“[T]here’s the uncomfortable fact that producing the 2 megajoules of laser power that started the fusion reaction took about 300 megajoules of grid power, so the overall process is nowhere near the break-even point. … [W]e’re still left with major questions about whether laser-driven fusion can be optimized enough to be useful.”
“[A] team of European researchers decided to model an event that should be relatively uncommon: the two black holes didn’t start out in a mutual orbit but happened to pass close enough to gravitationally latch onto each other. … The models that produced a chirp that best matched the GW190521 signal saw a single pass that drew the black holes closer, followed by a single rapid curve into the collision.”
“[T]he earliest image indicates that it was roughly 100,000 Kelvin, which suggests we were looking at it just six hours after it exploded. The latest lensed image shows that the debris had already cooled to 10,000 K over the eight days between the two different images.”
“Bubbles of hydrogen-ripping galaxy light began to grow, carving holes in the cold, quiet bulk of the intergalactic gas. Over a billion years, the bubbles filled the cosmos and nearly every hydrogen atom was torn in two, leaving protons and electrons to wander the Universe separately again.”
“Cosmic strings appear to be a generic prediction of our (admittedly fuzzy) understanding of the early Universe. We may not know exactly what went down all those billions of years ago, but we’re fairly certain that it involved phase transitions and that those phase transitions should support the existence of topological defects like cosmic strings.”
“[M]ost of my callers realised that they can’t contribute to a field without meeting today’s quality standard. … One of them might even publish a paper soon. Not a proposal for a theory of everything, mind you, but a new way to look at a known effect. A first step on a long journey.”
“This latest detection is a neutrino that began its journey in a faraway, as yet-unnamed-galaxy in the constellation Delphinus, born from the death throes of a shredded star.”