<h2>Dad Bod</h2>
NASA performed a new measurement of the mass of the Milky Way galaxy using the Hubble and Gaia space telescopes. Not only do the new measurements show that our home galaxy is bigger than many of its peers, but also that the overwhelming majority of that weight is invisible dark matter — opening up tantalizing mysteries about what comprises the portions of the Milky Way we can&#8217;t see.
&#8220;The new mass estimate puts our galaxy on the beefier side, compared to other galaxies in the universe,&#8221; reads a <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/what-does-the-milky-way-weigh-hubble-and-gaia-investigate">NASA blog post</a> about the research.
<h2>Star Weight</h2>
According to NASA&#8217;s new measurements, the Milky Way weighs in at about 1.5 trillion stellar masses, meaning it has 1.5 trillion times the weight of the Earth&#8217;s Sun.
The Milky way only has about 200 billion stars — plus a <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/black-hole-milky-way">black hole at its heart</a> that weighs as much as about another four million stars — which accounts for only about 13 percent of its mass.
<h2>Dark Matter</h2>
That means much of the rest of the Milky Way&#8217;s mass is something we can&#8217;t see — likely a mysterious substance physicists call dark matter.
&#8220;Most of the rest of the mass is locked up in dark matter, an invisible and mysterious substance that acts like scaffolding throughout the universe and keeps the stars in their galaxies,&#8221; reads the NASA blog post.
<div>
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/what-does-the-milky-way-weigh-hubble-and-gaia-investigate">What Does the Milky Way Weigh? Hubble and Gaia Investigate</a> [NASA]
</div>
<div>
More on the Milky Way: <a href="https://futurism.com/the-byte/stellar-stream-milky-way">Scientists Found a “River of Stars” Flowing Through the Milky Way</a>
</div>

"The new mass estimate puts our galaxy on the beefier side, compared to other galaxies in the universe."

New NASA measurements: Milky Way galaxy is "on the beefier side"

Galaxy Quest

New data collected by NASA, using two space telescopes, shows that the vast majority of our galaxy's mass is dark matter.

New NASA Measurements: Milky Way Galaxy Is “On the Beefier Side”

New data shows that the vast majority of our galaxy's mass is dark matter.

<h2>Galactic Warp</h2>
It turns out that Milky Way galaxy looks different from the familiar image we&#8217;ve all come to know.
Our galaxy still has a bright central core around which a spiraling disk orbits, but that disk isn&#8217;t quite as tidy as scientists previously thought. Instead, it&#8217;s <a href="http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/02/galactic-twist-the-milky-ways-disk-is-warped">bent and warped out of shape</a>, according to a new 3D map of the galaxy described in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-018-0686-7">research published Monday</a> in the journal Nature Astronomy. The new map suggests that there&#8217;s a lot we don&#8217;t know about the universe, and that we can expect to <a href="https://futurism.com/science-explained-milky-way-really-look">keep updating our knowledge</a> about even the parts of the cosmos closest to us.
<h2>Star Light</h2>
The new map was built from a survey of 1,339 stars called &#8220;classical Cepheids.&#8221; Often, attempts to plot stars&#8217; location in the cosmos are stymied by misleading measurements. Sometimes astronomers will conclude that a particularly-bright star is closer to us than it actually, is or that dimly-lit stars must be far away. But the rhythmic pulsations of light given off by Cepheids allow astronomers to determine precisely how far away they are just by measuring their brightness, <a href="http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/02/galactic-twist-the-milky-ways-disk-is-warped">according to Astronomy</a>.
Using data from WISE, a NASA program seeking to <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/main/index.html">survey the entire sky in infrared</a>, the team of Chinese and Australian astronomers observed that the locations of these classical Cepheids suggest a very different galactic structure than we&#8217;re used to.
<h2>The Big Picture</h2>
The researchers didn&#8217;t investigate why the galaxy looks the way it does, but they did fathom a guess. A typical model of a spiral galaxy like ours, whether it&#8217;s in the latest NASA simulation or a sci-fi movie, generally shows a gigantic central mass around which long, spiraling arms gently orbit. But the astronomers behind this new paper suggest that the various interconnected pieces of the galaxy have a more complex relationship than that — as the galaxy&#8217;s central core spins on its axis, it may be dragging against the outer disks and pulling them out of shape.
Whatever the reason, it&#8217;s clear that <a href="https://futurism.com/astronomers-have-begun-mapping-the-structure-of-the-far-side-of-the-milky-way">we don&#8217;t as much</a> about our cosmic home turf as we once thought.
READ MORE: <a href="http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/02/galactic-twist-the-milky-ways-disk-is-warped">Galactic twist: The Milky Way&#8217;s disk is warped</a> [Astronomy.com]
More on the Milky Way: <a href="https://futurism.com/weigh-galaxy-dark-matter">A New Trick Lets Us Weigh The Galaxy. It’s The First Step Toward Figuring Out What It’s Made Of</a>

It turns out our galaxy isn't the flat disk we once thought.

