Bizarre space circle captured in unprecedented detail

Astronomers have captured a rare image of ‘odd radio circles’, rare space objects made up of gigantic rings of radio waves. Only five of these massive balls of radio waves have ever been spotted, with most containing a galaxy at their centre. Researchers have proposed three theories to explain their origin: they are created from shock waves, radio jets or starbursts in the centre of their galaxies.

Liquid metal, ruby and sapphire could rain down on huge exoplanet

A hot, giant exoplanet, called WASP-121b, could experience ruby and sapphire rain. Astronomers developed a three-dimensional model of the planet based on observations taken from a spectroscopic camera aboard the Hubble Space Telescope. The exoplanet has a hot day side that always faces its star, and whips around in an orbit of just 30 hours. Winds could be blowing vapourised titanium and aluminium from the hot side to the night side, where it rains down as droplets of liquid metal, ruby and sapphire.

A Deepening Crisis Forces Physicists to Rethink Structure of Nature’s Laws

Particle physicists, who study nature’s fundamental building blocks, are in crisis. The relationship between the Higgs boson and phenomena at the highest energy scales — those associated with the quantum nature of gravity, black holes and the Big Bang — just doesn’t feel right. The equations require extreme fine-tuning — of a type that physicists dub ‘unnatural’ — to work out in a way that reflects observations. Some physicists think this failure of ‘naturalness’ signals the breakdown of reductionism — that the laws of physics at big scales emerge from those at smaller scales.

Blogger Comments:

This misunderstands reductionism. Reductionism is the misinterpretation of a compositional hierarchy as reducing to its lowest level, as when physicists say nonsense like 'we are nothing but elementary particles'.

Tyrannosaurus rex may have been three species

Tyrannosaurus rex might not have been one species, but three. Palæontologists studying 37 T. rex specimens say there is too much variation in their ‘stout build’ and teeth to be a single species. Instead, they propose that fossils found in lower layers of rock are probably from a species they call Tyrannosaurus imperator, and slender-boned specimens are likely from a creature they’ve named Tyrannosaurus regina. The work has prompted widespread discussion, but many palæontologists are not convinced.