Surprisingly chaotic early universe had supersonic turbulence

This is a 3D view of clumps of gas in the center of a dark matter mini-halo. A new study in Taiwan said the chaotic early universe experienced supersonic turbulence in its star-forming clouds. Image via Chen et al./ The Astrophysical Journal Letters (CC BY-SA 4.0).

• What was the early universe like? Astronomers thought the first stars were gigantic and drifted in isolation in relatively calm clouds of gas.
• But the first star-forming clouds were turbulent and clumpy, a new study from researchers in Taiwan suggests. The turbulence reached supersonic speeds. This was only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
• The first stars in the universe were less massive but more numerous than previously thought, the study says.

The early universe

What did the early universe look like, before there were any stars? Researchers at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan have a new answer. On August 5, 2025, the researchers said their cutting-edge simulations show the universe was turbulent, clumpy and supersonic. These were the first star-forming clouds, or early forms of galaxies. The researchers studied a mini-halo of dark matter – 10 million times more massive than our sun – to track the movements of gas within a star-forming cloud.

A dark matter mini-halo is a small, gravitationally bound clump of dark matter that can exist within a larger dark matter halo. A single dark matter halo contains multiple smaller clumps of dark matter, held together by gravity.

Astrophysicist Ke-Jung Chen at ASIAA led the research team. The researchers used the GIZMO simulation code and high-resolution cosmological data from the IllustrisTNG project for their study. GIZMO is a flexible, massively parallel, multi-physics simulation code. The IllustrisTNG project, likewise, is an ongoing series of large, cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation. Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is a field of study that examines the behavior of electrically conducting fluids, like plasmas and liquid metals, in the presence of magnetic fields.

The new findings reveal how chaotic the universe was only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. You might think it was a generally tranquil place, but it was anything but!

The researchers published their peer-reviewed findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 30, 2025.

View larger. | Successive zoom-ins of the dark matter mini-halo the researchers observed in the study. Image via Chen et al./ The Astrophysical Journal Letters (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A turbulent and chaotic early universe

It seems natural to think that before the first stars and galaxies formed, the universe was a rather quiet place. But the new findings from Chen and his team suggest just the opposite.

The first star-forming clouds – not the fully-formed galaxies we see now – were clumpy and surprisingly turbulent. In fact, that turbulence was supersonic, reaching speeds of up to five times faster than the speed of sound. (The speed of sound is about 761 miles per hour or 1,225 kph).

Gas falling into the dark matter mini-halos generated the turbulence. The turbulence was powerful enough to shred the cloud into multiple dense clumps. For the dark matter mini-halo that the researchers studied, one of the resulting clumps was ready to form a new star eight times as massive as the sun.

Chen said:

This is the first time we’ve been able to resolve the full development of turbulence during the earliest phases of the first star formation. It shows that violent, chaotic motions were not only present, they were crucial in shaping the first stars.

Astrophysicist Ke-Jung Chen at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan is the lead author of the new study about the early universe. Image via Ke-Jung Chen.

1st stars less massive but more numerous

Interestingly, the results also suggest that the first stars born in the universe were less massive but more numerous than previously thought. This contradicts earlier star formation models. In that scenario, the first stars were gigantic and solitary. They drifted through much smoother and less chaotic clouds of gas.

The results could also help explain another mystery. That mystery is the lack of chemical fingerprints from the massive first stars – which exploded – in the oldest stars we see today. But astronomers have never confirmed those fingerprints. If such massive stars were rare, as the study suggests, that could explain the lack of leftover chemical signatures.

The findings might also help astronomers better understand other cosmic phenomena as well. This includes early-universe magnetic fields, the formation of black holes and the origin of the chemical elements in the universe. As Chen noted:

This simulation represents a leap forward in connecting large-scale cosmic structure formation with the microscopic processes that govern star birth. By uncovering the role of turbulence, we’re one step closer to understanding how the cosmic dawn began.

Bottom line: In a surprisingly chaotic early universe, the first star-forming clouds experienced supersonic turbulence only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

Via ASIAA

Source: Formation of Supersonic Turbulence in the Primordial Star-forming Cloud

Read more: Surprising galaxy shines through fog of the early universe

Read more: Red monsters were massive galaxies in the early universe

The post Surprisingly chaotic early universe had supersonic turbulence first appeared on EarthSky.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/AjOXrL2

This is a 3D view of clumps of gas in the center of a dark matter mini-halo. A new study in Taiwan said the chaotic early universe experienced supersonic turbulence in its star-forming clouds. Image via Chen et al./ The Astrophysical Journal Letters (CC BY-SA 4.0).

• What was the early universe like? Astronomers thought the first stars were gigantic and drifted in isolation in relatively calm clouds of gas.
• But the first star-forming clouds were turbulent and clumpy, a new study from researchers in Taiwan suggests. The turbulence reached supersonic speeds. This was only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
• The first stars in the universe were less massive but more numerous than previously thought, the study says.

The early universe

What did the early universe look like, before there were any stars? Researchers at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan have a new answer. On August 5, 2025, the researchers said their cutting-edge simulations show the universe was turbulent, clumpy and supersonic. These were the first star-forming clouds, or early forms of galaxies. The researchers studied a mini-halo of dark matter – 10 million times more massive than our sun – to track the movements of gas within a star-forming cloud.

A dark matter mini-halo is a small, gravitationally bound clump of dark matter that can exist within a larger dark matter halo. A single dark matter halo contains multiple smaller clumps of dark matter, held together by gravity.

Astrophysicist Ke-Jung Chen at ASIAA led the research team. The researchers used the GIZMO simulation code and high-resolution cosmological data from the IllustrisTNG project for their study. GIZMO is a flexible, massively parallel, multi-physics simulation code. The IllustrisTNG project, likewise, is an ongoing series of large, cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation. Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is a field of study that examines the behavior of electrically conducting fluids, like plasmas and liquid metals, in the presence of magnetic fields.

The new findings reveal how chaotic the universe was only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. You might think it was a generally tranquil place, but it was anything but!

The researchers published their peer-reviewed findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 30, 2025.

View larger. | Successive zoom-ins of the dark matter mini-halo the researchers observed in the study. Image via Chen et al./ The Astrophysical Journal Letters (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A turbulent and chaotic early universe

It seems natural to think that before the first stars and galaxies formed, the universe was a rather quiet place. But the new findings from Chen and his team suggest just the opposite.

The first star-forming clouds – not the fully-formed galaxies we see now – were clumpy and surprisingly turbulent. In fact, that turbulence was supersonic, reaching speeds of up to five times faster than the speed of sound. (The speed of sound is about 761 miles per hour or 1,225 kph).

Gas falling into the dark matter mini-halos generated the turbulence. The turbulence was powerful enough to shred the cloud into multiple dense clumps. For the dark matter mini-halo that the researchers studied, one of the resulting clumps was ready to form a new star eight times as massive as the sun.

Chen said:

This is the first time we’ve been able to resolve the full development of turbulence during the earliest phases of the first star formation. It shows that violent, chaotic motions were not only present, they were crucial in shaping the first stars.

Astrophysicist Ke-Jung Chen at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taiwan is the lead author of the new study about the early universe. Image via Ke-Jung Chen.

1st stars less massive but more numerous

Interestingly, the results also suggest that the first stars born in the universe were less massive but more numerous than previously thought. This contradicts earlier star formation models. In that scenario, the first stars were gigantic and solitary. They drifted through much smoother and less chaotic clouds of gas.

The results could also help explain another mystery. That mystery is the lack of chemical fingerprints from the massive first stars – which exploded – in the oldest stars we see today. But astronomers have never confirmed those fingerprints. If such massive stars were rare, as the study suggests, that could explain the lack of leftover chemical signatures.

The findings might also help astronomers better understand other cosmic phenomena as well. This includes early-universe magnetic fields, the formation of black holes and the origin of the chemical elements in the universe. As Chen noted:

This simulation represents a leap forward in connecting large-scale cosmic structure formation with the microscopic processes that govern star birth. By uncovering the role of turbulence, we’re one step closer to understanding how the cosmic dawn began.

Bottom line: In a surprisingly chaotic early universe, the first star-forming clouds experienced supersonic turbulence only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

Via ASIAA

Source: Formation of Supersonic Turbulence in the Primordial Star-forming Cloud

Read more: Surprising galaxy shines through fog of the early universe

Read more: Red monsters were massive galaxies in the early universe

The post Surprisingly chaotic early universe had supersonic turbulence first appeared on EarthSky.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/AjOXrL2

Female gorillas favor moving to groups that have gal pals

Here are 3 generations of mountain gorillas. Gutangara is holding her infant daughter (right). Next to her is her adult daughter Shishikara and grandson Kira (not facing the camera). Image via Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund/ University of Zurich.

• Female mountain gorillas prefer joining groups with familiar females they lived with before.
• They avoid groups that include males they grew up with.
• Strong female social bonds influence group choice more than group size or composition.

What influences an animal to join a new social group?

In many animal societies, an individual often leaves its birth group to join another group. Scientists who study social animals have long wondered: How do they decide which group to join? On August 5, 2025, a new study revealed some answers for mountain gorillas. Researchers from the University of Zurich ran statistical analyses on 20 years of gorilla observations. Their results revealed female gorillas preferred to join groups with females they had lived with in the past. And they avoided groups that had males they had grown up with.

Co-author Robin Morrison of the University of Zurich said:

Going into a new group could feel pretty scary, with individuals usually entering at the bottom of the social hierarchy. A familiar female might help reduce this, providing a social ally.

It could also act like a recommendation from a friend – if a female they know has chosen to stay in this group, it could indicate positive things about the group as a whole or the dominant male leading that group.

The researchers published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B on August 6, 2025.

New insights from two decades of gorilla observations

The movement of animals to different social groups is called dispersal. It’s a behavior that’s crucial for the overall health of a population. For instance, it avoids inbreeding within a group. It also increases genetic diversity, cultivates relationships between groups and, in some instances, spreads knowledge and culture.

For this study, the scientists analyzed observations of mountain gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. Trained field teams gathered these observations between 2003 and 2023.

The scientists wanted to know: When a female moves to a new group, why did she pick that group?

The researchers decided to focus on females. That’s because males are harder to track; when they leave a group, they typically live a solitary life before creating their own social group. Females, on the other hand, transfer from one group to another or join a solitary male.

The scientists scrutinized 152 dispersals, made by 56 female mountain gorillas ranging in age from 6 to 43 years. Most moves to another group were undertaken alone, by adults and subadults over 6 years in age. The female gorillas, the researchers found, dispersed on average about 2.8 times to different groups during that 20-year period, with dispersions ranging from 1 to 11.

Female gorillas invest in relationships with other females

Female gorillas were generally not influenced by the size of a group or its demographics. They picked new groups based on the presence of females they had already lived with. Moreover, they were more strongly influenced to join a group if they had previously lived with those females for at least five years and seen them in the last two years.

Morrison added:

Investing in these relationships clearly matters. Spatial separation can be ephemeral with individuals being reunited in the future, easing the difficult process of starting over in a new social group.

Two adult female mountain gorillas resting in close physical contact, with an infant. Image via Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Female gorillas avoid groups with males they grew up with

In addition, females avoided going to groups that had males they grew up with.

The paper’s lead author, Victoire Martignac of the University of Zurich, said:

Because female mountain gorillas do not know with certainty who their fathers are, they might rely on a simple rule like ‘avoid any group with males I grew up with’ as the likelihood of them being related will be higher than with males they did not grow up with.