The Milky Way is a lot more warped than scientists thought

Distinct Kink

A new 3D map of the Milky Way galaxy shows a different structure than scientists expected. It turns out the outer disk is all warped out of shape.

The Milky Way is a Lot More Warped Than Scientists Thought

A new 3D map shows that our galaxy isn't nearly as tidy as we thought.

Astronomers have a pretty solid hunch they&#8217;re missing something.
Luminous matter — everything that we can see and feel — only makes up about 15 percent of all the matter in the universe, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-dark-matter-theory-or/">evidence suggests</a>. The rest of the matter in the universe, researchers suspect, is made up of something called dark matter, a substance they don&#8217;t know much about and is totally invisible. So far, we haven’t been able to figure out what dark matter is made of, or how it holds billions and billions of galaxies together.
But a team of astronomers recently took an important first step: weighing the Milky Way.
Figuring out how to weigh the galaxy has vexed astronomers for years. After all, they can&#8217;t exactly throw it on a scale. Previous attempts have yielded a huge range of answers, but <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.01878">research published earlier this spring</a> may finally settle the issue. This answer may bring researchers one step closer to discovering more about what dark matter is and how it works with the rest of the matter we can see.
To weigh a galaxy, you need to figure out how strong its gravitational pull is. Past experiments relied on the velocity and position of celestial bodies called tracers — rogue stars or galaxy fragments that may have been torn apart billions of years ago and now trail behind larger galaxies like our own. Because these tracers move at different velocities at different points in their erratic orbits (and because most earlier studies didn&#8217;t always take that into account), researchers have come up with a huge range of estimates for the mass of the Milky Way: anywhere between 700 billion and 2 trillion times that of the Sun. (I admit, it&#8217;s strange to measure the galaxy in terms of how many Suns it weighs. We <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=oZFfAAAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PT134&amp;dq=solar+mass+unit&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiYt5fCmcLbAhWIm1kKHYhlDlAQ6AEIQjAE#v=onepage&amp;q=solar%20mass%20unit&amp;f=false">seem to use this</a> as a way to measure the galaxy&#8217;s weight because we learned the mass of the Sun before we learned how to measure anything else in space, so it just became astronomers&#8217; go-to unit).
In this recent study, the scientists tweaked their measurements a bit. Instead of looking at the tracers&#8217; position and velocity to determine how much gravitational force the Milky Way was exerting on them, the researchers calculated angular momentum — a measurement of rotation that stays the same throughout a tracers’ elliptical path around the universe.
With their new approach, the researchers were able to use a model of two billion years’ worth of tracer activity and come up with a more precise estimate for the mass for the galaxy: just about 960 billion times that of our Sun. That&#8217;s about half of the highest estimates made in past studies.
Admittedly, this is a pretty roundabout way of unraveling the mysteries of dark matter. But now that scientists are armed with precise numbers about the things we do know, they’re better equipped to figure out how dark and luminous matter fit together to make our galaxy what it is.

Believe it or not, scientists have been trying to do this for a long time.

A new trick lets us weigh the galaxy. It's the first step toward figuring out what it's made of

Off World

By changing the way we try to calculate galactic mass, we have a better chance of understanding how dark and luminous matter fit together.

A New Trick Lets Us Weigh The Galaxy. It’s The First Step Toward Figuring Out What It’s Made Of

So that we can finally understand dark matter. 

