Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

CIERA @nuciera.bsky.social · 4h

CIERA is Now Accepting Applications for 3 Prestigious Postdoctoral Opportunities! Join a vibrant, interdisciplinary research community working at the forefront of astrophysics. Learn more and apply: bit.ly/48W5PbL

#Postdoc #Astrophysics #AstronomyJobs

1 1

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

Ethan Siegel @startswithabang.bsky.social · 7h

Macroscopic quantum tunneling wins 2025’s Nobel Prize in physics

This year's Nobel Prize in physics was all about building the first sustainable macroscopic system to exhibit quantum behavior.

Here's the science behind the prize, and why it matters.
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#physics #quantum

Macroscopic quantum tunneling wins 2025's Nobel Prize in physics

Quantum mechanics was first discovered on small, microscopic scales. 2025's Nobel Prize brings the quantum and large-scale worlds together.

bigthink.com

8 15

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @vrubinobs.bsky.social · 5h

Golden hour hits different above 2600 meters. ✨🌅

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory basks in that sunset ✨glow✨ at its site on Cerro Pachón. And with over 300 clear nights on average per year here, that's a lot of sunset basking we get to do! 🔭🧪

Large boot-shaped observatory with a massive telescope dome reflecting orange and golden sunset light atop its rocky mountain site.

Large boot-shaped observatory with a massive telescope dome atop its rocky mountain site, with the golden glow of sunset over the rolling peaks in the distance.

Large boot-shaped observatory on a rocky mountain peak during a vibrant sunset with layered mountain ranges in the background.

Drone shot of a massive teal telescope within an observatory's dome with a vertical opening, surrounded by winding mountain roads and dry terrain.

1 19 93

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 1d

Interested in research based on our archive data?

Then the ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme might be for you.

The next deadline for applications is 10 November 2025. Check out all the application details here 👉 www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc/vis... ☄️ 🧪 🔭

Illustration promoting the Archival Research Visitor Programme and the next deadline date of 10 November 2025. In the background, a model image of what our home galaxy, the Milky Way, might look like face-on: as viewed from above the disc of the galaxy, with its spiral arms and bulge in full view. In the centre of the galaxy, the bulge shines as a hazy oval, emitting a faint golden gleam. Starting at the central bulge, several glistening spiral arms coil outwards, creating a perfectly circle-shaped spiral. They give the impression of someone having sprinkled pastel purple glitter on the pitch-black background, in the shape of sparkling, curled-up snakes. Milky Way illustration by ESA/Gaia/DPAC, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar.

11 34

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 1d

First images of comet #3I/ATLAS from Europe's Mars orbiters 😍

Observing the comet from 30 million km away, #ExoMars reveals the halo of gas and dust surrounding the comet's nucleus.

Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
🔭🧪

4 55 210

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 1d

when you try and get your PhD advisor to review your manuscript 😂

Nobel committee unable to reach prize winner who is ‘living his best life’ hiking off grid

Fred Ramsdell was among those honoured with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine but might not know because he is somewhere in Idaho and uncontactable

13 120 1.1K

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

Ethan Siegel @startswithabang.bsky.social · 5d

How and when will the Universe die?

#AskEthan

Ever since the discovery of dark energy, astronomers have been secure in predicting the heat death of our Universe.

But if dark energy is changing, as DESI data suggests, are all bets off?
bigthink.com/starts-with-...
#space #cosmology #astro

Ask Ethan: How and when will the Universe die?

As the Universe ages, it continues to gravitate, form stars, and expand. And yet, all this will someday end. Do we finally understand how?

bigthink.com

7 6 25

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 7d

🆕 The discovery of new complex organic molecules at Saturn's #Enceladus enhances the likelihood that the moon is habitable 🪐

On Earth, these molecules are involved in chemical reaction chains that lead to the more complex molecules essential for life.

Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
🔭 🧪 ☄️

Scientific illustration showing a cross-section of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It features three labelled layers: An ice shell at the top, with visible cracks releasing jets of water vapour into space; an ocean in the middle, depicted as a large body of water beneath the ice; a rocky core at the bottom, shown emitting heat that may drive the jets. In the background, Saturn and its rings are visible in space.

