The universe (if it were stable all this time – and we have no reason to believe it is – and infinite in spatial dimension – and it could very well be) is old enough to have a 50% probability that the light of an
The universe (if it were stable all this time – and we have no reason to believe it is – and infinite in spatial dimension – and it could very well be) is old enough to have a 50% probability that the light of an
The universe (if it were stable all this time – and we have no reason to believe it is – and infinite in spatial dimension – and it could very well be) is old enough to have a 50% chance of being reached by the
Even enormous galactic black holes with original masses equal to several billion solar masses are evaporating, such as the one that lay at the centre of Milkomeda, the galaxy born from the merger of (our) Milky Way and Andromeda.
Even galactic black holes with original masses of several million solar masses evaporate.
The decay of protons lowers the atomic number of atoms in the Universe: even white dwarfs (re)transform into hydrogen.
The decay of protons lowers the atomic number of atoms in the Universe: the metallic nuclei of the remaining rocky planets are transformed into hydrogen.
Bismuth Half-Life: 50% of Bismuth decays. Bismuth will be the last element to disappear.
Galaxies gradually evaporate due to the gravitational slingshot effect caused by random close encounters between stars.
Red dwarfs become black dwarfs, veritable stellar corpses.
The electromagnetic radiation of stars is stretched by the accelerated expansion (by dark energy) of the Universe and the wavelength of photons becomes longer than that of the visible Universe.
Due to the redshift, the giant Virgo Cluster falls beyond our visibility horizon and Milkomeda remains the only observable galaxy.
The Universe is 1000 times bigger than it is today
In the theory conceived in 2003 by Robert Caldwell, the strength of dark energy grows so dramatically that it soon disintegrates matter itself until the Big Rip in 20 billion years. The theory does not find much credit in the scientific community.
The Sun’s core runs out of Helium. Gravity takes over and causes a new collapse of the core, triggering violent and unstable fusions. A series of 4 convulsions occur, each separated by 100,000 years. The Sun reaches the frightening luminosity of 5,200 times its current
The Sun’s core compresses and heats up to 100 million degrees. The heat expands into the outer layers, transforming it into a bloated red giant 250 times larger and 2,700 times brighter than today. The Earth reaches the solar atmosphere and soon the friction makes
The Sun’s hydrogen shell ignites and our star becomes twice its current size
Second collision-impact between the Milky Way and Andromeda. At this point the two galaxies are an ellipsoidal cluster of almost 1000 billion stars: an elliptical galaxy that TJ Cox and Abi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics call Milkomeda.
The Sun (and the Solar System), if the Milky Way did not collide with Andromeda, would leave the Orion Arm and enter the Perseus Arm, towards the Galactic Center.
The Milky Way’s central black hole goes from a few million to a few billion solar masses thanks to a nice feast of stars caused by the instability caused by the first impact with Andromeda. Eventually the object cyclically transforms into a very bright quasar
In the merger of our Galaxy (Milky Way) and that of Andromeda, the Sun has a 12% chance of ending up in the tidal tail and being ejected into the depths of intergalactic space, a 3% chance of being engulfed by Andromeda in subsequent rebounds
First encounter-impact between the Milky Way and Andromeda. Gravity creates rings and ripples in the distribution of stars and ejects a giant arc with more than a billion stars into the intergalactic void.
The Sun completes its next orbit around the galactic center
Approximate estimated time of the disappearance of Saturn’s rings, inexorably attracted to the planet and crashed onto it.
Next passage of the Great Comet of January 1910. In 1910 it was very bright, visible even to the naked eye and during the day.
Comets launched towards the inner Solar System by the passage of the Scholz binary star, are hurtling around the Sun, threatening even the Earth. The Scholz binary star was discovered in 2013 AD and is composed of a red dwarf and a brown dwarf, both
The red dwarf star Gliese 710 passes just 1 light-year from the Sun, interfering with the Oort Cloud and launching a few million comets toward the inner Solar System and therefore also the Earth. At this point Gliese 710 shines in the sky with the
850 light-years away, the (now) blue supergiant Rigel, in the constellation of Orion, explodes in a spectacular type II supernova that lights up the night sky on Earth like 100 full moons concentrated in one point. Before Rigel, the other very bright star in Orion,
Two symbols of human greatness will disappear: the pyramids of Giza and the astronauts’ footprints on the Moon.
(current age of the Universe) The universe, considered with discrete time and matter with discrete quantum structure and discrete states, i.e. considered as a gigantic computer that processes information (qubits) has processed since the Big Bang about 10^123 binary operations in the available 4E17s, contains
The neutron star (100 trillion times denser than steel) born from the explosion of the supernova RX J185635-3754 passes (at 100 km/s) 170 light years from Earth
The constellations will have become unrecognizable due to the proper motions of the individual stars. By that time Betelgeuse will have exploded as a supernova.
Next pass of Comet Hyakutake. The previous time it passed near Earth was in 1996.
The star Ross 248 will take away from Proxima Centauri the title of closest star to the Sun.
The radio signal sent by Frank Drake from Arecibo reaches the globular cluster M13, composed of 300,000 stars
The seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are reversed compared to today, due to the precession of the equinoxes.
Halley’s Comet Passes Earth’s Edge for the First Time in 75 Years. Keep the Evening Off Your Calendar!
Aurora Borealis also visible from Emilia (I saw it in Novellara at 11:00 pm). The origin of the storm that hit the Earth is the sunspot AR 3848 that on October 8 produced a strong solar flare of class X 1.8, the most powerful classified.