Between the glowing blue and yellow swirls of distant galaxies, this tiny pinprick of light doesn&#8217;t look like much: a white smudge on the infinite black of the universe.
But this tiny speck has enormous significance for astronomers. It&#8217;s the most distant star ever seen, affording astronomers a glimpse back in time.
<figure id="attachment_128511" style="width: 965px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="wp-image-128511 size-full" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2018/04/furtheststar.jpg" alt="Images showing how astronomers spotted the most distant star imaged, which was not visible in 2011 but popped up in 2016 thanks to gravitational lensing." width="965" height="579" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Icarus, the most distant star ever imaged, wasn&#8217;t visible in previous years (2011); it was only thanks to gravitational lensing that it twinkled into view (2016). Image credit: NASA, ESA, P KELLY/University of Minnesota</figcaption></figure>
The star, MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1 (more simply known as &#8220;Icarus&#8221;) was about 9 billion light years away when it emitted the light now reaching Earth. Most other objects spotted at this distance are either galaxies or exploding stars (AKA supernovas), which produce much more light than this distant glimmer.
Thanks to the <a href="https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_expansion.html">constant expansion of the universe</a>, Icarus would now be much further away from our planet; by now, it&#8217;s probably gone supernova itself, and formed either a black hole or neutron star. (For why we can still view it, though, see #3.)
Here are four things you should know about this distant galactic neighbor, and why we&#8217;re just seeing it for the first time.
<h2>1. Spotting Icarus was a stroke of good luck</h2>
Icarus is so far away that we technically shouldn&#8217;t be able to see it: it&#8217;s about 100 times further away than the most distant star telescopes have been able to view before now. Fortunately, astronomers got a little bit of help from the universe in spotting it (and the Hubble telescope, props to that).
Icarus was visible because of an astronomical <a href="https://futurism.com/astronomers-are-using-artificial-intelligence-to-search-for-gravitational-lenses/">phenomenon called gravitational lensing</a>. In short, the gravity of large, stacked-up celestial objects (in this case, a cluster of galaxies) bend light, creating a magnifying glass-effect for anything behind them. Overall, researchers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/02/hubble-space-telescope-captures-image-of-most-distant-star-ever-seen">told The Guardian</a>, Icarus was magnified more than 2,000 times.
Icarus also got a special boost from an extra-magnifying star within the galaxy cluster, making it appear four times brighter over the course of the time the astronomers studied it. Thank you, physics.
<h2>2. The star is a blue supergiant</h2>
Icarus would be an oddity in the universe — if it were still around. Analysis of the star&#8217;s light showed it was a blue supergiant, one of the hottest and highest-mass stars we know of; the blue supergiant Rigel A, the bright left &#8220;foot&#8221; of the constellation Orion, is 23 times more massive than the sun, and estimated to be several hundred thousand times brighter.
Stars like Icarus and Rigel are rare in the universe today, but in the early universe, they were common; <a href="https://io9.gizmodo.com/why-the-destruction-of-a-blue-supergiant-star-is-unlike-1603694190">according to io9</a>, most of the early stars were blue supergiants at some point in their lives.
That makes sense, since Icarus&#8217; distant light is actually somewhat like a time machine.
<h2>3. Icarus gives a view back in time</h2>
The universe is way, way bigger than you can probably comprehend. And because of this astronomical (sorry) size, it can take a really long time for light to reach Earth from the cosmic wilderness. Even traveling at its immense speeds, by the time light from this distant star reached Earth, 9 billion years had passed.
When Icarus released the photons currently hitting the Hubble&#8217;s cameras, Earth hadn&#8217;t even formed yet — it would be another 4.4 billion years before our solar system even began to coalesce from the dust of the universe. Such distant views of the universe are helping astronomers learn about <a href="https://futurism.com/astronomers-capture-image-of-universe-13-billion-years-ago-where-no-human-has-seen-before/">what the universe was like before our time</a>, even giving us glimpses back to the moments after the Big Bang.
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<h2>4. The view let scientists test dark matter theory</h2>
The Guardian reports that the team also used their view of Icarus to test a theory about dark matter, the mysterious substance that <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy">makes up 27 percent</a> of the universe (its counterpart, dark energy, makes up another 68 percent). One theory proposed that dark matter was made of black holes, but what the researchers saw of Icarus didn&#8217;t support that theory — looking back at a decade of Hubble images, they didn&#8217;t see Icarus&#8217; brightness vary over time. If the black-hole-dark-matter theory was correct, the star would have appeared brighter.
In the coming years, scientists hope to peer even further into our universe&#8217;s history with more powerful telescopes, like the<a href="https://futurism.com/james-webb-telescope-delayed/"> James Webb Space Telescope</a> and the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). Recent budget cuts from the White House <a href="https://futurism.com/cancelled-wfirst-space-telescope/">threatened the future of WFIRST</a>. If the government was unsure just how much these space telescopes could accomplish, this discovery from their predecessor might serve as an apt reminder.

