DailyDirt: Curiosities In Space

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The universe is filled with unsolved mysteries and phenomena that we haven't quite figured out how to explain. It's these unanswered questions that drive science and technology forward as people try to work out how the universe operates -- and we need to build more precise and accurate instruments in order to even attempt to determine what's really going on. Here are just a few curiosities in the universe that are worth exploring a bit more.

• The oldest known star in the universe has been recently identified as SMSS J031300.362670839.3 by Australian National University scientists. This star is only 6,000 light years away from us, and it's at least 13 billion years old. However, its exact age isn't really well-known (nor is the exact age of any star really well-known), but its composition makes it an extremely early star in our universe because it contains very little iron. [url]
• A puzzling dark matter "blob" near a merging galaxy cluster called Abell 520 isn't acting the way dark matter is supposed to behave. Possible explanations for this "Train Wreck" cluster could include different forms of dark matter -- or something else we haven't thought of yet. [url]
• The largest known structure in the universe is a large quasar group (LQG) about 4 billion light years across. This group of quasars is so large that it actually puts the Cosmological Principle into question (the assumption that the universe should look the same no matter where you are, at a sufficiently large scale). [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: abell 520, astronomy, cosmological principle, dark matter, galaxy, j031300.362670839.3, large quasar group, lqg, mysteries, space, star, universe