centres of galaxies into their outer disks, at a time when the universe was a mere 25 per cent of its present age.

James Webb Telescope Reveals Milky Way-Like Galaxies In Young Universe

<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">Washington: The most sensitive telescope now searching for radio signals from cosmic dawn, an era around 200 million years after the Big Bang when stars ignited, has doubled its sensitivity, a new paper reports. While not yet detecting this radiation, the redshifted 21-centimeter line they have put new limits on the elemental composition of galaxies during the Epoch of Reionization. Early galaxies seem to be low in metals, fitting the most popular theory of cosmic evolution.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">In a paper accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) team reports that it has doubled the sensitivity of the array, which was already the most sensitive radio telescope in the world dedicated to exploring this unique period in the history of the universe.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">While they have yet to actually detect radio emissions from the end of the cosmic dark ages, their results do provide clues to the composition of stars and galaxies in the early universe. In particular, their data suggest that early galaxies contained very few elements besides hydrogen and helium, unlike our galaxies today.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">When the radio dishes are fully online and calibrated, ideally this fall, the team hopes to construct a 3D map of the bubbles of ionized and neutral hydrogen as they evolved from about 200 million years ago to around 1 billion years after the Big Bang. The map could tell us how early stars and galaxies differed from those we see around us today, and how the universe as a whole looked in its adolescence.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">"This is moving toward a potentially revolutionary technique in cosmology. Once you can get down to the sensitivity you need, there's so much information in the data," said Joshua Dillon, a research scientist in the University of California, Berkeley's Department of Astronomy and lead author of the paper. "A 3D map of most of the luminous matter in the universe is the goal for the next 50 years or more."
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">Other telescopes also are peering into the early universe. The new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has now imaged a galaxy that existed about 325 million years after the birth of the universe in the Big Bang. But the JWST can see only the brightest of the galaxies that formed during the Epoch of Reionization, not the smaller but far more numerous dwarf galaxies whose stars heated the intergalactic medium and ionized most of the hydrogen gas.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">HERA seeks to detect radiation from the neutral hydrogen that filled the space between those early stars and galaxies and, in particular, determine when that hydrogen stopped emitting or absorbing radio waves because it became ionized. The fact that the HERA team has not yet detected these bubbles of ionized hydrogen within the cold hydrogen of the cosmic dark age rules out some theories of how stars evolved in the early universe.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">Specifically, the data show that the earliest stars, which may have formed around 200 million years after the Big Bang, contained few other elements than hydrogen and helium. This is different from the composition of today's stars, which have a variety of so-called metals, the astronomical term for elements, ranging from lithium to uranium, that are heavier than helium. The finding is consistent with the current model for how stars and stellar explosions produced most of the other elements.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">"Early galaxies have to have been significantly different than the galaxies that we observe today in order for us not to have seen a signal," said Aaron Parsons, principal investigator for HERA and a UC Berkeley associate professor of astronomy. "In particular, their X-ray characteristics have to have changed. Otherwise, we would have detected the signal we're looking for."
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">The atomic composition of stars in the early universe determined how long it took to heat the intergalactic medium once stars began to form. Key to this is the high-energy radiation, primarily X-rays, produced by binary stars where one of them has collapsed to a black hole or neutron star and is gradually eating its companion. With few heavy elements, a lot of the companion's mass is blown away instead of falling onto the black hole, meaning fewer X-rays and less heating of the surrounding region.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">The new data fit the most popular theories of how stars and galaxies first formed after the Big Bang, but not others. Preliminary results from the first analysis of HERA data, reported a year ago, hinted that those alternatives -- specifically, cold reionization -- were unlikely.
<span style="color: rgb(53,53,53);background-color: rgb(255,255,255);font-size: medium;font-family: ui-sans-serif, system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Noto Sans", sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji;">"Our results require that even before reionization and by as late as 450 million years after the Big Bang, the gas between galaxies must have been heated by X-rays. These likely came from binary systems where one star is losing mass to a companion black hole," Dillon said. "Our results show that if that's the case, those stars must have been very low 'metallicity,' that is, very few elements other than hydrogen and helium in comparison to our sun, which makes sense because we're talking about a period in time in the universe before most of the other elements were formed." —ANI

The most sensitive telescope now searching for radio signals from cosmic dawn, an era around 200 million years after the Big Bang when stars ignited, has doubled its sensitivity, a new paper reports. 