"Icarus" is 100 times farther than the previous most distant star we've seen.

Four notable things about the most distant star scientists have ever glimpsed

Thanks to gravitational lensing, the Hubble telescope captured an image of the most distant star ever seen, 9 million light years away.

Four Notable Things About the Most Distant Star Scientists Have Ever Glimpsed

Looking at the distant star is literally looking back in time.

Roughly 65 million light-years away from Earth is a galaxy called NGC 1052-DF2 (DF2 for short). But DF2 may as well be called F-U, because that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s saying to scientists who thought they understood galaxies, dark matter, and really anything about our universe.
What makes DF2 so special, you may ask? It appears to contain virtually no dark matter.
We&#8217;ve never seen <a href="https://home.cern/about/physics/dark-matter" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dark matter</a> directly. We only believe dark matter exists because we can see how it affects &#8220;regular,&#8221; or baryonic, matter. Based on these indirect observations, researchers have estimated that dark matter makes up about 27 percent of our universe.
Since dark matter was (sort of) discovered, researchers assumed dark matter was essential to galaxy formation. Dark matter would clump together. Then, the gravity from those clumps would attract baryonic matter, forming the stars, planets, and other objects we can actually see within a galaxy. Easy, right?
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Based on this understanding, the team studying DF2 thought they had a pretty good idea how much dark matter it contained. But when they calculated how much dark matter DF2 actually had, they discovered it contained only 1/400th the amount they expected.
&#8220;It challenges the standard ideas of how we think galaxies work,&#8221; Pieter van Dokkum, a Yale University professor and lead author of a paper on DF2, now <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25767" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published in Nature</a>, said in <a href="http://www.dunlap.utoronto.ca/how-do-you-make-a-galaxy-without-dark-matter/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a press release</a>. &#8220;This result also suggests that there may be more than one way to form a galaxy.&#8221;
DF2 is unique in other ways, too. It doesn&#8217;t fit the characteristics of a spiral galaxy, which typically have dense, central regions, spiral arms, and a disk. But it also isn&#8217;t like known elliptical galaxies, which have a black hole at their center.
Instead, DF2 is a rare ultra-diffuse galaxy. &#8220;It&#8217;s so sparse that you see all of the galaxies behind it,&#8221; van Dokkum said. &#8220;It is literally a see-through galaxy.&#8221;
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This might seem counterintuitive, but DF2 actually supports the existence of dark matter, which some theories argue doesn&#8217;t exist.
&#8220;For those kinds of theories, it wouldn&#8217;t be possible to ever have a galaxy that looks as though it doesn&#8217;t have dark matter,&#8221; Jocelyn Monroe, a particle physicist and dark matter expert at Royal Holloway, University of London, who was not involved in the study, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/28/17169782/dark-matter-galaxy-ngc-1052-df2-dragonfly-telephoto-array" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told The Verge</a>. &#8220;So [this galaxy is] really interesting for the potential it has to exclude some of these ideas.&#8221;
The researchers hope to pin down the age of DF2. &#8220;At the moment, we only know its older than 10 billion years, but we&#8217;d like to know if it&#8217;s 10 billion years old or 13 billion years old, which is right after the <a href="https://futurism.com/researchers-say-theres-no-alternative-theory-to-the-big-bang-yet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Big Bang</a>,&#8221; van Dokkum <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-03-29/galaxy-with-no-dark-matter-puzzles-astronomers/9596840" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told ABC</a>.
If DF2 does end up being 13 billion years old, it could rack in another superlative: the oldest galaxy ever discovered.

For one thing, it completely changes how we think galaxies owrk

Scientists found a galaxy with almost no dark matter. Here's what that means.

Hard Science

A galaxy known as DF2 contains almost no dark matter, challenging what researchers thought they knew about how galaxies form.

Scientists Found a Galaxy With Almost No Dark Matter. Here's What That Means.

"It is literally a see-through galaxy.”

Scientists Found a Galaxy With Almost No Dark Matter. Here’s What That Means.