4 huge coronal mass eruptions are on their way to Earth. The first one arrived late in the evening. We also saw the pink sky of the Northern Lights from Modena, Italy (latitude 44 degrees North), around 22:30 to the North. Grade G5 (5 on
Total solar eclipse in North America, visible across a wide area covering Mexico, the United States and Canada.
Analysis of samples from a massive meteorite reveals two minerals never before seen on our planet. Canadian researchers said the rock was found in rural Somalia two years ago, but locals believe it is much older. They call the stone Nightfall and say it is
The first science photos from the Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are released in an exciting NASA live broadcast, also featuring President Joe Biden. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has produced the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe to date. Known as the
The first-ever image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The image – which looks like a fuzzy orange donut (but as big as Mercury’s orbit) – is of the dust and shadow around the black hole Sgr A* itself, seen
The Arecibo telescope is announced to be closed. Unfortunately, the damage caused by the collapse of some cables that support one of the platforms above the main dish, first this August, and then in early November, does not allow the safety of the workers. After
Venus. A particular gas, phosphine, which on Earth is linked to anaerobic life forms has been detected in the clouds that make up the atmosphere of Venus. Jane Greaves and colleagues – we read in our press release accompanying the research – observed Venus with
As many as 139 minor planetary bodies have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt. They are added to the three thousand already known trans-Neptunian objects (TNO – Trans-Neptunian Objects). The discovery was made through data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) at the Cerro Tololo
A clear trace of water is discovered in the atmosphere of K2-18b, a terrestrial planet, which orbits in the Goldilocks zone, that is, the area around its star with terrestrial environmental conditions. The lead scientist is Giovanna Tinetti of University College London. The planet is
Washington DC. Sheperd Doeleman of Harvard University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows the first image ever taken of the event horizon of a black hole. This is the image of the black hole in M87, captured by a network of radio telescopes called
Total lunar eclipse, with a record duration (in the 21st century) of 1h and 43min, with, at the same time, Mars, positioned in the sky very close to the Moon, in opposition (maximum diameter in the sky) with the atmosphere almost completely obscured by a
The team led by the Italian Roberto Orosei of INAF, discovers a 20km long lake of liquid salt water, under the Martian South polar cap. A few years later, in 2021, independent laboratory tests raise doubts about the possibility of having liquid water in those
It turns out that the galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 has no dark matter. It is an ultra-diffuse galaxy, with very low mass. It is therefore the first galaxy observed whose orbital velocity is consistent with the gravitational force expected from its observable stars. The presence of
Pisa. Adalberto Giazotto, an Italian physicist, dies. He had the intuition that gravitational wave detectors could be built on Earth, using enormous interferometers with stationary pendulums to minimize the coupling of the mirrors with the ground. Interferometers that search for signals in the 10-100Hz region,
Chile. With the La Silla telescope, the planet Ross 128b is discovered 11 light years from Earth. It is the second terrestrial planet in terms of distance, after Proxima b.
iPTF14hls, a bizarre supernova (or zombie star), continues to explode repeatedly. The first known was in 1954, and several times recently in the span of 11 weeks. A possible explanation (Pulsational Pair-Instability Supernovae), hypothesized by Daniel Kasen, and discovered by Arcavi, Howell, Birnstein, hypothesizes a
Data from NASA’s Dwarf spacecraft suggest that Ceres likely had an ocean of liquid water that covered its entire surface 4 billion years ago, now preserved in fossil form as solid ice, with perhaps a layer of liquid still underneath.
The Pan-Starrs1 telescope in Hawaii discovers an asteroid that comes from outside the Solar System. It is the first of its kind. It is first called 1I/2017U1 and then named Oumuamua, a Hawaiian word meaning “the messenger that comes from far away and arrives first”.
Granada, Andalusia, Spain. Jose Ortix and his team discover that Haumea, a Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) comparable in size to Pluto but ellipsoidal in shape, does indeed have rings.
The Italian Virgo rises to prominence. For the first time, gravitational waves and light emissions from the same event are directly observed, and for the first time this event is the fusion of two neutron stars, an event that involves the production of enormous amounts
Orsay, France. Hideki Tanimura and his team of astrophysicists prove that at least 50% of the missing matter (so-called dark matter) is present in the form of enormous filaments of hot gas that connect galaxies.
Nobel Prize in Physics to Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish for the discovery of gravitational waves, completing the verification of Einstein’s General Relativity.
The discovery of gravitational waves emitted by a fourth black hole collision is announced. This time the Virgo observatory in Pisa also sees it. With the triangulation with the two American observatories in Louisiana and Washington state, the location is also identified, by triangulation. The
Ligo in the United States and Virgo in Pisa, Italy, receive and detect the gravitational wave caused by the collision of two neutron stars. This is the first gravitational wave not caused by the merger of two black holes. It is located 130 million light
Supermoon (perigee full moon) particular. The diameter of the full Moon is 14% larger than average, the largest of the 21st century, and the satellite is 30% brighter, thanks to the perigee coinciding with the full Moon. The next similar event is November 25, 2034
The experimental detection of gravitational waves is confirmed. Confirmed with a confidence level of 5.1 sigma, or with the same level of confidence with which, for example, the observation of the Higgs Boson was confirmed. The rumor of the discovery of gravitational waves had been
Second black hole merger event, detected by Ligo in the United States and Virgo in Italy.
At the Atlas computing center of the Max Planck Institute in Hannover, shortly before 12. The Italian physicist Marco Drago (a young post-doc), responsible for studying some of the data arriving from the two large Ligo antennas in the United States designed to capture gravitational