Tag Archives: Space

Information could be a fundamental part of the universe – and may explain dark energy and dark matter

Florian Neukart is Assistant Professor of Physics, Leiden University. He is widely recognized as a leading figure in high technology, innovation, and future tech. With extensive experience in academia, industry, and consulting, he has established himself as a trusted advisor and practitioner in artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

Currently serving as the Executive Board Member for Product at Terra Quantum AG, as the Director for Exponential Technologies at the Quantum Economy Institute, and on Board of Trustees of the International Foundation of Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing, Florian also holds a special advisory role at the Quantum Strategy Institute and serves on the Board of Advisors of KI Park. He has contributed significantly to shaping Germany’s approach to quantum computing as a co-author of the National Roadmap for Quantum Computing and sits on the Advisory Board of Quantum.Tech. Florian’s expertise has also been sought after on the global stage, as evidenced by his membership in the World Economic Forum’s Future Council on Quantum Computing.

What’s the shape of the universe? Mathematicians use topology to study the shape of the world and everything in it

John Etnyre is currently a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
“I received my PhD from the University of Texas and then spent several years at Stanford with an NSF postdoctoral fellowship. The next stop was the University of Pennsylvania where, after four years, I became an Associate Professor and then moved to Georgia Tech.”

Wormholes may not exist – we’ve found they reveal something deeper about time and the universe

Enrique Gaztanaga is Professor of Astrophysics at Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth.
“I also have a civil servant (on leave) appointment as Research Professor in the Institute of Space Studies (ICE) working for the Spanish National Research Council (www.csic.es) and the IEEC in Barcelona. My background is in Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology. My expertise is in the area of theoretical models of Cosmology and the building and analysis of the largest Cosmic maps. I am currently director of the PAU Survey (pausurvey.org) and the Science Coordinator of ESA ARRAKIHS (arrakihs-mission.eu) space mission. ”

Do We Need to Rethink Everything?

We know from cognitive science and neuroscience that the brain is not a passive observer, like a camera lens. The brain actively composes what we perceive. Still we persist, in all our endeavors – from trying to cure cancer to conceiving of a unified theory – to operate from a materialist perspective. Perhaps this needs to change.

Extraterrestrial life may look nothing like life on Earth − so astrobiologists are coming up with a framework to study how complex systems evolve

Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 180 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He has won eleven teaching awards, and has taught three massive open online classes with over 180,000 enrolled. Impey is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society and he has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council’s Arizona Professor of the Year, and most recently, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He’s written over 70 popular articles on cosmology and astrobiology, two introductory textbooks, a novel called ‘Shadow World’, and eight popular science books: ‘The Living Cosmos’, ‘How It Ends’, ‘Talking About Life’, ‘How It Began’, ‘Dreams of Other Worlds’, ‘Humble Before the Void’, ‘Beyond: The Future of Space Travel’, and ‘Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes’.

The earliest galaxies formed amazingly fast after the Big Bang. Do they break the universe or change its age?

Sandro Tacchella is an astrophysicist working at the Department of Physics (Cavendish Laboratory) and at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology of the University of Cambridge. Before joining the University of Cambridge in 2022, he was Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of UNIST in Ulsan, Korea. From 2017-2021, he was a CfA Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, USA. He has received his Ph.D. from ETH Zurich (Switzerland) in 2017.
Sandro’s long-range scientific goal is to understand the physics of the formation and evolution of galaxies and black holes across cosmic time. Specifically, he investigates the physical mechanisms that govern the formation of the first galaxies in the early universe, the buildup of the bulge and disk components in galaxies, and the cessation of star formation in massive galaxies. He exploits cutting-edge multi-wavelength observational data obtained with some of the most advanced telescopes on ground and in space. He uses and develops analytical and cosmological numerical models to shed light on the physical properties of galaxies. Sandro is also heavily involved in the new James Webb Space Telescope, playing a key role both in the data processing of the NIRCam instrument and in projects aimed at detecting galaxies formed in the early Universe and at characterising their primeval properties.

‘Dark stars’: dark matter may form exploding stars – and observing the damage could help reveal what it’s made of

Andreea Font is a Reader in Theoretical Astrophysics, Liverpool John Moores University.

“I am a theoretical cosmologist and my interests are in the formation and evolution of galaxies, in particular in the formation of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. To this aim, I build computer simulations that follow the evolution of Milky Way-type galaxies since their birth until the present time.
I am particularly interested in making detailed comparisons between cosmological simulations of the Milky Way and the most up-to-date observational data in our Galaxy, for example, the data obtained from the Gaia satellite. Examples of my recent work include modelling of stellar haloes of Milky Way-type galaxies and of satellite dwarf galaxies orbiting these systems.
I also have an interest in deciphering the nature of dark matter and, to this aim, I develop models that help us distinguish between various possible dark matter particle candidates using cosmological simulations.”

Cosmology is at a tipping point – we may be on the verge of discovering new physics

Andreea Font is a Reader in Theoretical Astrophysics, Liverpool John Moores University.

“I am a theoretical cosmologist and my interests are in the formation and evolution of galaxies, in particular in the formation of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. To this aim, I build computer simulations that follow the evolution of Milky Way-type galaxies since their birth until the present time.
I am particularly interested in making detailed comparisons between cosmological simulations of the Milky Way and the most up-to-date observational data in our Galaxy, for example, the data obtained from the Gaia satellite. Examples of my recent work include modelling of stellar haloes of Milky Way-type galaxies and of satellite dwarf galaxies orbiting these systems.
I also have an interest in deciphering the nature of dark matter and, to this aim, I develop models that help us distinguish between various possible dark matter particle candidates using cosmological simulations.”

‘Cosmic inflation’: did the early cosmos balloon in size? A mirror universe going backwards in time may be a simpler explanation

Neil Turok is the inaugural Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh. He holds the Roger Penrose Visiting Professorship at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada where he is emeritus Director. Before that he was Chair of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge and Professor of Physics at Princeton.
Neil’s day job is developing and testing fundamental physics theories of the universe. His first-principles predictions of correlations between the temperature and polarisation of the cosmic background radiation (CBR), and the CBR and the galaxy distribution have been confirmed at high precision. His work also ruled out several popular theoretical models. Recently, he showed how a CPT-symmetric universe could provide the simplest-yet explanation of the cosmic dark matter, the large scale properties of the universe and the primordial density variations.

In 2008 Neil won the TED prize for his research and for AIMS. In 2016 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the UK Institute of Physics and was awarded the John Torrence Tate Medal of the American Institute of Physics for International Leadership in Physics. In 2018 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Seti: how we’re searching for alien life at previously unexplored frequencies

Owen Johnson
“I am an Irish astrophysicist, currently enrolled as a PhD researcher at Trinity College Dublin , jointly supported by UC Berkeley under the supervision of Prof. Evan Keane and Dr. Vishal Gajjar . My research is based on transient astronomical objects using everything from pulsars as gravitational probes to searching large data sets for signs of ET.
I completed my undergraduate degree in Physics with Astronomy and Space Science at University College Dublin (UCD) in 2022. During this time I worked as a research assistant at UC Berkeley. Working primarily using LOw Frequency ARrays (LOFAR) searching for technosignatures, pulsars and FRBs.”