<h2>Looking Back</h2>
Given the immense size of our universe, astronomers often speak about looking back in time: the light reaching a telescope from a star one million light-years away takes one million years to reach Earth, so that star will appear to the astronomer&#8217;s eye as it did one million years ago. Today, astronomers from the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst and Mexico&#8217;s Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica announced that they used a new telescope to crane their eyes almost as far back in time as we&#8217;ve ever looked: 12.8 billion years ago, to a dusty galaxy created in <a href="https://futurism.com/researchers-say-theres-no-alternative-theory-to-the-big-bang-yet/">the honeymoon glow following the Big Bang.</a>
&#8220;The Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago, and now we are seeing this galaxy from 12.8 billion years ago, so it was forming within the first billion years after the Big Bang,&#8221; said Min Yun, a UMass Amherst astrophysicist and one of the foremost experts in collecting data about distant cosmic objects, <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-11/uoma-upn110317.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener">in a press release</a>.
<figure id="attachment_109616" style="width: 937px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-109616 size-full" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/11/LMT-telescope.jpg" alt="(Image Credit: UMass Amherst)" width="937" height="369" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The Large Millimeter Telescope. Image Credit: UMass Amherst</figcaption></figure>
Yun&#8217;s team spotted the distant object using the <a href="http://www.lmtgtm.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Large Millimeter Telescope</a> (LMT), located on the summit of Mexico&#8217;s Sierra Negra, a 15,000-foot extinct volcano. When it becomes fully operational this winter, the LMT will be the most sensitive instrument of its kind in the world.
Astrophysicists believe that the universe was too hot and too uniform to create anything at all for its first 400 million years of existence, and that the first stars and galaxies only began forming between 500 million and a billion years in. Therefore, says Yun, &#8220;This new object is very close to being one of the first galaxies ever to form.&#8221;
<h2>Eye on the Sky</h2>
This distant galaxy was first detected by NASA&#8221;s Herschel Space Telescope, a space-based infrared telescope that was retired in 2013. The galaxy was so distant that the telescope only yielded a blurry image, so astronomers passed the project onto the team at the LMT. Jorge Zavala, a graduate student at the LMT at the time, is the first author of a new paper on the discovery, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0297-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published in </a><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0297-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nature Astronomy</a>.
Zavala and Yun&#8217;s team was able to measure the object&#8217;s distance by measuring its redshift, or the degree to which light has shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. This shift is caused by the expansion of the universe, and can be used to determine how fast the object is receding from the observer — and thus, how far away it is.
&#8220;These high redshift, very distant objects are a class of mythical beasts in astrophysics,&#8221; Yun said in the press release. &#8220;We always knew there were some out there that are enormously large and bright, but they are invisible in visible light spectrum because they are so obscured by the thick dust clouds that surround their young stars.&#8221;
The higher resolution and sensitivity promised by the LMT, once it is fully operational, promises that we will be able to find even fainter and more distant objects and phenomena. Astronomers like Yun are unsurprisingly excited about the telescope&#8217;s potential.
&#8220;Now, it could be that there are a whole bunch of them out there and we haven&#8217;t been able to see them, but with the LMT we have the power to see them,&#8221; Yun said. &#8220;I&#8217;m always hoping that these things will pop out. You have to be a hopeless optimist to be doing this kind of work, and this time it absolutely paid off.&#8221;

Could we one day look back at the Big Bang?

A new telescope allowed astronomers to spot one of the oldest galaxies in the universe

Astronomers using the Large Millimeter Telescope in Mexico detected a galaxy from 12.8 billion years ago. It was one of the first formed after the Big Bang.

A New Telescope Allowed Astronomers to Spot One of the Oldest Galaxies in the Universe

The Large Millimeter Telescope has detected a galaxy formed only a billion years after the Big Bang.

The universe is far greater than it seems.

This puts humanity's problems into perspective.