Because females can disperse multiple times, they will become familiar with many males from different groups. Yet, when choosing their next group, they only avoid males they grew up with. This really tells us that it’s not just who they know that matters but how they know them.

Deep social ties

This study shows how deep wide-ranging social ties affect the dispersal of female gorillas, allowing the formation of new relationships and sustaining current ones. And groups often interact and share overlapping ranges, indicating that relationships spread beyond group boundaries.

Martignac observed:

This mirrors a key aspect of human societies: the existence of strong ties between different social groups. As humans, we’re constantly moving across jobs, cities and social groups. We do it so effortlessly that we forget how unusual this flexibility actually is within the animal kingdom.

This is a reminder of the meaningfulness of social relationships kept across boundaries and how this extended network of relationships might have played a key role in the evolution of larger and more cooperative societies.

An encounter between 2 gorilla groups. This provides an opportunity for females to learn about their neighbors to decide if they want to join them. Image via Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund/ Eurekalert.

Continuing the legacy of Dian Fossey

Since 1967, mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) have been monitored at Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Dian Fossey was a pioneering primatologist who did groundbreaking studies on gorillas and championed their conservation. Tragically, she was murdered in 1985, in her cabin in Rwanda.

Tara Stoinski, a paper co-author and CEO of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, commented on the value of long-term studies:

Being able to study dispersal, to track not only where individuals are from but also where they go, and to construct their whole social history in such detail, is only possible because of decades of data collection. With just a few years and a few groups, all of these inter-group ties and extended networks would be invisible to us. This really highlights the value of long-term observations on multiple groups in better understanding the evolution of sociality.

Bottom line: Female gorillas prefer to join groups with females they had lived with in the past. They also avoided groups with males they grew up with.

Source: Dispersed female networks: female gorillas’ inter-group relationships influence dispersal decisions

Via:
University of Zurich
Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
Eurekalert

Read more: Chimpanzees wear blades of grass in their ears and rears

The post Female gorillas favor moving to groups that have gal pals first appeared on EarthSky.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/9yqvlzK

Here are 3 generations of mountain gorillas. Gutangara is holding her infant daughter (right). Next to her is her adult daughter Shishikara and grandson Kira (not facing the camera). Image via Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund/ University of Zurich.

• Female mountain gorillas prefer joining groups with familiar females they lived with before.
• They avoid groups that include males they grew up with.
• Strong female social bonds influence group choice more than group size or composition.

What influences an animal to join a new social group?

In many animal societies, an individual often leaves its birth group to join another group. Scientists who study social animals have long wondered: How do they decide which group to join? On August 5, 2025, a new study revealed some answers for mountain gorillas. Researchers from the University of Zurich ran statistical analyses on 20 years of gorilla observations. Their results revealed female gorillas preferred to join groups with females they had lived with in the past. And they avoided groups that had males they had grown up with.

Co-author Robin Morrison of the University of Zurich said:

Going into a new group could feel pretty scary, with individuals usually entering at the bottom of the social hierarchy. A familiar female might help reduce this, providing a social ally.

It could also act like a recommendation from a friend – if a female they know has chosen to stay in this group, it could indicate positive things about the group as a whole or the dominant male leading that group.

The researchers published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B on August 6, 2025.

New insights from two decades of gorilla observations

The movement of animals to different social groups is called dispersal. It’s a behavior that’s crucial for the overall health of a population. For instance, it avoids inbreeding within a group. It also increases genetic diversity, cultivates relationships between groups and, in some instances, spreads knowledge and culture.

For this study, the scientists analyzed observations of mountain gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. Trained field teams gathered these observations between 2003 and 2023.

The scientists wanted to know: When a female moves to a new group, why did she pick that group?

The researchers decided to focus on females. That’s because males are harder to track; when they leave a group, they typically live a solitary life before creating their own social group. Females, on the other hand, transfer from one group to another or join a solitary male.

The scientists scrutinized 152 dispersals, made by 56 female mountain gorillas ranging in age from 6 to 43 years. Most moves to another group were undertaken alone, by adults and subadults over 6 years in age. The female gorillas, the researchers found, dispersed on average about 2.8 times to different groups during that 20-year period, with dispersions ranging from 1 to 11.

Female gorillas invest in relationships with other females

Female gorillas were generally not influenced by the size of a group or its demographics. They picked new groups based on the presence of females they had already lived with. Moreover, they were more strongly influenced to join a group if they had previously lived with those females for at least five years and seen them in the last two years.

Morrison added:

Investing in these relationships clearly matters. Spatial separation can be ephemeral with individuals being reunited in the future, easing the difficult process of starting over in a new social group.

Two adult female mountain gorillas resting in close physical contact, with an infant. Image via Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Female gorillas avoid groups with males they grew up with

In addition, females avoided going to groups that had males they grew up with.

The paper’s lead author, Victoire Martignac of the University of Zurich, said:

Because female mountain gorillas do not know with certainty who their fathers are, they might rely on a simple rule like ‘avoid any group with males I grew up with’ as the likelihood of them being related will be higher than with males they did not grow up with.

Because females can disperse multiple times, they will become familiar with many males from different groups. Yet, when choosing their next group, they only avoid males they grew up with. This really tells us that it’s not just who they know that matters but how they know them.

Deep social ties

This study shows how deep wide-ranging social ties affect the dispersal of female gorillas, allowing the formation of new relationships and sustaining current ones. And groups often interact and share overlapping ranges, indicating that relationships spread beyond group boundaries.

Martignac observed:

This mirrors a key aspect of human societies: the existence of strong ties between different social groups. As humans, we’re constantly moving across jobs, cities and social groups. We do it so effortlessly that we forget how unusual this flexibility actually is within the animal kingdom.

This is a reminder of the meaningfulness of social relationships kept across boundaries and how this extended network of relationships might have played a key role in the evolution of larger and more cooperative societies.

An encounter between 2 gorilla groups. This provides an opportunity for females to learn about their neighbors to decide if they want to join them. Image via Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund/ Eurekalert.

Continuing the legacy of Dian Fossey

Since 1967, mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) have been monitored at Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Dian Fossey was a pioneering primatologist who did groundbreaking studies on gorillas and championed their conservation. Tragically, she was murdered in 1985, in her cabin in Rwanda.

Tara Stoinski, a paper co-author and CEO of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, commented on the value of long-term studies:

Being able to study dispersal, to track not only where individuals are from but also where they go, and to construct their whole social history in such detail, is only possible because of decades of data collection. With just a few years and a few groups, all of these inter-group ties and extended networks would be invisible to us. This really highlights the value of long-term observations on multiple groups in better understanding the evolution of sociality.

Bottom line: Female gorillas prefer to join groups with females they had lived with in the past. They also avoided groups with males they grew up with.

Source: Dispersed female networks: female gorillas’ inter-group relationships influence dispersal decisions

Via:
University of Zurich
Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
Eurekalert

Read more: Chimpanzees wear blades of grass in their ears and rears

The post Female gorillas favor moving to groups that have gal pals first appeared on EarthSky.

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Find the Andromeda galaxy using Cassiopeia

Here’s the technique most people use to find the Andromeda galaxy. But be sure you’re looking in a dark sky. Look northward for the M – or W – shaped constellation Cassiopeia the Queen. Then locate the star Schedar in Cassiopeia. It’s the constellation’s brightest star, and it points to the Andromeda galaxy. Chart via EarthSky.

The Andromeda galaxy

The Andromeda galaxy is the nearest large spiral galaxy to our Milky Way. It’s about 2.5 million light-years away, teeming with hundreds of billions of stars. In fact, it’s considered the farthest object you can see with the unaided eye.

Read more: The Andromeda galaxy: All you need to know

Use Cassiopeia to find the Andromeda galaxy

Tonight, if you have a dark sky, try star-hopping to the Andromeda galaxy from the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen. If your sky is dark, you might even spot this hazy patch of light with no optical aid, as the ancient stargazers did before the days of city lights.

But what if you aren’t under a dark sky, and you can’t find the Andromeda galaxy with the eyes alone? Well, some stargazers use binoculars and star-hop to the Andromeda galaxy via this W – or M-shaped constellation.

Cassiopeia appears in the northeast sky at nightfall and early evening, then swings upward as evening deepens into late night. Then in the wee hours before dawn, Cassiopeia is found high over Polaris, the North Star. Note that one half of the W is more deeply notched than the other half. This deeper V is your “arrow” in the sky, pointing to the Andromeda galaxy.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Jan Curtis in Cheyenne, Wyoming, caught Messier 31, the Andromeda galaxy, on September 25, 2024. Jan wrote: “M31 is well-placed this time of year for all-night viewing.” Thank you, Jan!

Finder chart for the Andromeda galaxy

Draw an imaginary line from the star Kappa Cassiopeiae (abbreviated Kappa) through the star Schedar, then go about 3 times the Kappa-Schedar distance to locate the Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31).Image via Wikimedia. Used with permission.

Binoculars enhance the view

Binoculars are an excellent choice for beginners to observe the Andromeda galaxy, because they are so easy to point. As you stand beneath a dark sky, locate the galaxy with your eye first. Then slowly bring the binoculars up to your eyes so that the galaxy comes into binocular view. If that doesn’t work for you, try sweeping the area with your binoculars. Go slowly, and be sure your eyes are dark-adapted. The galaxy will appear as a fuzzy patch to the eye. Naturally, it’ll appear brighter in binoculars. And can you see its central region is brighter and more concentrated?

But remember, with the eye, binoculars, or with a backyard telescope, the Andromeda galaxy won’t look like the images from famous telescopes and observatories. But it will be beautiful. Plus, it’ll take your breath away. And just think, you’re looking at a galaxy over 2 million light-years away. Wow!

Bottom line: You can find the Andromeda galaxy using the constellation Cassiopeia as a guide. Remember, on a dark night, this galaxy will look like a faint smudge of light. And once you’ve found it with the unaided eye or binoculars, look at it with a telescope if you have one.

Read more: Andromeda galaxy: Find it by star-hopping from Pegasus

Read more: Andromeda galaxy stuns in new images and sounds!

The post Find the Andromeda galaxy using Cassiopeia first appeared on EarthSky.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/7MKqNIS

Here’s the technique most people use to find the Andromeda galaxy. But be sure you’re looking in a dark sky. Look northward for the M – or W – shaped constellation Cassiopeia the Queen. Then locate the star Schedar in Cassiopeia. It’s the constellation’s brightest star, and it points to the Andromeda galaxy. Chart via EarthSky.

The Andromeda galaxy

The Andromeda galaxy is the nearest large spiral galaxy to our Milky Way. It’s about 2.5 million light-years away, teeming with hundreds of billions of stars. In fact, it’s considered the farthest object you can see with the unaided eye.

Read more: The Andromeda galaxy: All you need to know

Use Cassiopeia to find the Andromeda galaxy

Tonight, if you have a dark sky, try star-hopping to the Andromeda galaxy from the constellation Cassiopeia the Queen. If your sky is dark, you might even spot this hazy patch of light with no optical aid, as the ancient stargazers did before the days of city lights.

But what if you aren’t under a dark sky, and you can’t find the Andromeda galaxy with the eyes alone? Well, some stargazers use binoculars and star-hop to the Andromeda galaxy via this W – or M-shaped constellation.