Researchers Explain How Were Galaxies Much Different In The Early Universe

Pennsylvania (US): What scientists previously believed about the genesis of galaxies in the cosmos is being challenged by the discovery of six huge galaxies in the early universe.
"These objects are way more massive? than anyone expected," said Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, who modelled light from these galaxies, adding, "We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we've discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe."
Using the first dataset released from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the international team of scientists discovered objects as mature as the Milky Way when the universe was only 3% of its current age, about 500-700 million years after the Big Bang.
The telescope is equipped with infrared-sensing instruments capable of detecting light that was emitted by the most ancient stars and galaxies. Essentially, the telescope allows scientists to see back in time roughly 13.5 billion years, near the beginning of the universe as we know it, Leja explained.
"This is our first glimpse back this far, so it's important that we keep an open mind about what we are seeing," Leja said, adding, "While the data indicates they are likely galaxies, I think there is a real possibility that a few of these objects turn out to be obscured supermassive black holes. Regardless, the amount of mass we discovered means that the known mass in stars at this period of our universe is up to 100 times greater than we had previously thought. Even if we cut the sample in half, this is still an astounding change."
In a paper published in 'Nature,' the researchers show evidence that the six galaxies are far more massive than anyone expected and call into question what scientists previously understood about galaxy formation at the very beginning of the universe.
"The revelation that massive galaxy formation began extremely early in the history of the universe upends what many of us had thought was settled science," said Leja, adding, "We've been informally calling these objects 'universe breakers' -- and they have been living up to their name so far."
Leja explained that the galaxies the team discovered are so massive that they are in tension with 99 per cent of models for cosmology. Accounting for such a high amount of mass would require either altering the models for cosmology or revising the scientific understanding of galaxy formation in the early universe -- that galaxies started as small clouds of stars and dust that gradually grew larger over time. Either scenario requires a fundamental shift in our understanding of how the universe came to be, he added.
"We looked into the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we were going to find," Leja said, adding, "It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question."
On July 12, NASA released the first full-colour images and spectroscopic data from the James Webb Space Telescope. The largest infrared telescope in space, Webb was designed to see the genesis of the cosmos, its high resolution allowing it to view objects too old, distant or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope.
"When we got the data, everyone just started diving in and these massive things popped out really fast," Leja said, adding, "We started doing the modelling and tried to figure out what they were because they were so big and bright. My first thought was we had made a mistake and we would just find it and move on with our lives. But we have yet to find that mistake, despite a lot of trying." Leja explained that one way to confirm the team's finding and alleviate any remaining concerns would be to take a spectrum image of the massive galaxies. That would provide the team data on the true distances, and also the gasses and other elements that made up the galaxies.
The team could then use the data to model a clearer picture of what the galaxies looked like, and how massive they truly were. "A spectrum will immediately tell us whether or not these things are real," Leja said. "It will show us how big they are, how far away they are. What's funny is we have all these things we hope to learn from James Webb and this was nowhere near the top of the list. We've found something we never thought to ask the universe -- and it happened way faster than I thought, but here we are," Leja added. —ANI

What scientists previously believed about the genesis of galaxies in the cosmos is being challenged by the discovery of six huge galaxies in the early universe.

Discovery Of Massive Early Galaxies Defies Prior Understanding Of Universe

Paris: The European Space Agency's Euclid mission, aimed at probing the "dark side" of the universe -- namely dark matter and dark energy -- has successfully completed the final test before launch in July 2023.
The space telescope will create the largest, most accurate 3D map of the Universe ever produced, observing shapes and movements of billions of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic time, over more than a third of the sky.
From this data, Euclid will reveal how the Universe has expanded and how structures have formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.
The two-tonne spacecraft, which is 4.7 metres tall and 3.5 metres wide, is a fully European mission -- built and operated by ESA, with contributions from NASA. It is currently situated at the Thales Alenia Space test facilities in Cannes, France and has successfully undergone electromagnetic compatibility testing.
The test is aimed at ruling out electromagnetic waves that can cause interference with other devices, which in space can have disastrous consequences.
The large test chamber at TAS, called the Compact Antenna Test Range, simulates the electromagnetic environment of deep space, being lined with cones that absorb radio signals and prevent reflections.
To avoid TV or radio interference, the walls of the chamber form a steel Faraday cage, impenetrable to electromagnetic signals from the outside world.
In this radiation-free environment, the team studied the radio signals and electrical noise coming from the various systems on the spacecraft and checked whether they caused any electromagnetic interference with each other. After completing a few final tests, it will head to Cape Canaveral in the US for a launch in July on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The $1.5 billion mission is planned to last until 2029. —IANS

The European Space Agency's Euclid mission, aimed at probing the "dark side" of the universe -- namely dark matter and dark energy -- has successfully completed the final test before launch in July 2023.

ESA Telescope Gets Ready To Probe Universe's Dark Mysteries

Mumbai: Actress Kaveri Priyam, who is known for a variety of roles on the small screen, spoke about how she wanted to be a film actor in the initial days but then she got good opportunities on TV.

However, she refrains from getting tagged as a TV actor as she feels that actors are actors at the end of the day, and can act equally well irrespective of the medium.

Talking about the same, Kaveri said: "When I started out I always wanted to be a film actor. But destiny had some other plans. When I was giving auditions, I wanted to work, Just work! And that's when TV welcomed me with open arms. I am not a television actor, I am an actor who is here to work on all the mediums."

Kaveri is known for shows such as 'Yeh Rishtey Hain Pyaar Ke', 'Ziddi Dil Maane Na', 'Dil Diyaan Gallaan', among others.