Journey From Earth to the Edge of the Horizon in Space and Time

<h2>Black Hole Birth-Gaze</h2>
Physicists recently narrowed the origin story for black holes beyond our galaxy down to two possibilities, according to a study published in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature23453" target="_blank">Nature</a>. The analysis was based on data gathered after the <a href="https://futurism.com/ligo-just-detected-gravitational-waves-from-a-second-black-hole-collision/" target="_blank">landmark intra-galactic black hole mergers</a> detected earlier this year by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
Gravitational waves have provided the first and only known means for observing the cataclysmic births of black holes. The paper extends this methodology to take a <a href="https://futurism.com/cosmic-census-there-could-be-100-million-black-holes-in-our-galaxy-alone/" target="_blank">cosmic census of black holes</a> with stellar-level masses lying outside of the galaxy.
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The odd thing is that black holes confirmed via gravitational waves differ from those seen in our galaxy. To make early headway toward answering why this is so, physicists in the study posited two non-exclusive possibilities for explaining the pattern of the waves.
<h2>Two (Ways) to Tango</h2>
The first option is that the black holes in binary (or mutual) orbit spin slowly around one another. This would mean that stars outside of our galaxy come to form binary black holes differently than they do inside our galaxy.
Imagine a baseball floating in the air and spinning at a constant slow velocity. This ball only has red stitching on its poles, representing observable gravitational waves from our pair of black holes. Now imagine that the baseball was turned on its side, so that the poles were aligned along the equator. With a slow rotation, we&#8217;d observe the red color from its stitches only infrequently. <figure style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/the-futurism-guide-to-cosmic-explosions-infographic/"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/08/cosmic-explosion_home_v3.jpg" alt="The Futurism Guide To Cosmic Explosions [INFOGRAPHIC]" ></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text center"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/the-futurism-guide-to-cosmic-explosions-infographic/" target="_blank">Click to View Full Infographic</a></figcaption></figure>
The other possibility is that extra-galactic black holes spin rapidly (like in our galaxy), but that they &#8216;tumbled&#8217; during formation, and are no longer aligned with their orbit. This would mean the black holes exist within a dense environment, like a star cluster. In this case, our polar-stitched baseball spins fast, but tumbles from north to south, flashing us the occasional stitch of red with the same observable frequency.
It&#8217;s also possible we&#8217;re seeing both types in the same field — slow-spinning black hole pairs not too far from other fast-spinning pairs, sending a super-dynamic set of waves our way. Our knowledge of black holes may be elementary, but thanks to LIGO, we&#8217;re learning how to ask the right questions.
&#8220;By presenting these two explanations for the observed behavior, and ruling out other scenarios, we are providing those who study and try to explain the formation of black holes a target to hit,&#8221; said co-author Dr. Will Farr, of the University of Birmingham School of Physics and Astronomy, in a press release. &#8220;In our field, knowing the question to ask is almost as important as getting the answer itself.&#8221;

Black holes outside our galaxy might come in two types.

Physicists analyzed gravitational waves observed by LIGO to study how black holes form outside our galaxy, and only two models describe what's seen.

Black Holes Outside Our Galaxy Work Differently From Ours

Extra-galactic black holes may either spin slowly, or tumble quickly in an unusual orbit.