6 94 300

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

EGO and the Virgo Collaboration @egovirgo.bsky.social · 8d

Ondas gravitacionales, fal grawitacyjnych, ondes gravitationnelles, onde gravitazionali, everyone was talking about gravitational waves on European Researcher’s Night 🌊

1 1 6

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 12d

Mirror, mirror, reflecting our [LASER] beam...
What is the loudest [gravitational wave] signal that we've seen?

It’s #GW250114!

(Yes, it’s been two weeks since it was announced, but I can still celebrate! 🎉 )

#EinsteinWasRight #HawkingWasRight
@ligo.org @egovirgo.bsky.social

An infographic created by @astronerdika titled “MIRROR, MIRROR, reflecting our LASER beam… what’s the LOUDEST signal gravitational wave we’ve seen?” explaining the gravitational-wave discovery GW250114 and how the observation confirms Hawking’s area law. The visual shows the mirrors in a gravitational-wave interferometer speaking about the loudest event they have seen. There are several illustrations as follows:

1. A simplified diagram of a laser interferometer. A red laser beam from a labeled “LASER source” hits a beam splitter, travels down two perpendicular arms, reflects off round mirrors, and recombines at a labeled “detector.” A label near the top-right mirror reads: “the DETECTOR, signal seen by LIGO Hanford & LIGO Livingston.” 
2. An illustration of a binary black hole merger, with two black circles spiraling inward. They are labeled ~34 solar masses and ~32 solar masses. Surrounding spiral lines represent gravitational waves. A nearby caption reads: “the SOURCE, Discovered in 2025, on January 14, at 08:22:03 UTC.”

3. A prominent speech bubble with white text on a purple background states: “GW250114 is the loudest & clearest signal we’ve seen!” A smaller note below reads: “as of January 2025.”

4. Another speech bubble reads: “AND we saw that Hawking was right too!”

5. Visual explanation of Hawking’s Area Law. Two small circles labeled “this BH” + “this BH” are shown to the left of a “<” symbol, pointing to a larger circle labeled “the surface area of the merged BH.” Below there is the explanatory sentence: “GW250114’s remnant event horizon area is larger than the sum of the individual areas.”

6. A section titled “the PAPERS” lists two arXiv references: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08054 and https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2509.08099

Note: This infographic plays off the classic line from Snow White, “Mirror, mirror on the wall…” Here, the “mirrors” are the ones inside the laser interferometer, reflecting light to detect passing gravitational waves.

1 19 64

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 8d

🥰

1

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 8d

Oh WOW! So cool!

1

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

Mapping Ignorance @mappingignorance.org · 9d

Few ideas in modern science have reshaped our understanding of reality more profoundly than space-time — the interwoven fabric of space and time at the heart of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Is space-time structure, substance or metaphor?

What does it really mean to say that space-time exists? What kind of thing is it? Does it exist in the same way the galaxy exists?

mappingignorance.org

1 3 5

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 9d

Count down the top 10 breakthroughs in the 10 years since our first detection with @space.com. Do you agree with their picks?

www.space.com/astronomy/li... by @robleascijorno.bsky.social

#GW10Years 🔭 ⚛️ 🧪

Screenshot: 1. Proving Einstein right! The first gravitational wave detection.

On Sept. 14, 2015, ripples in space-time washed over Earth that were generated by the merger of two black holes, each with a mass of around 30 times that of the sun. This signal, which would come to be known as GW150914 (GW for "gravitational wave" and the following numbers for the date of measurement), had been traveling to our planet for 1.4 billion years.

GW150914's arrival and detection confirmed a theory that was first proposed a century earlier by arguably history's most famous physicist, Albert Einstein, in his 1915 theory of gravity, general relativity.

Screenshot: 10. Proving Einstein ... wrong!?!

The LIGO project operates two detector sites: one near Hanford in eastern Washington, and another near Livingston, Louisiana (shown here). The observatory has four kilometre arms, long concrete tubes surrounded by the greenery of Louisiana. The central building shines white in the middle of the picture. There is LIGO's Science Education Center there is you would like to visit.