She shared about the role she aspires to play on screen: "There are many. I want to play all sorts of roles but I would love to do some action on screen or be a part of a spy universe. I also want to be a commercial heroine and do some pathbreaking roles on screen." IANS

Actress Kaveri Priyam, who is known for a variety of roles on the small screen, spoke about how she wanted to be a film actor in the initial days but then she got good opportunities on TV.

'I always wanted to be a film actor,' says Kaveri Priyam

Los Angeles: Actress Zoe Saldana is done playing Gamora in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While speaking with The Hollywood Reporter for a cover story on filmmaker James Gunn and the development of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie series, Saldana, reaffirmed that she will no longer play the character after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 releases on May 5, reports People.

"I don't think this is the end for the Guardians," the actress said, noting that she originally only expected to portray Gamora for the property's original 2014 movie.

"It is the end for me, for Gamora."

The article covers how Saldana and co-stars Chris Pratt, Karen Gillan and Dave Bautista and more actors supported director Gunn, 56, during his months-long estrangement from Marvel after he was fired from future Guardians movies in 2018. He was later reinstated in 2019.

In the piece, Saldana, who reportedly visited Gunn at his home in the wake of his firing, said she gave a speech thanking the Guardians crew on her last day of filming for the new movie.

"I thanked James for just his time and his patience and his guidance and his friendship," she told the outlet.

'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3' releases May 5. IANS

Actress Zoe Saldana is done playing Gamora in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Zoe Saldana says she won't reprise Gamora's role after 'Guardians Vol. 3'

Beijing: An international team of scientists has proved that gas recycling is the key factor in the formation of massive galaxies in the early universe and this discovery came after they observed a nebula located 11 billion light-years away, Xinhua News Agency reported. After years of study, the team has detected the detailed process of circumgalactic gas entering this massive galaxy group and has captured a three-dimensional view of its gas recycling, Tsinghua University said at a press conference. According to the university, previous studies had not fully understood the process of how gas flows into galaxies and how this flowing gas drives star formation. Therefore, the team of astronomers from Tsinghua University and their counterparts abroad used the 10-metre Keck II telescope and targeted a massive nebula, referred to as MAMMOTH-1, at an epoch corresponding to 11 billion years ago, to obtain the first glimpse of how such galaxies accrete their gas. They successfully detected line emission in hydrogen, helium and carbon extending for 300,000 light years around this galaxy, said the research article published in the journal Science on Friday. In further analysis, they found the galaxy is surrounded by gas rich in heavy elements, which was ejected from the centre of the galaxy. The cooled gas then flows back into the galaxy under its own gravity and the interactions with nearby satellite galaxies, said Cai Zheng from Tsinghua University. “Our observations give a first hint that the recycled inflows of gas might be a ubiquitous supply mechanism for the formation of stars and massive galaxies in the early universe,” added Cai, who is also the corresponding author of the paper. —ANI

An international team of scientists has proved that gas recycling is the key factor in the formation of massive galaxies

Scientists Reveal How Massive Galaxies Form In Early Universe

Washington: The James Webb Telescope has discovered that the early universe had more than 700 galaxies, a finding not known before. Scientists led an investigation into galaxies that existed millions of years after the big bang. This was a crucial time known as the Epoch of Reionization. For hundreds of millions of years after the big bang, the universe was filled with a gaseous fog that made it opaque to energetic light. By one billion years after the big bang, the fog had cleared and the universe became transparent, a process known as reionization. Kevin Hainline of the University of Arizona in Tucson and his team used Webb's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument and identified more than 700 candidate galaxies that existed when the universe was between 370 million and 650 million years old. The sheer number of these galaxies was far beyond predictions from observations made before Webb's launch. The observatory's exquisite resolution and sensitivity are allowing astronomers to get a better view of these distant galaxies than ever before. "Previously, the earliest galaxies we could see just looked like little smudges. And yet those smudges represent millions or even billions of stars at the beginning of the universe," said Hainline. "Now, we can see that some of them are actually extended objects with visible structure. We can see groupings of stars being born only a few hundred million years after the beginning of time." The study is part of an international collaboration called the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), which gathered observations from two tiny patches in the sky: One in the Ursa Minor constellation and another in the direction of the Fornax cluster. These new findings shed light on how the first galaxies and stars formed, creating the rich catalogue of elements observed in the universe today. However, the researchers stated that 93 per cent of the newfound galaxies had never been seen before. "We're finding star formation in the early universe is much more complicated than we thought," Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona in Tucson, co-lead of the JADES programme. The findings were reported at the 242nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Albuquerque in New Mexico. —IANS

The James Webb Telescope has discovered that the early universe had more than 700 galaxies, a finding not known before

The Hawk

Tag : Universe

Marvel Studios signs 20-year deal with Stan Lee Universe

Pushkar Raj Kapoor

Tag : Universe

Marvel Studios signs 20-year deal with Stan Lee Universe

Pushkar Raj Kapoor

More about Universe