Cassiopeia appears in the northeast sky at nightfall and early evening, then swings upward as evening deepens into late night. Then in the wee hours before dawn, Cassiopeia is found high over Polaris, the North Star. Note that one half of the W is more deeply notched than the other half. This deeper V is your “arrow” in the sky, pointing to the Andromeda galaxy.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Jan Curtis in Cheyenne, Wyoming, caught Messier 31, the Andromeda galaxy, on September 25, 2024. Jan wrote: “M31 is well-placed this time of year for all-night viewing.” Thank you, Jan!

Finder chart for the Andromeda galaxy

Draw an imaginary line from the star Kappa Cassiopeiae (abbreviated Kappa) through the star Schedar, then go about 3 times the Kappa-Schedar distance to locate the Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31).Image via Wikimedia. Used with permission.

Binoculars enhance the view

Binoculars are an excellent choice for beginners to observe the Andromeda galaxy, because they are so easy to point. As you stand beneath a dark sky, locate the galaxy with your eye first. Then slowly bring the binoculars up to your eyes so that the galaxy comes into binocular view. If that doesn’t work for you, try sweeping the area with your binoculars. Go slowly, and be sure your eyes are dark-adapted. The galaxy will appear as a fuzzy patch to the eye. Naturally, it’ll appear brighter in binoculars. And can you see its central region is brighter and more concentrated?

But remember, with the eye, binoculars, or with a backyard telescope, the Andromeda galaxy won’t look like the images from famous telescopes and observatories. But it will be beautiful. Plus, it’ll take your breath away. And just think, you’re looking at a galaxy over 2 million light-years away. Wow!

Bottom line: You can find the Andromeda galaxy using the constellation Cassiopeia as a guide. Remember, on a dark night, this galaxy will look like a faint smudge of light. And once you’ve found it with the unaided eye or binoculars, look at it with a telescope if you have one.

Read more: Andromeda galaxy: Find it by star-hopping from Pegasus

Read more: Andromeda galaxy stuns in new images and sounds!

The post Find the Andromeda galaxy using Cassiopeia first appeared on EarthSky.

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Meet intermediate black holes: Between stellar and massive

Artist concept of 2 intermediate black holes merging that generate gravitational waves. Astronomers can track gravitational waves to help them locate smaller, stellar black holes. Image via Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS), CC BY-ND 4.0.

• Intermediate-mass black holes are black holes with masses between stellar black holes and supermassive black holes.
• Intermediate black holes are hard to detect and much rarer, making them mysterious to astronomers.
• Understanding these black holes could help scientists learn how supermassive black holes form and grow.

Meet intermediate black holes, the supermassive black hole’s smaller, much more mysterious cousin

By Bill Smith, Vanderbilt University; Karan Jani, Vanderbilt University, and Krystal Ruiz-Rocha, Vanderbilt University

Black holes are massive, strange and incredibly powerful astronomical objects. Scientists know that supermassive black holes reside in the centers of most galaxies.

And they understand how certain stars form the comparatively smaller stellar mass black holes once they reach the end of their life. Understanding how the smaller stellar mass black holes could form the supermassive black holes helps astronomers learn about how the universe grows and evolves.

But there’s an open question in black hole research: What about black holes with masses in between? These are much harder to find than their stellar and supermassive peers, in size range of a few hundred to a few hundred thousand times the mass of the sun.

We’re a team of astronomers who are searching for these in-between black holes, called intermediate black holes. In a new paper, two of us (Krystal and Karan) teamed up with a group of researchers, including postdoctoral researcher Anjali Yelikar, to look at ripples in space-time to spot a few of these elusive black holes merging.

Take me out to the (gravitational wave) ball game

To gain an intuitive idea of how scientists detect stellar mass black holes, imagine you are at a baseball game where you’re sitting directly behind a big concrete column and can’t see the diamond. Even worse, the crowd is deafeningly loud, so it is also nearly impossible to see or hear the game.

But you’re a scientist, so you take out a high-quality microphone and your computer and write a computer algorithm that can take audio data and separate the crowd’s noise from the “thunk” of a bat hitting a ball.

You start recording, and, with enough practice and updates to your hardware and software, you can begin following the game, getting a sense of when a ball is hit, what direction it goes, when it hits a glove, where runners’ feet pound into the dirt and more.

Admittedly, this is a challenging way to watch a baseball game. But unlike baseball, when observing the universe, sometimes the challenging way is all we have.

This principle of recording sound and using computer algorithms to isolate certain sound waves to determine what they are and where they are coming from is similar to how astronomers like us study gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that allow us to observe objects such as black holes.

Now imagine implementing a different sound algorithm, testing it over several innings of the game and finding a particular hit that no legal combination of bats and balls could have produced. Imagine the data was suggesting that the ball was bigger and heavier than a legal baseball could be. If our paper was about a baseball game instead of gravitational waves, that’s what we would have found.

Listening for gravitational waves

While the baseball recording setup is designed specifically to hear the sounds of a baseball game, scientists use a specialized observatory called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, to observe the “sound” of two black holes merging out in the universe.

The LIGO detector in Hanford, Washington, uses lasers to measure the minuscule stretching of space caused by a gravitational wave. Image via LIGO Laboratory.

Scientists look for the gravitational waves that we can measure using LIGO, which has one of the most mind-bogglingly advanced laser and optics systems ever created.

In each event, two “parent” black holes merge into a single, more massive black hole. Using LIGO data, scientists can figure out where and how far away the merger happened, how massive the parents and resultant black holes are, which direction in the sky the merger happened and other key details.

Most of the parent black holes in merger events originally form from stars that have reached the end of their lives – these are stellar mass black holes.

This artist’s impression shows a binary system containing a stellar mass black hole called IGR J17091-3624. The strong gravity of the black hole, on the left, is pulling gas away from a companion star on the right. Image via NASA/CXC/M.Weiss, CC BY-NC

The black hole mass gap

Not every dying star can create a stellar mass black hole. The ones that do are usually between about 20 to 100 times the mass of the Sun. But due to complicated nuclear physics, really massive stars explode differently and don’t leave behind any remnant, black hole or otherwise.

These physics create what we refer to as the “mass gap” in black holes. A smaller black hole likely formed from a dying star. But we know that a black hole more massive than about 60 times the size of the Sun, while not a supermassive black hole, is still too big to have formed directly from a dying star.

The exact cutoff for the mass gap is still somewhat uncertain, and many astrophysicists are working on more precise measurements. However, we are confident that the mass gaps exist and that we are in the ballpark of the boundary.

We call black holes in this gap lite intermediate mass black holes or lite IMBHs, because they are the least massive black holes that we expect to exist from sources other than stars. They are no longer considered stellar mass black holes.

Calling them “intermediate” also doesn’t quite capture why they are special. They are special because they are much harder to find, astronomers still aren’t sure what astronomical events might create them, and they fill a gap in astronomers’ knowledge of how the universe grows and evolves.

Evidence for IMBHs

In our research, we analyzed 11 black hole merger candidates from LIGO’s third observing run. These candidates were possibly gravitational wave signals that looked promising but still needed more analysis to conclusively confirm.

The data suggested that for those 11 we analyzed, their final post-merger black hole may have been in the lite IMBH range. We found five post-merger black holes that our analysis was 90% confident were lite IMBHs.

Even more critically, we found that one of the events had a parent black hole that was in the mass gap range, and two had parent black holes above the mass gap range. Since we know these black holes can’t come from stars directly, this finding suggests that the universe has some other way of creating black holes this massive.

A parent black hole this massive may already be the product of two other black holes that merged in the past, so observing more IMBHs can help us understand how often black holes are able to “find” each other and merge out in the universe.

LIGO is in the end stages of its fourth observing run. Since this work used data from the third observing run, we are excited to apply our analysis to this new dataset. We expect to continue to search for lite IMBHs, and with this new data we will improve our understanding of how to more confidently “hear” these signals from more massive black holes above all the noise.

Shedding more light on IMBH

We hope this work not only strengthens the case for lite IMBHs in general but helps shed more light on how they are formed.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bottom line: Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are black holes with masses between stellar black holes and supermassive black holes. Understanding them could help scientists learn how supermassive black holes form and grow.

Read more: Meet a monster black hole at the dawn of time

The post Meet intermediate black holes: Between stellar and massive first appeared on EarthSky.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/xvU2qh7

Artist concept of 2 intermediate black holes merging that generate gravitational waves. Astronomers can track gravitational waves to help them locate smaller, stellar black holes. Image via Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS), CC BY-ND 4.0.

• Intermediate-mass black holes are black holes with masses between stellar black holes and supermassive black holes.
• Intermediate black holes are hard to detect and much rarer, making them mysterious to astronomers.
• Understanding these black holes could help scientists learn how supermassive black holes form and grow.

Meet intermediate black holes, the supermassive black hole’s smaller, much more mysterious cousin

By Bill Smith, Vanderbilt University; Karan Jani, Vanderbilt University, and Krystal Ruiz-Rocha, Vanderbilt University

Black holes are massive, strange and incredibly powerful astronomical objects. Scientists know that supermassive black holes reside in the centers of most galaxies.

And they understand how certain stars form the comparatively smaller stellar mass black holes once they reach the end of their life. Understanding how the smaller stellar mass black holes could form the supermassive black holes helps astronomers learn about how the universe grows and evolves.

But there’s an open question in black hole research: What about black holes with masses in between? These are much harder to find than their stellar and supermassive peers, in size range of a few hundred to a few hundred thousand times the mass of the sun.

We’re a team of astronomers who are searching for these in-between black holes, called intermediate black holes. In a new paper, two of us (Krystal and Karan) teamed up with a group of researchers, including postdoctoral researcher Anjali Yelikar, to look at ripples in space-time to spot a few of these elusive black holes merging.

Take me out to the (gravitational wave) ball game

To gain an intuitive idea of how scientists detect stellar mass black holes, imagine you are at a baseball game where you’re sitting directly behind a big concrete column and can’t see the diamond. Even worse, the crowd is deafeningly loud, so it is also nearly impossible to see or hear the game.

But you’re a scientist, so you take out a high-quality microphone and your computer and write a computer algorithm that can take audio data and separate the crowd’s noise from the “thunk” of a bat hitting a ball.

You start recording, and, with enough practice and updates to your hardware and software, you can begin following the game, getting a sense of when a ball is hit, what direction it goes, when it hits a glove, where runners’ feet pound into the dirt and more.

Admittedly, this is a challenging way to watch a baseball game. But unlike baseball, when observing the universe, sometimes the challenging way is all we have.

This principle of recording sound and using computer algorithms to isolate certain sound waves to determine what they are and where they are coming from is similar to how astronomers like us study gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time that allow us to observe objects such as black holes.

Now imagine implementing a different sound algorithm, testing it over several innings of the game and finding a particular hit that no legal combination of bats and balls could have produced. Imagine the data was suggesting that the ball was bigger and heavier than a legal baseball could be. If our paper was about a baseball game instead of gravitational waves, that’s what we would have found.

Listening for gravitational waves

While the baseball recording setup is designed specifically to hear the sounds of a baseball game, scientists use a specialized observatory called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, to observe the “sound” of two black holes merging out in the universe.

The LIGO detector in Hanford, Washington, uses lasers to measure the minuscule stretching of space caused by a gravitational wave. Image via LIGO Laboratory.

Scientists look for the gravitational waves that we can measure using LIGO, which has one of the most mind-bogglingly advanced laser and optics systems ever created.

