#cosmic rays

A new study from NYU Abu Dhabi has found that high-energy particles from space, known as cosmic rays, could create the energy needed to support life underground on planets and moons in our solar system. The research shows that cosmic rays may not only be harmless in certain environments, but could actually help microscopic life survive. These findings challenge the traditional view that life can only exist near sunlight or volcanic heat. Published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the study was led by the Principal Investigator of the Space Exploration Laboratory at NYUAD's Center for Astrophysics and Space Science (CASS), Dimitra Atri.

Like that amp in Spinal Tap that goes up to eleven?

A galaxy is a vast system of stars, #gas, #dust, #stellar remnants, and dark matter held together by #gravity, with the Milky Way being our own galaxy. Galaxies come in #various shapes, including spirals, ellipticals, and #irregular forms, and can be organized into larger structures like groups, clusters, and superclusters, which together form the large-scale structure of the #universe. The word "galaxy" comes from the #Greek #word galaxias, meaning "milky," which was a reference to the #band of light we see in the night sky, the Milky Way.

Key Characteristics

#Composition: A galaxy consists of stars, planets, #interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter.

Gravity: #Gravity is the force that holds all these #components together.

Scale: Galaxies can range from containing a few #thousand stars to #billions, with the largest spanning more than a million light-years across.

Supermassive Black Holes: Most large galaxies have a supermassive #black hole at their #center.

Types of Galaxies

#Astronomers classify galaxies primarily based on their appearance, a #system proposed by #Edwin #Hubble:

Spiral Galaxies: #Characterized by a central bulge and #spiral arms, such as the Milky Way.

#Elliptical Galaxies: Smooth, oval-shaped galaxies.

Irregular Galaxies: Galaxies with no defined, orderly shape.

Our Galaxy

The Milky Way: Our #home galaxy, the Milky Way, contains our #Solar System and is a large barred spiral galaxy.

The #Universe's Structure

Galaxies are not isolated but are organized into larger structures:

Groups: Collections of around 100 or fewer galaxies.

#Clusters: Thousands of galaxies held together by gravity.

#Superclusters: Even larger structures, sometimes called the #cosmic #web, which include groups, clusters, and #voids.

Funky alien guys are never free of my greedy fanart grasp

Jackie Stargazer

Summary: A funeral brings Jackie and Hyde together after fourteen years apart. Trauma made them wanderers, vagabonds moving in opposite directions. But the rock band Hyde roadies for reconnects them in ways neither expects.

Rated: M

Disclaimer: The lyrics are copyright to me. The music belongs to Suno and, really, every musical artist whose songs were scraped to make Suno possible. I don't believe AI-generated music should be monetized, just as I don't believe fanfiction should be monetized. DO NOT UPLOAD THIS SONG TO SPOTIFY OR ANY STREAMING SERVICE because, again, the lyrics are copyright to me and no money should be made off AI-generated music. You may download the song for personal enjoyment.

I have musical theory education and knowledge, songwriting experience, and a significant history of playing and performing music on multiple instruments. I wrote the prompts with as much specificity as I could, altered prompts when the results weren't satisfactory, and Suno generated music based on them to the best of its abilities and limitations. I've also done post-production work on some of the music.

"New research suggests that these ultra-high energy rays derive their energy from magnetic turbulence."

"Ultra-high energy cosmic rays, which emerge in extreme astrophysical environments—like the roiling environments near black holes and neutron stars—have far more energy than the energetic particles that emerge from our sun. In fact, the particles that make up these streams of energy have around 10 million times the energy of particles accelerated in the most extreme particle environment on earth, the human-made Large Hadron Collider.

Where does all that energy come from? For many years, scientists believed it came from shocks that occur in extreme astrophysical environments—when, for example, a star explodes before forming a black hole, causing a huge explosion that kicks up particles.

That theory was plausible, but, according to new research published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the observations are better explained by a different mechanism. The source of the cosmic rays’ energy, the researchers found, is more likely magnetic turbulence. The paper’s authors found that magnetic fields in these environments tangle and turn, rapidly accelerating particles and sharply increasing their energy up to an abrupt cutoff.

“These findings help solve enduring questions that are of great interest to both astrophysicists and particle physicists about how these cosmic rays get their energy,” said Luca Comisso, associate research scientist in the Columbia Astrophysics Lab, and one of the paper’s authors.

The paper complements recent research published by Comisso and collaborators on the sun’s energetic particles, which they also found emerge from magnetic fields in the sun’s corona. In that paper, Comisso and his colleagues discovered ways to better predict where those energetic particles would emerge."