<h2>Intergalactic Transfer</h2>
In a first-of-its-kind analysis, Northwestern University astrophysicists have discovered that, contrary to previously standard lore, up to half of the matter in our Milky Way galaxy may come from distant galaxies. As a result, each one of us may be made in part from extragalactic matter.
<figure id="attachment_94142" style="width: 800px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-94142" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/08/milkywaysori.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="480" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Milky Way&#8217;s origins are not what they seem Pair of nearby galaxies with possible intergalactic transfer: This image shows M81 (bottom right) and M82 (upper left), a pair of nearby galaxies where &#8216;intergalactic transfer&#8217; may be happening. Gas ejected by supernova explosions in M82 can travel through space and eventually contribute to the growth of M81. Image Sourcet: Fred Herrmann</figcaption></figure>
Using supercomputer simulations, the research team found a major and unexpected new mode for how galaxies, including our own Milky Way, acquired their <a class="textTag" href="https://phys.org/tags/matter/" rel="tag">matter</a>: intergalactic transfer. The simulations show that supernova explosions eject copious amounts of gas from galaxies, which causes atoms to be transported from one galaxy to another via powerful <a class="textTag" href="https://phys.org/tags/galactic+winds/" rel="tag">galactic winds</a>. Intergalactic transfer is a newly identified phenomenon, which simulations indicate will be critical for understanding how galaxies evolve.
&#8220;Given how much of the matter out of which we formed may have come from other galaxies, we could consider ourselves space travelers or extragalactic immigrants,&#8221; said Daniel Anglés-Alcázar, a postdoctoral fellow in Northwestern&#8217;s astrophysics center, CIERA (Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics), who led the study. &#8220;It is likely that much of the Milky Way&#8217;s matter was in other galaxies before it was kicked out by a powerful wind, traveled across intergalactic space and eventually found its new home in the Milky Way.&#8221;
Galaxies are far apart from each other, so even though galactic winds propagate at several hundred kilometers per second, this process occurred over several billion years.
Professor Claude-André Faucher-Giguère and his research group, along with collaborators from the FIRE (&#8220;Feedback In Realistic Environments&#8221;) project, which he co-leads, had developed sophisticated numerical simulations that produced realistic 3-D models of galaxies, following a galaxy&#8217;s formation from just after the Big Bang to the present day. Anglés-Alcázar then developed state-of-the-art algorithms to mine this wealth of data and quantify how galaxies acquire matter from the universe.
The study, which required the equivalent of several million hours of continuous computing, will be published July 26 (July 27 in the U.K.) by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
&#8220;This study transforms our understanding of how galaxies formed from the Big Bang,&#8221; said Faucher-Giguère, a co-author of the study and assistant professor of physics and astronomy in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
<h2>Complex Flows of Matter</h2>
&#8220;What this new mode implies is that up to one-half of the atoms around us—including in the solar system, on Earth and in each one of us—comes not from our own galaxy but from other galaxies, up to one million light years away,&#8221; he said.
By tracking in detail the complex flows of matter in the simulations, the research team found that gas flows from smaller galaxies to larger galaxies, such as the Milky Way, where the gas forms stars. This transfer of mass through galactic winds can account for up to 50 percent of matter in the larger galaxies.
&#8220;In our simulations, we were able to trace the origins of stars in Milky Way-like galaxies and determine if the star formed from matter endemic to the galaxy itself or if it formed instead from gas previously contained in another galaxy,&#8221; said Anglés-Alcázar, the study&#8217;s corresponding author.
In a galaxy, stars are bound together: a large collection of stars orbiting a common center of mass. After the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, the universe was filled with a uniform gas—no stars, no galaxies. But there were tiny perturbations in the gas, and these started to grow by force of gravity, eventually forming stars and galaxies. After <a class="textTag" href="https://phys.org/tags/galaxies/" rel="tag">galaxies</a> formed, each had its own identity.
&#8220;Our origins are much less local than we previously thought,&#8221; said Faucher-Giguère, a CIERA member. &#8220;This study gives us a sense of how things around us are connected to distant objects in the sky.&#8221;
The findings open a new line of research in understanding galaxy formation, the researchers say, and the prediction of intergalactic transfer can now be tested. The Northwestern team plans to collaborate with observational astronomers who are working with the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories to test the <a class="textTag" href="https://phys.org/tags/simulation/" rel="tag">simulation</a> predictions.
The simulations were run and analyzed using the National Science Foundation&#8217;s Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment supercomputing facilities, as well as Northwestern&#8217;s Quest high-performance computer cluster.
The study is titled &#8220;The Cosmic Baryon Cycle and Galaxy Mass Assembly in the FIRE Simulations.&#8221;
This article was provided by <a class="textTag" href="http://www.northwestern.edu/" rel="news">Northwestern University</a>. Materials may have been edited for clarity and brevity. And make the name of the source a link back to their website.

We all may be made in part from extragalactic matter.

Northwestern University astrophysicists have discovered that up to half of the matter in our Milky Way galaxy may come from distant galaxies.

Milky Way’s Origins Are Not What They Seem

This study transforms our understanding of how galaxies formed from the Big Bang.