In each event, two “parent” black holes merge into a single, more massive black hole. Using LIGO data, scientists can figure out where and how far away the merger happened, how massive the parents and resultant black holes are, which direction in the sky the merger happened and other key details.

Most of the parent black holes in merger events originally form from stars that have reached the end of their lives – these are stellar mass black holes.

This artist’s impression shows a binary system containing a stellar mass black hole called IGR J17091-3624. The strong gravity of the black hole, on the left, is pulling gas away from a companion star on the right. Image via NASA/CXC/M.Weiss, CC BY-NC

The black hole mass gap

Not every dying star can create a stellar mass black hole. The ones that do are usually between about 20 to 100 times the mass of the Sun. But due to complicated nuclear physics, really massive stars explode differently and don’t leave behind any remnant, black hole or otherwise.

These physics create what we refer to as the “mass gap” in black holes. A smaller black hole likely formed from a dying star. But we know that a black hole more massive than about 60 times the size of the Sun, while not a supermassive black hole, is still too big to have formed directly from a dying star.

The exact cutoff for the mass gap is still somewhat uncertain, and many astrophysicists are working on more precise measurements. However, we are confident that the mass gaps exist and that we are in the ballpark of the boundary.

We call black holes in this gap lite intermediate mass black holes or lite IMBHs, because they are the least massive black holes that we expect to exist from sources other than stars. They are no longer considered stellar mass black holes.

Calling them “intermediate” also doesn’t quite capture why they are special. They are special because they are much harder to find, astronomers still aren’t sure what astronomical events might create them, and they fill a gap in astronomers’ knowledge of how the universe grows and evolves.

Evidence for IMBHs

In our research, we analyzed 11 black hole merger candidates from LIGO’s third observing run. These candidates were possibly gravitational wave signals that looked promising but still needed more analysis to conclusively confirm.

The data suggested that for those 11 we analyzed, their final post-merger black hole may have been in the lite IMBH range. We found five post-merger black holes that our analysis was 90% confident were lite IMBHs.

Even more critically, we found that one of the events had a parent black hole that was in the mass gap range, and two had parent black holes above the mass gap range. Since we know these black holes can’t come from stars directly, this finding suggests that the universe has some other way of creating black holes this massive.

A parent black hole this massive may already be the product of two other black holes that merged in the past, so observing more IMBHs can help us understand how often black holes are able to “find” each other and merge out in the universe.

LIGO is in the end stages of its fourth observing run. Since this work used data from the third observing run, we are excited to apply our analysis to this new dataset. We expect to continue to search for lite IMBHs, and with this new data we will improve our understanding of how to more confidently “hear” these signals from more massive black holes above all the noise.

Shedding more light on IMBH

We hope this work not only strengthens the case for lite IMBHs in general but helps shed more light on how they are formed.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bottom line: Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are black holes with masses between stellar black holes and supermassive black holes. Understanding them could help scientists learn how supermassive black holes form and grow.

Read more: Meet a monster black hole at the dawn of time

The post Meet intermediate black holes: Between stellar and massive first appeared on EarthSky.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/xvU2qh7

9 mind-blowing space facts that will shock you

Much about our universe is incredible, but here are 9 mind-blowing space facts you might not have known about the cosmos. Image via Igor Cibulsky/ Pexels.

9 mind-blowing space facts that will shock you

When it comes down to it, almost everything about space is amazing. The billion-year lifespans of some stars, the enormousness of our universe, the bizarre behavior of black holes … they can all leave you scratching your head. Here are 9 truly mind-blowing facts about our Earth, sun, solar system and universe that will make you a hit at your next dinner party.

1. There might be dinosaur fossils on the moon

Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid hurtled toward Earth. When it hit, it helped bring about a mass extinction and the end of the dinosaurs. By this time, dinosaurs had already been around for some 200 million years. So, many generations had already died and their bones had become fossilized in earthly rocks. When the dinosaur-killing asteroid hit Earth, it impacted so violently that some of the rocks jettisoned from the impact flew into space. And it’s possible some of those rocks with fossilized dinosaurs might have landed on the moon. Therefore, there could be rocks with dinosaur fossils on the moon.

Source: Astro Alexandra

Artist’s concept of an asteroid striking Earth during the age of dinosaurs. The impact might have jettisoned dinosaur fossils to the moon. Image via Britannica.com/ NASA/ Don Davis.

2. All the planets could fit between Earth and the moon

The distance between objects in space is vast. As an example of this, if you took all the other planets in the solar system, you could pack them tightly between Earth and the moon. There are a couple of caveats here. First, we are stacking the planets pole to pole so we don’t have to worry about Saturn’s rings. Second, we’re performing this feat during apogee, or when the moon is farthest away from Earth in its elliptical orbit. Lastly, we’re not including Pluto because it’s not a planet, despite what you may have learned as a kid.

Source: Phil Plait for SyFy

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission caught this view of Earth (left) and the moon (right). Now picture Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune wedged between them. Image via NASA.

3. If we could hear the sun, it would be deafening

Sounds waves can’t travel through the vacuum of space. And while it might seem charming to not only see but be able to hear the universe around us, mostly what we’d hear is the sound of the sun screaming. Because – if sound waves could travel through space – we’d hear the sun roaring. That roar would pound our ears at about 100 decibels. That’s like standing next to Niagara Falls all day long. Fortunately, as night falls and we turn away from the sun, we’d get a little bit of peace and quiet.

Source: Astronomy.com

A view of our active sun from August 6-8. 2025. Read the daily sun news here. Image via NASA/SDO.

4. That roar would linger

And – if you could hear the sun and it suddenly disappeared – the light from it would be gone in 8 minutes but the sound would continue for 13 years. Light traveling from the sun to Earth takes 8 minutes to reach us. But light is more than 850,000 times faster than sound. So if sound could similarly travel through space, what we hear at this moment is really closer to 13 years old. So if the sun winked out, the last rays of light would end in about 8 minutes, but the roaring would continue for 13 years.

Source: World Atlas

5. The dinosaurs didn’t see the same constellations we do

Stars are born, move through space, evolve and die. Some of the stars we see now didn’t exist during the Age of Dinosaurs, from about 252 million to 66 million years ago. So when the dinosaurs looked up at the night sky, they saw different stars and constellations than we see now. Consider the constellation Orion the Hunter. Its bright blue star denoting one knee is Rigel, which is just 8 million years old. And its famous red star Betelgeuse marking Orion’s shoulder is only 10 million years old. The dinosaurs did not see the figure or Orion, nor the Big Dipper, nor the Teapot of Sagittarius. But also, our solar system is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy. And during the height of the dinosaurs, Earth was on the other side of the galaxy than it is now.

Source: Adler Planetarium

6. Galactic collision doesn’t mean stars crash, too

You might have already guessed from mind-blowing fact number two, but there is a lot of space in space. In fact, there is so much space between things in our universe that even though the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might collide and merge one day, it’s unlikely that any of its planets or stars will collide.

Source: EarthSky

This image represents Earth’s night sky in 3.75 billion years. The Andromeda galaxy (left) will fill our field of view as it heads toward a collision with our Milky Way galaxy. Image via NASA/ ESA/ Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI/ T. Hallas/ A. Mellinger.

7. There are countless galaxies packed into every patch of sky

If you’ve ever taken time to gaze at some of the deep-field images from our best telescopes, you already know the universe is absolutely packed with galaxies. From the Hubble Ultra Deep Field to the James Webb Space Telescope’s view of distant galaxies to the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s look at our distant universe, galaxies are packed in everywhere we look. Brian Greene is a theoretical physicist at Columbia University and author of Until the End of Time. He said:

Hold your thumb at arm’s length against the night sky, and it will cover more than 10 million galaxies in the observable universe.

Source: Brain Greene

Here’s a small section of NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s total view of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. Visible are 2 prominent spiral galaxies (lower right), 3 merging galaxies (upper right), several groups of distant galaxies, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and more. Image via NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

8. The observable universe is wider than light has had time to travel

So what is the observable universe? It’s all the light we can see in the universe. And although light is speedy, it still has its limits. We can only see the light that has had time to travel to Earth since the beginning of the universe. So while the universe might be infinite, our view of it is not. Our view of the universe stretches in every direction around us for about 46.5 billion light-years. Therefore, the total width of the observable universe from one side of us to the other is 93 billion light-years wide. But we measure our universe at nearly 14 billion years old, starting with the Big Bang. So how is the observable universe wider than its age would suggest? It’s because the universe is expanding. So while light from the farthest observed objects has traveled for 13.8 billion years, the space they are in has also expanded, resulting in a much larger observable universe.

Source: Astronomy.com

9. Most of the universe will move beyond our sight

If we look far, far into the future, eventually the view we have from the Milky Way galaxy will become limited by the expanding universe. Astronomers call the boundary of our observable universe the cosmic event horizon. And because of the finite speed of light travel, we can never see beyond it. So, eventually, as the space between objects in the universe expands, everything that is not gravitationally bound to us will be beyond our sight. And, in fact, the expansion of the universe has been speeding up for about the last 5 billion years. As Katie Mack explains in her book The End of Everything:

As the expansion of the universe accelerates, galaxies that are currently inside our Hubble radius [14 billion light-years away] will be outside it. Eventually, no galaxies outside our Local Group will be visible.

Source: Katie Mack

So distant galaxies will eventually become lost to us. That means we better learn to love our neighbors.

Bottom line: Read nine mind-blowing space facts that will surprise and delight you. You’ll be a hit at your next dinner party!

Read our daily sun news

New map of Andromeda galaxy and its colossal ecosystem

The post 9 mind-blowing space facts that will shock you first appeared on EarthSky.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/o9r7WlM

Much about our universe is incredible, but here are 9 mind-blowing space facts you might not have known about the cosmos. Image via Igor Cibulsky/ Pexels.

9 mind-blowing space facts that will shock you

When it comes down to it, almost everything about space is amazing. The billion-year lifespans of some stars, the enormousness of our universe, the bizarre behavior of black holes … they can all leave you scratching your head. Here are 9 truly mind-blowing facts about our Earth, sun, solar system and universe that will make you a hit at your next dinner party.

1. There might be dinosaur fossils on the moon

Some 65 million years ago, an asteroid hurtled toward Earth. When it hit, it helped bring about a mass extinction and the end of the dinosaurs. By this time, dinosaurs had already been around for some 200 million years. So, many generations had already died and their bones had become fossilized in earthly rocks. When the dinosaur-killing asteroid hit Earth, it impacted so violently that some of the rocks jettisoned from the impact flew into space. And it’s possible some of those rocks with fossilized dinosaurs might have landed on the moon. Therefore, there could be rocks with dinosaur fossils on the moon.

Source: Astro Alexandra

Artist’s concept of an asteroid striking Earth during the age of dinosaurs. The impact might have jettisoned dinosaur fossils to the moon. Image via Britannica.com/ NASA/ Don Davis.

2. All the planets could fit between Earth and the moon

The distance between objects in space is vast. As an example of this, if you took all the other planets in the solar system, you could pack them tightly between Earth and the moon. There are a couple of caveats here. First, we are stacking the planets pole to pole so we don’t have to worry about Saturn’s rings. Second, we’re performing this feat during apogee, or when the moon is farthest away from Earth in its elliptical orbit. Lastly, we’re not including Pluto because it’s not a planet, despite what you may have learned as a kid.

Source: Phil Plait for SyFy

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission caught this view of Earth (left) and the moon (right). Now picture Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune wedged between them. Image via NASA.

