Category archives: Astrophysics

The search for dark matter gets a speed boost from quantum technology

The search for dark matter gets a speed boost from quantum technology

AstrophysicsCosmologyQuantum physics

By Invited Researcher

Nearly a century after dark matter was first proposed to explain the motion of galaxy clusters, physicists still have no idea what it’s made of. Researchers around the world have built dozens of detectors in hopes of discovering dark matter. As a graduate student, I helped design and operate one of these detectors, aptly named […]

The brightest end of the Lyman alpha luminosity function

The brightest end of the Lyman alpha luminosity function

AstrophysicsCosmologyDIPC AstrophysicsDIPC Computational Cosmology

By DIPC

The Javalambre-Photometric Local Universe Survey, J-PLUS, is an unprecedented photometric sky survey of 8500 deg 2 visible from Javalambre (Aragón, Spain), using a set of 12 broad, intermediate and narrow-band filters. The J-PLUS photometric system is well suited to study the properties of nearby galaxies (z < 0.015). However, there are a few redshift windows […]

The origin of our Galaxy

The origin of our Galaxy

Astrophysics

By Tomás Ruiz-Lara

A group of astrophysicists (to which I have the pleasure to belong to), led by scientists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC, Spain), have recently published an article in Nature Astronomy in which the early events shaping the current view of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, have been unveiled . Such discovery has […]

The dark collapse of merging galaxies as the origin of supermassive black holes

The dark collapse of merging galaxies as the origin of supermassive black holes

AstrophysicsCosmologyDIPC Computational Cosmology

By DIPC

I remember very well my physics professor during my first year at university. She stressed the importance of having clear intuitions of what physical terms mean before any mathematics was invoked. ‘Imagine someone drops an 100-gram apple 1 metre above your head’, she would say; ‘the pain you feel is the equivalent of a joule […]

Galaxies with no dark matter?

Galaxies with no dark matter?

Astrophysics

By Tomás Ruiz-Lara

Astrophysicists from Yale University have recently claimed the discovery of a galaxy lacking dark matter . But, to fully understand (and assess) the excitement produced by this paper, let’s review a couple of things regarding dark matter and galaxies. In the current lambda-Cold Dark Matter (ΛCDM) paradigm, the most accepted “theory to model the Universe […]

How black holes affect star formation in massive galaxies

How black holes affect star formation in massive galaxies

Astrophysics

By Tomás Ruiz-Lara

It is commonly said that Astronomy is an observational science. We cannot create and study stars or galaxies in our laboratories and, thus all the information we have from the Universe comes from observations. However, there is another approach: simulations. Astronomers use complex algorithms and computational techniques, in combination with the laws of physics, to […]