4 22

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

CIERA @nuciera.bsky.social · 12d

TONIGHT at 9 PM at Dearborn Observatory: Divjyot Singh (graduate student) will talk about the solar eclipse and give a gravitational waves demo, followed by Ethan Ro (undergraduate) presenting on the Search for (extraterrestrial) Life. Stay for telescope viewing!

1 2

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 12d

There's a really nice explanation (with clear graphics) in this @quantamagazine.bsky.social article of why most molecules in the atmosphere (oxygen & nitrogen) don't act as greenhouse gases, but a lot of the far less numerous ones (like carbon dioxide and methane) do. A great teaching aid :)

The Quantum Mechanics of Greenhouse Gases | Quanta Magazine

Earth’s radiation can send some molecules spinning or vibrating, which is what makes them greenhouse gases. This infographic explains how relatively few heat-trapping molecules can have a planetary ef...

www.quantamagazine.org

5 130 370

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 12d

This is an open question in the field, and actually, some recent studies reported on some evidence for this gap in the latest bunch of merging black holes we saw with LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA

arxiv.org/abs/2509.04151
arxiv.org/abs/2509.04637
arxiv.org/abs/2509.09123

1

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 12d

Sorry, I missed this!

So this forbidden region is related to a process called "pair-instability". Essentially, for some mass range, massive stars don't form black holes when they die, instead, they completely blow up! Leaving nothing behind.

📷 Farag et al 2022 [arXiv:2208.09624]

Diagram showing how black hole mass depends on the helium core mass of a star. Core-collapse supernovae form black holes below ~45 M☉ and above ~130 solar masses. Between ~45–130 solar masses, pulsational pair-instability and pair-instability supernovae prevent black hole formation, creating a "black hole mass gap" from ~50–120 solar masses. Additional labels indicate ignition processes and core temperatures.

1 1

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 12d

What a way to celebrate ten years of gravitational wave astronomy!

This incredible discovery was made by both LIGO detectors. Let’s hope we can keep them both in operation 🤞

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/10/s...

#GW10Years #GW250114

Happy Birthday, LIGO. Now Drop Dead.

www.nytimes.com

2

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 12d

Get all the details of this event in this deep dive thread by @ligo.org 🧵✨

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 28d

What a difference a decade makes! Announcing the clearest #GravitationalWave detection ever #GW250114

youtu.be/2XmZ8-XQ9jU

📓: doi.org/10.1103/kw5g...

🔭🧪⚛️☄️ #O4IsHere

GW250114 – The Clearest of Chirps

YouTube video by LIGO Virgo KAGRA

youtu.be

1 2

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 12d

Mirror, mirror, reflecting our [LASER] beam...
What is the loudest [gravitational wave] signal that we've seen?

It’s #GW250114!

(Yes, it’s been two weeks since it was announced, but I can still celebrate! 🎉 )

#EinsteinWasRight #HawkingWasRight
@ligo.org @egovirgo.bsky.social

1 19 64

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

Caltech IPAC @caltechipac.bsky.social · 20d

The official number of exoplanets has surpassed 6,000! And you can access data on all 6,007 of them right here at IPAC 📈 🪐

Watch the video & read all about the center of the exoplanet universe (also known as NExScI!) here:
www.ipac.caltech.edu/news/the-nas...

3 32 92

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 22d

Beautiful! 😍

Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 22d

Groundbreaking new image! The EHT reveals the dynamic environment around black hole M87*.

The 2021 image shows a distinct shift in polarization patterns, tracing changes in magnetic fields near the event horizon.

eventhorizontelescope.org/new-eht-imag...

2

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 22d

😂

Reposted by Shanika Galaudage

Event Horizon Telescope @ehtelescope.bsky.social · 22d

The new image of M87* just released today comes to life in this stunning animation, revealing its incredible evolution over the years!

Watch closely and see how this mysterious supermassive black hole changes over time.

Credit: EHT Collaboration | Animation: Saurabh (MPIfR)

1 13 42