3. If we could hear the sun, it would be deafening

Sounds waves can’t travel through the vacuum of space. And while it might seem charming to not only see but be able to hear the universe around us, mostly what we’d hear is the sound of the sun screaming. Because – if sound waves could travel through space – we’d hear the sun roaring. That roar would pound our ears at about 100 decibels. That’s like standing next to Niagara Falls all day long. Fortunately, as night falls and we turn away from the sun, we’d get a little bit of peace and quiet.

Source: Astronomy.com

A view of our active sun from August 6-8. 2025. Read the daily sun news here. Image via NASA/SDO.

4. That roar would linger

And – if you could hear the sun and it suddenly disappeared – the light from it would be gone in 8 minutes but the sound would continue for 13 years. Light traveling from the sun to Earth takes 8 minutes to reach us. But light is more than 850,000 times faster than sound. So if sound could similarly travel through space, what we hear at this moment is really closer to 13 years old. So if the sun winked out, the last rays of light would end in about 8 minutes, but the roaring would continue for 13 years.

Source: World Atlas

5. The dinosaurs didn’t see the same constellations we do

Stars are born, move through space, evolve and die. Some of the stars we see now didn’t exist during the Age of Dinosaurs, from about 252 million to 66 million years ago. So when the dinosaurs looked up at the night sky, they saw different stars and constellations than we see now. Consider the constellation Orion the Hunter. Its bright blue star denoting one knee is Rigel, which is just 8 million years old. And its famous red star Betelgeuse marking Orion’s shoulder is only 10 million years old. The dinosaurs did not see the figure or Orion, nor the Big Dipper, nor the Teapot of Sagittarius. But also, our solar system is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy. And during the height of the dinosaurs, Earth was on the other side of the galaxy than it is now.

Source: Adler Planetarium

6. Galactic collision doesn’t mean stars crash, too

You might have already guessed from mind-blowing fact number two, but there is a lot of space in space. In fact, there is so much space between things in our universe that even though the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might collide and merge one day, it’s unlikely that any of its planets or stars will collide.

Source: EarthSky

This image represents Earth’s night sky in 3.75 billion years. The Andromeda galaxy (left) will fill our field of view as it heads toward a collision with our Milky Way galaxy. Image via NASA/ ESA/ Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI/ T. Hallas/ A. Mellinger.

7. There are countless galaxies packed into every patch of sky

If you’ve ever taken time to gaze at some of the deep-field images from our best telescopes, you already know the universe is absolutely packed with galaxies. From the Hubble Ultra Deep Field to the James Webb Space Telescope’s view of distant galaxies to the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s look at our distant universe, galaxies are packed in everywhere we look. Brian Greene is a theoretical physicist at Columbia University and author of Until the End of Time. He said:

Hold your thumb at arm’s length against the night sky, and it will cover more than 10 million galaxies in the observable universe.

Source: Brain Greene

Here’s a small section of NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s total view of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. Visible are 2 prominent spiral galaxies (lower right), 3 merging galaxies (upper right), several groups of distant galaxies, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and more. Image via NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

8. The observable universe is wider than light has had time to travel

So what is the observable universe? It’s all the light we can see in the universe. And although light is speedy, it still has its limits. We can only see the light that has had time to travel to Earth since the beginning of the universe. So while the universe might be infinite, our view of it is not. Our view of the universe stretches in every direction around us for about 46.5 billion light-years. Therefore, the total width of the observable universe from one side of us to the other is 93 billion light-years wide. But we measure our universe at nearly 14 billion years old, starting with the Big Bang. So how is the observable universe wider than its age would suggest? It’s because the universe is expanding. So while light from the farthest observed objects has traveled for 13.8 billion years, the space they are in has also expanded, resulting in a much larger observable universe.

Source: Astronomy.com

9. Most of the universe will move beyond our sight

If we look far, far into the future, eventually the view we have from the Milky Way galaxy will become limited by the expanding universe. Astronomers call the boundary of our observable universe the cosmic event horizon. And because of the finite speed of light travel, we can never see beyond it. So, eventually, as the space between objects in the universe expands, everything that is not gravitationally bound to us will be beyond our sight. And, in fact, the expansion of the universe has been speeding up for about the last 5 billion years. As Katie Mack explains in her book The End of Everything:

As the expansion of the universe accelerates, galaxies that are currently inside our Hubble radius [14 billion light-years away] will be outside it. Eventually, no galaxies outside our Local Group will be visible.

Source: Katie Mack

So distant galaxies will eventually become lost to us. That means we better learn to love our neighbors.

Bottom line: Read nine mind-blowing space facts that will surprise and delight you. You’ll be a hit at your next dinner party!

Read our daily sun news

New map of Andromeda galaxy and its colossal ecosystem

The post 9 mind-blowing space facts that will shock you first appeared on EarthSky.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/o9r7WlM

Thuban. was the North Star for the ancient Egypt

The Great Pyramid of Giza. Egyptologists believe that it was built as a tomb for a 4th Dynasty Egyptian pharaoh, Khufu, in the 26th century BC. During the reign of Khufu, Thuban was the North Star aka the Pole Star. Image via Nina Aldin Thune/ Wikimedia Commons (CC 3.0).

Thuban isn’t a particularly bright star, but it holds a special place in the hearts of stargazers. That’s because Thuban – a relatively inconspicuous star in the constellation Draco the Dragon – was the Pole Star some 5,000 years ago, when the Egyptians were building the pyramids.

And there’s evidence that Thuban helped guide the ancient pyramid-builders. Some features inside the pyramids do align with the stars.

But while the pyramids appear to us as an enduring monument of ancient Egypt. … the sky slowly changes. And, because Earth’s axis wobbles slowly over 26,000 years, the identity of our Pole Star changes. So Thuban is no longer our Pole Star.

But it’ll be the Pole Star again some 20,000 years from now. What will humanity be doing then?

The pyramids and Thuban

Among the many mysteries surrounding Egypt’s pyramids are the so-called “air shafts” in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Originally, experts believed these narrow passageways were for ventilation while building the pyramids. In the 1960s, though, we realized the air shafts aligned with stars or areas of sky as the sky appeared for the pyramids’ builders 5,000 years ago.

One of the “air shafts” follows a crooked course through the Great Pyramid, so you couldn’t have sighted stars through it. To this day, the purpose of these passageways inside the Great Pyramid isn’t clear, although they might have been connected to rituals associated with the king’s ascension to the heavens. Whatever their purpose, the Great Pyramid of Giza reveals that its builders knew the starry skies intimately.

They surely knew Thuban was their Pole Star, the point around which the heavens appeared to turn.

The 26,000-year cycle of precession causes Earth’s north pole to trace out a counterclockwise circle among the stars. Thus the position of the north celestial pole – the point in the sky directly above Earth’s north pole – continually shifts. The bright star closest to the north celestial pole, at any given time, is what we call the North Star. Thuban was the North Star some 5,000 years ago. Image via Wikimedia. Used with permission.

Past and future Pole Stars

Indeed, Thuban at times made a better Pole Star than our modern Polaris. Various sources claim that Thuban almost exactly pinpointed the position of the north celestial pole in the year 2787 BCE.

Meanwhile, our modern Polaris – which many centuries ago was an ordinary star known by the name Phoenice – won’t match Thuban’s precision when it most closely aligns with the north celestial pole on March 24, 2100. Polaris will be 27′ 09″ (0.4525 degrees) from the north celestial pole at that time (a little less than the angular diameter of the moon when at its farthest from Earth), according to the computational wizard Jean Meeus.

The Northern Hemisphere also has had long stretches without a Pole Star. After the reign of Thuban but before that of Polaris, Kochab in the Little Dipper served as a rather poor Pole Star in 1100 BCE. Kochab was only half again as close to the north celestial pole as it is today.

Looking into the future, Errai will become the northern Pole Star around 4000 CE, and Alderamin will take its turn around 7500 CE.

Earth never changes its axial tilt, but its axis does point at different Pole Stars. Many compare this movement of Earth to the wobble of a spinning top before it falls. Animation via Astro Bob. Used with permission.

Why does the identity of the Pole Star keep changing?

Earth’s axis maintains a tilt that varies from about 22 degrees to 24 degrees from perpendicular every 41,000 years with respect to the plane of our orbit around the sun. But, over a period of 26,000 years, Earth’s axis points out at different Pole Stars, tracing out a slow circle in the heavens. Whichever star lies on or near that circle will eventually be a Pole Star.

Many compare this motion of Earth – called precession or sometimes precession of the equinoxes – to that which you sometimes see in a spinning top wobbling before it falls.

The 26,000-year cycle of precession. It’s caused by a wobble of Earth. Over this cycle, Earth’s northern axis can be imagined to trace out a circle on the celestial sphere. In reality, precession causes Earth’s northern axis to point to different stars. Thus, the identity of Earth’s Pole Star, or North Star, shifts over the cycle of 26,000 years. Image via Tfr000/ Wikimedia Commons. Used with permission.

How to see Thuban

Thuban is part of the constellation Draco the Dragon. Although it’s not a super bright star, it is bright enough to see with relative ease on a dark night.

Most people star-hop to Thuban from the Big and Little Dippers.

Orientation of Dippers on July and August evenings. Note that Polaris is the end star in the handle of the Little Dipper. The star Thuban, in the constellation Draco, lies between the 2 Dippers. Chart via EarthSky.

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Bottom line: The North Star changes over time. Thuban was the Pole Star some 5,000 years ago, when the Egyptians were building the pyramids.

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The Great Pyramid of Giza. Egyptologists believe that it was built as a tomb for a 4th Dynasty Egyptian pharaoh, Khufu, in the 26th century BC. During the reign of Khufu, Thuban was the North Star aka the Pole Star. Image via Nina Aldin Thune/ Wikimedia Commons (CC 3.0).

Thuban isn’t a particularly bright star, but it holds a special place in the hearts of stargazers. That’s because Thuban – a relatively inconspicuous star in the constellation Draco the Dragon – was the Pole Star some 5,000 years ago, when the Egyptians were building the pyramids.

And there’s evidence that Thuban helped guide the ancient pyramid-builders. Some features inside the pyramids do align with the stars.

But while the pyramids appear to us as an enduring monument of ancient Egypt. … the sky slowly changes. And, because Earth’s axis wobbles slowly over 26,000 years, the identity of our Pole Star changes. So Thuban is no longer our Pole Star.

But it’ll be the Pole Star again some 20,000 years from now. What will humanity be doing then?

The pyramids and Thuban

Among the many mysteries surrounding Egypt’s pyramids are the so-called “air shafts” in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Originally, experts believed these narrow passageways were for ventilation while building the pyramids. In the 1960s, though, we realized the air shafts aligned with stars or areas of sky as the sky appeared for the pyramids’ builders 5,000 years ago.

One of the “air shafts” follows a crooked course through the Great Pyramid, so you couldn’t have sighted stars through it. To this day, the purpose of these passageways inside the Great Pyramid isn’t clear, although they might have been connected to rituals associated with the king’s ascension to the heavens. Whatever their purpose, the Great Pyramid of Giza reveals that its builders knew the starry skies intimately.

They surely knew Thuban was their Pole Star, the point around which the heavens appeared to turn.