<h2>Largest Known Structures in the Universe</h2>
The Milky Way Galaxy, which measures 100,000 to 180,000 light years (31 – 55 kiloparsecs) in diameter and contains 100 to 400 billion stars, is so immense that it boggles the mind. And yet, when it comes to the large-scale structure of the Universe, our galaxy is merely a drop in the bucket. Looking farther, astronomers have noted that galaxies form clusters, which in turn form superclusters – the <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/117809/what-is-the-biggest-thing-in-the-universe/">largest known structures</a> in the Universe.
The supercluster in which our galaxy resides is known as the <a href="https://www.universetoday.com/114304/meet-laniakea-our-home-supercluster/">Laniakea Supercluster</a>, which spans 500 million light-years. But thanks to a <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.03082.pdf">new study</a> by a team of Indian astronomers, a new supercluster has just been identified that puts all previously known ones to shame. Known as Saraswati, this supercluster is over 650 million light years (200 megaparsecs) in diameter, making it one the largest large-scale structures in the known Universe.
The study, which recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal under the title “<a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.03082.pdf">Saraswati: An Extremely Massive ~ 200 Megaparsec Scale Supercluster</a>“, was conducted by astronomers from the <a href="http://www.iucaa.ernet.in/">Inter University Center for Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics</a> (IUCAA) and the <a href="http://www.iiserpune.ac.in/">Indian Institute of Science Education and Research</a> (IISER), with assistance provided by a number of Indian universities.
<figure style="width: 580px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/07/saraswati1-580x288.png" alt="This Is the One of the Largest Structures We Know of in the Universe" width="580" height="288" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The distribution of galaxies, from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), in Saraswati supercluster. Image Source: IUCAA</figcaption></figure>
For the sake of their study, the team relied on data obtained by the <a href="http://www.sdss.org/">Sloan Digital Sky Survey</a> (SDSS) to examine the large-scale structure of the Universe. In the past, astronomers have found that the cosmos is hierarchically assembled, with galaxies being arranged in clusters, superclusters, sheets, walls and filaments. These are separated by immense cosmic voids, which together create the vast “Cosmic Web” structure of the Universe.
<h2>Superclusters</h2>
Superclusters, which are the largest coherent structures in the Cosmic Web, are basically chains of galaxies and galaxy clusters that can extend for hundreds of millions of light years and contain trillions of stars. In the end, the team found a supercluster located about 4 billion (1226 megaparsecs) light-years from Earth – in the constellation Pisces – that is 600 million light-years wide and may contain the mass equivalent of over 20 million billion suns.
They gave this supercluster the name “Saraswati”, the name of an ancient river that played an important role in the emergence of Indian civilization. Saraswait is also the name of a goddess that is worshipped in India today as the keeper of celestial rivers and the goddess of knowledge, music, art, wisdom and nature. This find was particularly surprising, seeing as how Saraswati was older than expected.
Essentially, the supercluster appeared in the SDSS data as it would have when the Universe was roughly 10 billion years old. So not only is Saraswati one of the largest superclusters discovered to date, but its existence raises some serious questions about our current cosmological models. Basically, the predominant model for cosmic evolution does not predict that such a superstructure could exist when the Universe was 10 billion years old.
<figure style="width: 580px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/07/Lambda-Cold-Dark-Matter-Expansion-15cm150dpi-580x325.jpg" alt="This Is the One of the Largest Structures We Know of in the Universe" width="580" height="325" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Diagram of the Lambda-CDM model, which shows cosmic evolution from the Big Bang/Inflation Era and the subsequent expansion of the universe. Image Source: Alex Mittelmann.</figcaption></figure>
Known as the “Cold Dark Matter” model, this theory predicts that small structures (i.e. galaxies) formed first in the Universe and then congregated into larger structures. While variations within this model exist, none predict that something as large as Saraswati could have existed 4 billion years ago. Because of this, the discovery may require astronomers to rethink their theories of how the Universe became what it is today.
To put it simply, the Saraswati supercluster formed at a time when Dark Energy began to dominate structure formation, replacing gravitation as the main force shaping cosmic evolution. As Joydeep Bagchi, a researcher from IUCAA and the lead author of the paper, and co-author Shishir Sankhyayan (of IISER) explained in a IUCAA <a href="http://www.iucaa.ernet.in/Saraswati-General.html">press release</a>:
<blockquote>‘’We were very surprised to spot this giant wall-like supercluster of galaxies… This supercluster is clearly embedded in a large network of cosmic filaments traced by clusters and large voids. Previously only a few comparatively large superclusters have been reported, for example the ‘Shapley Concentration’ or the ‘Sloan Great Wall’ in the nearby universe, while the ‘Saraswati’ supercluster is far more distant one. Our work will help to shed light on the perplexing question; how such extreme large scale, prominent matter-density enhancements had formed billions of years in the past when the mysterious Dark Energy had just started to dominate structure formation.’’</blockquote>
As such, the discovery of this most-massive of superclusters may shed light on how and when Dark Energy played an important role in supercluster formation. It also opens the door to other cosmological theories that are in competition with the CDM model, which may offer more consistent explanations as to why Saraswati could exist 10 billion years after the Big Bang.
One thing is clear thought: this discovery represents an exciting opportunity for new research into cosmic formation and evolution. And with the aid of new instruments and observational facilities, astronomers will be able to look at Saraswait and other superclusters more closely in the coming years and study just how they effect their cosmic environment.

A new supercluster has just been identified that puts all previously known ones to shame--Saraswati, a supercluster over 650 million light years (200 megaparsecs) in diameter, making it one of the largest large-scale structures in the known Universe.

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