The 26,000-year cycle of precession causes Earth’s north pole to trace out a counterclockwise circle among the stars. Thus the position of the north celestial pole – the point in the sky directly above Earth’s north pole – continually shifts. The bright star closest to the north celestial pole, at any given time, is what we call the North Star. Thuban was the North Star some 5,000 years ago. Image via Wikimedia. Used with permission.

Past and future Pole Stars

Indeed, Thuban at times made a better Pole Star than our modern Polaris. Various sources claim that Thuban almost exactly pinpointed the position of the north celestial pole in the year 2787 BCE.

Meanwhile, our modern Polaris – which many centuries ago was an ordinary star known by the name Phoenice – won’t match Thuban’s precision when it most closely aligns with the north celestial pole on March 24, 2100. Polaris will be 27′ 09″ (0.4525 degrees) from the north celestial pole at that time (a little less than the angular diameter of the moon when at its farthest from Earth), according to the computational wizard Jean Meeus.

The Northern Hemisphere also has had long stretches without a Pole Star. After the reign of Thuban but before that of Polaris, Kochab in the Little Dipper served as a rather poor Pole Star in 1100 BCE. Kochab was only half again as close to the north celestial pole as it is today.

Looking into the future, Errai will become the northern Pole Star around 4000 CE, and Alderamin will take its turn around 7500 CE.

Earth never changes its axial tilt, but its axis does point at different Pole Stars. Many compare this movement of Earth to the wobble of a spinning top before it falls. Animation via Astro Bob. Used with permission.

Why does the identity of the Pole Star keep changing?

Earth’s axis maintains a tilt that varies from about 22 degrees to 24 degrees from perpendicular every 41,000 years with respect to the plane of our orbit around the sun. But, over a period of 26,000 years, Earth’s axis points out at different Pole Stars, tracing out a slow circle in the heavens. Whichever star lies on or near that circle will eventually be a Pole Star.

Many compare this motion of Earth – called precession or sometimes precession of the equinoxes – to that which you sometimes see in a spinning top wobbling before it falls.

The 26,000-year cycle of precession. It’s caused by a wobble of Earth. Over this cycle, Earth’s northern axis can be imagined to trace out a circle on the celestial sphere. In reality, precession causes Earth’s northern axis to point to different stars. Thus, the identity of Earth’s Pole Star, or North Star, shifts over the cycle of 26,000 years. Image via Tfr000/ Wikimedia Commons. Used with permission.

How to see Thuban

Thuban is part of the constellation Draco the Dragon. Although it’s not a super bright star, it is bright enough to see with relative ease on a dark night.

Most people star-hop to Thuban from the Big and Little Dippers.

Orientation of Dippers on July and August evenings. Note that Polaris is the end star in the handle of the Little Dipper. The star Thuban, in the constellation Draco, lies between the 2 Dippers. Chart via EarthSky.

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Bottom line: The North Star changes over time. Thuban was the Pole Star some 5,000 years ago, when the Egyptians were building the pyramids.

The post Thuban. was the North Star for the ancient Egypt first appeared on EarthSky.

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Did alcohol and evolution go hand in hand for humanity?

Are alcohol and evolution related? Millions of years ago, animals that would eventually evolve into modern humanity ate enough fermented fruit that it altered our genome. And the adaptation stuck. Humans, chimps, bonobos and gorillas can metabolize booze 40 times better than other primates. A team of anthropologists and biologists led by Nathaniel Dominy of Dartmouth University wonder if our love of social drinking led us to develop agriculture and even civilization just so we could brew beer. Dominy joins EarthSky’s Dave Adalian at 12:15 p.m. CDT (17:15 UTC) today to talk about our possibly alcohol-fueled evolution. Watch here or on YouTube.

Alcohol and evolution

Humans and some other great apes share an unusual adaptation: They can metabolize ethyl alcohol – the intoxicating ingredient in beer, wine and cocktail spirits – 40 times more efficiently than other primates.

This genetic change – called the A294V mutation by scientists – gave the last common ancestor of African apes and humans two things: the ability to consume fermented fruits, and a reason to gather in large groups in a relaxed atmosphere. That’s the conclusion of a recently published paper by researchers from the University of St Andrews and Dartmouth College.

The ancient mutation, they said, might be the driving force behind agriculture and civilization:

The significance of this mutation is rather profound, representing, potentially, a signal moment in the history of life on Earth. If the early domestication of cereals revolved around making beer instead of bread, then the A294V mutation was the preadaptation that fueled the Neolithic Revolution and everything that followed.

Chimpanzees, humanity’s closest relatives, share a meal of fermented fruit. A new paper suggests alcohol and evolution might have gone hand in hand for humanity. Image via Anna Bowland/ Cantanhez Chimpanzee Project/ University of Exeter.

Why humans and apes can still metabolize booze

The question then becomes one of how the mutation for more effectively metabolizing alcohol survived to the present day. The key, the authors say, was a matter of taste, ease and safety:

The quality, availability, and accessibility of fruit are integral to almost every aspect of ape biology and behavior, and it is practically axiomatic to describe apes as frugivores. It is a classification that rings true even when fruit is scarce, because all apes show a categorical preference for ripening fruit when available …

But that doesn’t explain why large African apes would eat fallen fruit on the ground when there’s still fruit on the trees. Asian apes and most monkeys, by contrast, feed almost exclusively on fruit by climbing up to get it. The authors cite an important previous anthropological work from 2015 to explain why there’s a difference.

Past research on alcohol and evolution

The older work demonstrated gorillas, chimps and bonobos (and humans, too) inherited the critical ability to metabolize booze from a common ancestor that developed it roughly 10 million years ago. That study also speculated that previously these distant ancestors of modern animals starting spending more of their time on the ground during the Middle Miocene period 11.4 million or more years ago, and they simply ran into more fallen fruit. When the mutation came along, it made it possible for animals who had it to take advantage of fruit that was toxic to others. And so they thrived.

The study’s authors put these facts together and reasonably assume that eating perfectly edible fallen fruit was far less dangerous and tiring – and just as rewarding – as trying to get at the fresher stuff. And so early ancestors of humans and modern apes probably relaxed together under fruit trees, eating slightly alcoholic windfall and socializing.

Research shows a direct correlation between possession of the gene for enhanced alcohol metabolism and the amount of fallen fruit consumed by great apes. Those with the mutation consume the fermented fruits, while those without it avoid them. Image via Dominy et al./ Oxford University Press/ American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Let the feasting begin

And so happy hour was born somewhere under the boughs of ancient groves where the ground was covered with overripe fruit. It is an idea that seems to make sense given the circumstances of our evolution. But where is the evidence it’s true? The obvious model is the behavior of modern apes. They should still be carrying on this behavior. But the 2025 paper’s authors point out no one had ever checked:

It is a compelling idea that suffers from two problems: the ethanol exposure of African apes is all but unknown, and primatologists seldom differentiate fallen fruits from arborescent ones in their field notes, meaning we have little sense of how often apes consume fruits from the ground. In fact, we don’t even have a word for this behavior.

Lead author Nathaniel Dominy pointed out other anthropologists have used the drunken monkey hypothesis to encapsulate the idea of primates consuming fermented fruit. But, he said, that is likely misleading. His team instead picked an obscure English word – scrumping – to describe the behavior:

Scrumping is the act of gathering – or sometimes stealing – windfallen apples and other fruit. It is an English derivation of the Middle Low German word schrimpen (“shriveled, shrunken”), a medieval noun for describing overripe or fermented fruit. It is an obscure origin perhaps, but its legacy echoes in many British pubs today, where patrons can order scrumpy, a cloudy apple cider with an alcohol by volume content that ranges between 6% and 9%. The adjective scrumptious (something delicious, alluring) alludes to fruit and temptation, a frequent motif in Gothic art and architecture. Indeed, the Gothic tradition recognized scrumping as an essential behavior of nonhuman primates.

Scrumping among the primates

With this new term, they had a way to communicate distinctly with field researchers about exactly what data they needed:

Equipped with this word, we were curious to quantify the frequency of scrumping among great apes. We surveyed dietary reports for orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei), and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), cross-referencing fruit-feeding observations with the vertical height of the focal animal or group.

What they found was definitive:

African apes are regular scrumpers …

Editor’s Note: A scrumper is British slang for someone, often a young person, who steals fruit, particularly apples, from a garden or orchard.

Gothic tradition recognized scrumping as nonhuman primate behavior. Here, monkeys in Gothic art are shown as the embodiment of curiosity and temptation. At right, Justice conquers a monkey (inscription curiositas, “curiosity”). Bottom left: a bronze plaquette with gilding titled Adam and Eve, dated 1514 by Ludwig Krug. Right: panel painting titled Earthly Paradise with the Fall of Man, dated 1615 by Peter Paul Rubens (the figures) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (the flora and fauna, including two monkeys resembling Cercocebus torquatus on the left and Cercopithecus petaurista on the right). Image via Dominy et al./ Oxford University Press/ American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Did booze really lead to modern civilization?

And the question of whether alcohol is something apes seek seems to have been answered by another paper on fermented fruit consumption in modern chimps. In April of this year, researchers from the University of Exeter provided evidence of chimps sharing fermented breadfruit on a regular basis. They wonder if the practice might be significant to fostering socialization:

For humans, we know that drinking alcohol leads to a release of dopamine and endorphins, and resulting feelings of happiness and relaxation. We also know that sharing alcohol – including through traditions such as feasting – helps to form and strengthen social bonds. So – now we know that wild chimpanzees are eating and sharing ethanolic fruits – the question is: could they be getting similar benefits?

Dominy and his co-authors conclude their paper with reasons why scrumping was greatly beneficial. It was safer to stay on the ground, and more importantly gave them a feeding advantage among greedy adversaries:

Arboreal monkeys are unapologetic consumers of unripe fruits, exploiting a critical resource during an early stage of development. Such temporal competition is thought to have exerted a strong selective pressure on the cognitive faculties of apes, including tool-use and careful route-planning. Scrumping with a turbocharged ADH4 may have given African apes a similar advantage, yielding access to fruit resources beyond the temporal window preferred by monkeys.

The social aspect, however, may have been even more important for humans:

Co-feeding, and even proactive sharing of high-value foods, including fruit, is common among apes, whereas human co-consumption of alcohol is often integral to feasting and sacred rituals, events that produce and reinforce community identity and cohesion. Is it possible to trace the roots of these human foodways to social scrumping of fermented fruits in the rainforests of Africa?

The research is ongoing to bolster the idea. The next area to explore is finding out how scrumping and the sharing of fermented fruit influences ape society, and thus perhaps influenced our own. Dominy and his team know what questions they must answer:

How does sharing fermented fruits shape the formation and maintenance of social bonds? Does sharing produce social capital for specific individuals, affecting power structures and social relationships? Could regular scrumping influence long-term group stability?

The connection between scrumping fermented fruit and civilization is tenuous, but the evidence is slowly mounting in its favor. As the paper concludes, their new approach – and their new anthropological term, scrumping – may eventually yield a more definitive answer:

Connecting these dots may seem far-fetched, but now we have a word to consider the possibility.

Bottom line: The ability to tolerate alcoholic fruit may have encouraged early hominid socialization. Later, humanity’s love of alcohol may even have driven the rise of agriculture and civilization.

Read more: Microbe-brewery: Favorite fermentation microorganisms

The post Did alcohol and evolution go hand in hand for humanity? first appeared on EarthSky.

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Are alcohol and evolution related? Millions of years ago, animals that would eventually evolve into modern humanity ate enough fermented fruit that it altered our genome. And the adaptation stuck. Humans, chimps, bonobos and gorillas can metabolize booze 40 times better than other primates. A team of anthropologists and biologists led by Nathaniel Dominy of Dartmouth University wonder if our love of social drinking led us to develop agriculture and even civilization just so we could brew beer. Dominy joins EarthSky’s Dave Adalian at 12:15 p.m. CDT (17:15 UTC) today to talk about our possibly alcohol-fueled evolution. Watch here or on YouTube.

Alcohol and evolution

Humans and some other great apes share an unusual adaptation: They can metabolize ethyl alcohol – the intoxicating ingredient in beer, wine and cocktail spirits – 40 times more efficiently than other primates.

This genetic change – called the A294V mutation by scientists – gave the last common ancestor of African apes and humans two things: the ability to consume fermented fruits, and a reason to gather in large groups in a relaxed atmosphere. That’s the conclusion of a recently published paper by researchers from the University of St Andrews and Dartmouth College.

The ancient mutation, they said, might be the driving force behind agriculture and civilization:

The significance of this mutation is rather profound, representing, potentially, a signal moment in the history of life on Earth. If the early domestication of cereals revolved around making beer instead of bread, then the A294V mutation was the preadaptation that fueled the Neolithic Revolution and everything that followed.

Chimpanzees, humanity’s closest relatives, share a meal of fermented fruit. A new paper suggests alcohol and evolution might have gone hand in hand for humanity. Image via Anna Bowland/ Cantanhez Chimpanzee Project/ University of Exeter.

Why humans and apes can still metabolize booze

The question then becomes one of how the mutation for more effectively metabolizing alcohol survived to the present day. The key, the authors say, was a matter of taste, ease and safety:

The quality, availability, and accessibility of fruit are integral to almost every aspect of ape biology and behavior, and it is practically axiomatic to describe apes as frugivores. It is a classification that rings true even when fruit is scarce, because all apes show a categorical preference for ripening fruit when available …

But that doesn’t explain why large African apes would eat fallen fruit on the ground when there’s still fruit on the trees. Asian apes and most monkeys, by contrast, feed almost exclusively on fruit by climbing up to get it. The authors cite an important previous anthropological work from 2015 to explain why there’s a difference.

Past research on alcohol and evolution

The older work demonstrated gorillas, chimps and bonobos (and humans, too) inherited the critical ability to metabolize booze from a common ancestor that developed it roughly 10 million years ago. That study also speculated that previously these distant ancestors of modern animals starting spending more of their time on the ground during the Middle Miocene period 11.4 million or more years ago, and they simply ran into more fallen fruit. When the mutation came along, it made it possible for animals who had it to take advantage of fruit that was toxic to others. And so they thrived.

The study’s authors put these facts together and reasonably assume that eating perfectly edible fallen fruit was far less dangerous and tiring – and just as rewarding – as trying to get at the fresher stuff. And so early ancestors of humans and modern apes probably relaxed together under fruit trees, eating slightly alcoholic windfall and socializing.

Research shows a direct correlation between possession of the gene for enhanced alcohol metabolism and the amount of fallen fruit consumed by great apes. Those with the mutation consume the fermented fruits, while those without it avoid them. Image via Dominy et al./ Oxford University Press/ American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Let the feasting begin

And so happy hour was born somewhere under the boughs of ancient groves where the ground was covered with overripe fruit. It is an idea that seems to make sense given the circumstances of our evolution. But where is the evidence it’s true? The obvious model is the behavior of modern apes. They should still be carrying on this behavior. But the 2025 paper’s authors point out no one had ever checked:

It is a compelling idea that suffers from two problems: the ethanol exposure of African apes is all but unknown, and primatologists seldom differentiate fallen fruits from arborescent ones in their field notes, meaning we have little sense of how often apes consume fruits from the ground. In fact, we don’t even have a word for this behavior.

Lead author Nathaniel Dominy pointed out other anthropologists have used the drunken monkey hypothesis to encapsulate the idea of primates consuming fermented fruit. But, he said, that is likely misleading. His team instead picked an obscure English word – scrumping – to describe the behavior:

Scrumping is the act of gathering – or sometimes stealing – windfallen apples and other fruit. It is an English derivation of the Middle Low German word schrimpen (“shriveled, shrunken”), a medieval noun for describing overripe or fermented fruit. It is an obscure origin perhaps, but its legacy echoes in many British pubs today, where patrons can order scrumpy, a cloudy apple cider with an alcohol by volume content that ranges between 6% and 9%. The adjective scrumptious (something delicious, alluring) alludes to fruit and temptation, a frequent motif in Gothic art and architecture. Indeed, the Gothic tradition recognized scrumping as an essential behavior of nonhuman primates.

Scrumping among the primates

With this new term, they had a way to communicate distinctly with field researchers about exactly what data they needed:

Equipped with this word, we were curious to quantify the frequency of scrumping among great apes. We surveyed dietary reports for orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei), and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), cross-referencing fruit-feeding observations with the vertical height of the focal animal or group.

What they found was definitive:

African apes are regular scrumpers …

Editor’s Note: A scrumper is British slang for someone, often a young person, who steals fruit, particularly apples, from a garden or orchard.

Gothic tradition recognized scrumping as nonhuman primate behavior. Here, monkeys in Gothic art are shown as the embodiment of curiosity and temptation. At right, Justice conquers a monkey (inscription curiositas, “curiosity”). Bottom left: a bronze plaquette with gilding titled Adam and Eve, dated 1514 by Ludwig Krug. Right: panel painting titled Earthly Paradise with the Fall of Man, dated 1615 by Peter Paul Rubens (the figures) and Jan Brueghel the Elder (the flora and fauna, including two monkeys resembling Cercocebus torquatus on the left and Cercopithecus petaurista on the right). Image via Dominy et al./ Oxford University Press/ American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Did booze really lead to modern civilization?

And the question of whether alcohol is something apes seek seems to have been answered by another paper on fermented fruit consumption in modern chimps. In April of this year, researchers from the University of Exeter provided evidence of chimps sharing fermented breadfruit on a regular basis. They wonder if the practice might be significant to fostering socialization:

For humans, we know that drinking alcohol leads to a release of dopamine and endorphins, and resulting feelings of happiness and relaxation. We also know that sharing alcohol – including through traditions such as feasting – helps to form and strengthen social bonds. So – now we know that wild chimpanzees are eating and sharing ethanolic fruits – the question is: could they be getting similar benefits?

Dominy and his co-authors conclude their paper with reasons why scrumping was greatly beneficial. It was safer to stay on the ground, and more importantly gave them a feeding advantage among greedy adversaries:

Arboreal monkeys are unapologetic consumers of unripe fruits, exploiting a critical resource during an early stage of development. Such temporal competition is thought to have exerted a strong selective pressure on the cognitive faculties of apes, including tool-use and careful route-planning. Scrumping with a turbocharged ADH4 may have given African apes a similar advantage, yielding access to fruit resources beyond the temporal window preferred by monkeys.

The social aspect, however, may have been even more important for humans:

Co-feeding, and even proactive sharing of high-value foods, including fruit, is common among apes, whereas human co-consumption of alcohol is often integral to feasting and sacred rituals, events that produce and reinforce community identity and cohesion. Is it possible to trace the roots of these human foodways to social scrumping of fermented fruits in the rainforests of Africa?

The research is ongoing to bolster the idea. The next area to explore is finding out how scrumping and the sharing of fermented fruit influences ape society, and thus perhaps influenced our own. Dominy and his team know what questions they must answer:

How does sharing fermented fruits shape the formation and maintenance of social bonds? Does sharing produce social capital for specific individuals, affecting power structures and social relationships? Could regular scrumping influence long-term group stability?

The connection between scrumping fermented fruit and civilization is tenuous, but the evidence is slowly mounting in its favor. As the paper concludes, their new approach – and their new anthropological term, scrumping – may eventually yield a more definitive answer:

Connecting these dots may seem far-fetched, but now we have a word to consider the possibility.

Bottom line: The ability to tolerate alcoholic fruit may have encouraged early hominid socialization. Later, humanity’s love of alcohol may even have driven the rise of agriculture and civilization.

Read more: Microbe-brewery: Favorite fermentation microorganisms

The post Did alcohol and evolution go hand in hand for humanity? first appeared on EarthSky.

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Is Ophiuchus the 13th constellation of the zodiac?

If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, look southward on your summer evenings for mighty Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer. It’s surrounded by the constellations Serpens Cauda and Serpens Caput. Chart via EarthSky.

Ophiuchus, the unofficial 13th constellation of the zodiac

If you were born somewhere between November 30 and December 18, chances are the sun was in the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer. Therefore, your “sign” should be Ophiuchus. But, of course, Ophiuchus is not an official constellation of the zodiac, nor will you find it in horoscopes. Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer is a large constellation that you can spot near the southern horizon from the Northern Hemisphere during July, August and September evenings. The Serpent Bearer is standing on the Scorpion and its red star Antares.

From the Southern Hemisphere, Ophiuchus is closer to overhead. Ophiuchus’ brightest star is Rasalhague.

The official boundary lines for all 88 constellations were drawn up by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in the 1930s.

Signs versus constellations

Poor Ophiuchus. Nobody ever claims him as a birth sign, despite the fact that the ecliptic runs across him, too. After all, the band of the zodiac extends some 8 degrees north and south of the ecliptic, spanning a total of 16 degrees in width. And the constellations are not evenly spaced along this band in our sky. The signs of the zodiac are familiar to all who read online astrology advice. There are 12 familiar signs of the zodiac, but no Ophiuchus.

Yet the moon and planets do regularly move within the boundaries of Ophiuchus. And so does the sun. The sun is in front of Ophiuchus from about November 30 to December 18 each year.

The sun is said to enter the sign Sagittarius around November 21, or whenever the sun is precisely 30 degrees west of the December solstice point. And then the sun then enters the sign Capricorn on the December 21 solstice. So the sun passes through the “sign” Sagittarius for the period before and up to the December solstice, irrespective of the fact that the sun is actually shining in front of the constellation Ophiuchus from November 30 to December 18.

By the way, the December solstice point moves one degree westward in front of the zodiacal constellations – or backdrop stars – in about 72 years. This means that the December solstice point will finally move into the constellation Ophiuchus by the year 2269.

Ophiuchus holding the serpent, Serpens, as depicted in Urania’s Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London circa 1825. Image via Adam Cuerden/ Wikipedia.

When and where to locate Ophiuchus

The best time to observe Ophiuchus is during a Northern Hemisphere summer (Southern Hemisphere winter). From the Northern Hemisphere, late July and early August present this constellation high in the southern sky at nightfall and early evening. It’s in the southwest sky on autumn evenings in the Northern Hemisphere.

This rather large constellation fills the area of sky to the north of the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion and to the south of the constellation Hercules the Strongman. If you’re familiar with Scorpius’ brightest star Antares, try star-hopping to Ophiuchus from this ruddy gem of a star. The head of Ophiuchus is marked by the star Rasalhague (Alpha Ophiuchi).

View larger. | Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer. Image via Wikipedia (CC BY 3.0).

Ophiuchus is joined in legend and in the sky to the constellation of the Serpent. If you have a dark sky, you might find this is one constellation that looks like what it’s supposed to be: a big guy holding a snake. The name Ophiuchus comes from two Greek words meaning serpent and holding.

Deep-sky objects in Ophiuchus

On a night when the moon is absent, take your binoculars and use them to scan Ophiuchus, which lies near the band of the Milky Way and so has many deep-sky wonders. Ophiuchus boasts of numerous globular clusters, for example. The two easiest globular clusters to see with ordinary binoculars are M10 and M12, as shown on the above chart. Through binoculars, they look like faint puffs of light, but with the telescope, you begin to see these globular clusters for what they really are. They are immense stellar cities spanning a hundred to a few hundred light-years in diameter, teeming with hundreds of thousands of stars.

Another big deep-sky favorite is the Pipe Nebula, a vast interstellar cloud of gas and dust sweeping across about 7 degrees of sky. At arm’s length, that’s about the width of three to four fingers. This dark nebula resides at a distance of 600 to 700 light-years in southern Ophiuchus. You can see it with the unaided eye in a dark, transparent sky. The Pipe Nebula is due east of the star Antares and due north of the stars Shaula and Lesath. These two stars (but not the Pipe Nebula) are shown on the above chart.

Ophiuchus in myth and star lore

In Greek sky lore, Ophiuchus represents Asclepius, Greek god of medicine and doctors. He is always holding a great serpent or snake. And, depending on how it’s used, a snake’s venom can either kill or cure. It’s said that Asclepius concocted a healing potion from the venom of Serpens the Serpent, mixing it with a Gorgon’s blood and an unknown herb. This potion gave humans access to immortality, until the god of the underworld, Pluto, appealed to the king of the gods. Pluto asked Zeus to reconsider the ramifications of the death of death.

We hardly know how Pluto made his appeal. Perhaps he said only that which never lives never dies, and that no mortal can have one without the other. Sophocles may have expressed the myth’s inherent message when saying:

Better to die, and sleep the never-waking sleep, than linger on and dare to live when the soul’s life is gone.

Possibly, the poet T.S. Eliot echoed the theme of the ever-living story in his Four Quartets:

We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.

In any event, according to the myth, Zeus confiscated the potion, removed Asclepius from Earth and placed the gifted physician into the starry heavens. Today, the Staff of Asclepius – symbol of the World Health Organization and other medical organizations – pays tribute to this story and echoes the mighty celestial shape of the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer.

Ophiuchus in history and science

It’s been more than 400 years since anyone has seen a supernova explosion of a star within our own Milky Way galaxy. But in the year 1604, a supernova known as Kepler’s Supernova exploded onto the scene, attaining unaided-eye visibility for 18 months. It shone in southern Ophiuchus, not all that far from the Pipe Nebula.

Kepler’s Supernova in 1604 came upon the heels of Tycho’s Supernova that lit up Cassiopeia in 1572. These supernovae sent shock waves into the intelligentsia of Europe, which firmly believed in the Aristotelian notion of an immutable universe outside the orbit of the moon. Tycho Brahe took a parallax measurement of the 1572 supernova, proving that it could not be an atmospheric phenomenon. In fact, the supernova shone well beyond the moon’s orbit. Shortly thereafter, Kepler’s Supernova in 1604 seemed to drive home the point all over again.

Moreover, Tycho Brahe measured the distance of a comet in 1577, also finding it to be farther away than the moon. Aristotelians wanted to believe comets were gases burning in the atmosphere, but once again, Tycho threw cold water on the idea of Aristotle’s immutable universe.

Bottom line: The sun lies within the boundaries of the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer for about two weeks of every year. Thus, Ophiuchus is an unofficial member of the zodiac. Learn the difference between constellations and signs, and how to locate Ophiuchus.

The constellations of the zodiac

Say hello to Aries the Ram
Meet Taurus the Bull in the evening sky
Meet Gemini the Twins, home to 2 bright stars
Cancer the Crab and its Beehive Cluster
Leo the Lion and its backward question mark
Virgo the Maiden in northern spring skies
Meet Libra the Scales, a zodiacal constellation
Scorpius the Scorpion is a summertime delight
Sagittarius the Archer and its famous Teapot
Capricornus the Sea-goat has an arrowhead shape
Meet Aquarius the Water Bearer and its stars
Meet Pisces the Fish, 1st constellation of the zodiac

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The post Is Ophiuchus the 13th constellation of the zodiac? first appeared on EarthSky.

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If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, look southward on your summer evenings for mighty Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer. It’s surrounded by the constellations Serpens Cauda and Serpens Caput. Chart via EarthSky.

Ophiuchus, the unofficial 13th constellation of the zodiac

If you were born somewhere between November 30 and December 18, chances are the sun was in the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer. Therefore, your “sign” should be Ophiuchus. But, of course, Ophiuchus is not an official constellation of the zodiac, nor will you find it in horoscopes. Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer is a large constellation that you can spot near the southern horizon from the Northern Hemisphere during July, August and September evenings. The Serpent Bearer is standing on the Scorpion and its red star Antares.

From the Southern Hemisphere, Ophiuchus is closer to overhead. Ophiuchus’ brightest star is Rasalhague.

The official boundary lines for all 88 constellations were drawn up by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in the 1930s.

Signs versus constellations

Poor Ophiuchus. Nobody ever claims him as a birth sign, despite the fact that the ecliptic runs across him, too. After all, the band of the zodiac extends some 8 degrees north and south of the ecliptic, spanning a total of 16 degrees in width. And the constellations are not evenly spaced along this band in our sky. The signs of the zodiac are familiar to all who read online astrology advice. There are 12 familiar signs of the zodiac, but no Ophiuchus.

Yet the moon and planets do regularly move within the boundaries of Ophiuchus. And so does the sun. The sun is in front of Ophiuchus from about November 30 to December 18 each year.

The sun is said to enter the sign Sagittarius around November 21, or whenever the sun is precisely 30 degrees west of the December solstice point. And then the sun then enters the sign Capricorn on the December 21 solstice. So the sun passes through the “sign” Sagittarius for the period before and up to the December solstice, irrespective of the fact that the sun is actually shining in front of the constellation Ophiuchus from November 30 to December 18.

By the way, the December solstice point moves one degree westward in front of the zodiacal constellations – or backdrop stars – in about 72 years. This means that the December solstice point will finally move into the constellation Ophiuchus by the year 2269.

Ophiuchus holding the serpent, Serpens, as depicted in Urania’s Mirror, a set of constellation cards published in London circa 1825. Image via Adam Cuerden/ Wikipedia.

When and where to locate Ophiuchus

The best time to observe Ophiuchus is during a Northern Hemisphere summer (Southern Hemisphere winter). From the Northern Hemisphere, late July and early August present this constellation high in the southern sky at nightfall and early evening. It’s in the southwest sky on autumn evenings in the Northern Hemisphere.

This rather large constellation fills the area of sky to the north of the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion and to the south of the constellation Hercules the Strongman. If you’re familiar with Scorpius’ brightest star Antares, try star-hopping to Ophiuchus from this ruddy gem of a star. The head of Ophiuchus is marked by the star Rasalhague (Alpha Ophiuchi).

View larger. | Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer. Image via Wikipedia (CC BY 3.0).

Ophiuchus is joined in legend and in the sky to the constellation of the Serpent. If you have a dark sky, you might find this is one constellation that looks like what it’s supposed to be: a big guy holding a snake. The name Ophiuchus comes from two Greek words meaning serpent and holding.

Deep-sky objects in Ophiuchus

On a night when the moon is absent, take your binoculars and use them to scan Ophiuchus, which lies near the band of the Milky Way and so has many deep-sky wonders. Ophiuchus boasts of numerous globular clusters, for example. The two easiest globular clusters to see with ordinary binoculars are M10 and M12, as shown on the above chart. Through binoculars, they look like faint puffs of light, but with the telescope, you begin to see these globular clusters for what they really are. They are immense stellar cities spanning a hundred to a few hundred light-years in diameter, teeming with hundreds of thousands of stars.

Another big deep-sky favorite is the Pipe Nebula, a vast interstellar cloud of gas and dust sweeping across about 7 degrees of sky. At arm’s length, that’s about the width of three to four fingers. This dark nebula resides at a distance of 600 to 700 light-years in southern Ophiuchus. You can see it with the unaided eye in a dark, transparent sky. The Pipe Nebula is due east of the star Antares and due north of the stars Shaula and Lesath. These two stars (but not the Pipe Nebula) are shown on the above chart.

Ophiuchus in myth and star lore

In Greek sky lore, Ophiuchus represents Asclepius, Greek god of medicine and doctors. He is always holding a great serpent or snake. And, depending on how it’s used, a snake’s venom can either kill or cure. It’s said that Asclepius concocted a healing potion from the venom of Serpens the Serpent, mixing it with a Gorgon’s blood and an unknown herb. This potion gave humans access to immortality, until the god of the underworld, Pluto, appealed to the king of the gods. Pluto asked Zeus to reconsider the ramifications of the death of death.

We hardly know how Pluto made his appeal. Perhaps he said only that which never lives never dies, and that no mortal can have one without the other. Sophocles may have expressed the myth’s inherent message when saying:

Better to die, and sleep the never-waking sleep, than linger on and dare to live when the soul’s life is gone.

Possibly, the poet T.S. Eliot echoed the theme of the ever-living story in his Four Quartets:

We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.

In any event, according to the myth, Zeus confiscated the potion, removed Asclepius from Earth and placed the gifted physician into the starry heavens. Today, the Staff of Asclepius – symbol of the World Health Organization and other medical organizations – pays tribute to this story and echoes the mighty celestial shape of the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer.

Ophiuchus in history and science

It’s been more than 400 years since anyone has seen a supernova explosion of a star within our own Milky Way galaxy. But in the year 1604, a supernova known as Kepler’s Supernova exploded onto the scene, attaining unaided-eye visibility for 18 months. It shone in southern Ophiuchus, not all that far from the Pipe Nebula.

Kepler’s Supernova in 1604 came upon the heels of Tycho’s Supernova that lit up Cassiopeia in 1572. These supernovae sent shock waves into the intelligentsia of Europe, which firmly believed in the Aristotelian notion of an immutable universe outside the orbit of the moon. Tycho Brahe took a parallax measurement of the 1572 supernova, proving that it could not be an atmospheric phenomenon. In fact, the supernova shone well beyond the moon’s orbit. Shortly thereafter, Kepler’s Supernova in 1604 seemed to drive home the point all over again.

Moreover, Tycho Brahe measured the distance of a comet in 1577, also finding it to be farther away than the moon. Aristotelians wanted to believe comets were gases burning in the atmosphere, but once again, Tycho threw cold water on the idea of Aristotle’s immutable universe.

Bottom line: The sun lies within the boundaries of the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer for about two weeks of every year. Thus, Ophiuchus is an unofficial member of the zodiac. Learn the difference between constellations and signs, and how to locate Ophiuchus.

The constellations of the zodiac

Say hello to Aries the Ram
Meet Taurus the Bull in the evening sky
Meet Gemini the Twins, home to 2 bright stars
Cancer the Crab and its Beehive Cluster
Leo the Lion and its backward question mark
Virgo the Maiden in northern spring skies
Meet Libra the Scales, a zodiacal constellation
Scorpius the Scorpion is a summertime delight
Sagittarius the Archer and its famous Teapot
Capricornus the Sea-goat has an arrowhead shape
Meet Aquarius the Water Bearer and its stars
Meet Pisces the Fish, 1st constellation of the zodiac

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The post Is Ophiuchus the 13th constellation of the zodiac? first appeared on EarthSky.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/s0R8m4j