Best printers for Home

Best Mixer Grinder

Best wired Earphones

Best 43 Inch TV in India

Best Wi Fi Routers

Best Home Theatre in India

Smart Watch under 5000

Best Laptops for Education

Best Laptop for Students

Imagine gazing at the night sky, night after night, locking eyes with a single star that twinkles just for you. And then, poof! Gone. No goodbye note, no flickering farewell — just an empty patch where your starry friend once resided. And for those believing that stars represent the souls of their ancestors, this could come as a rude shock.<br /><br />While this sounds like a Star Wars plot, we do seem to be having a problem with stars just disappearing into the darkness of late.<br /><br />Based off of the little sense we’ve made of the hot mess that is the cosmos, there are two ways stars disappear: the no-drama kind simply dim over time, while the bigger stars like to go out with a bang and explode as supernovas. However, astronomers have documented around 800 cases of stars just vanishing without a trace over the last 70 years!<br /><br />While the mysterious disappearances have had scientists scratching their heads, we finally have reason to reopen this cold case. Recently, astrophysicists at the <keyword id="19995548" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="university-of-copenhagen" source="keywords">University of Copenhagen</keyword>'s <keyword id="21810637" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Niels-Bohr-Institute" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Niels Bohr Institute" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Niels Bohr Institute">Niels Bohr Institute</keyword> shared their <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.02258">study</a> of a rather unusual <keyword id="19681256" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="binary-star-system" source="Orion">binary star system</keyword> that gives credence to the theory that some massive stars can entirely collapse and become black holes without all the fanfare of a <keyword id="1994433" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="supernova-explosion" source="Orion">supernova explosion</keyword>.<br /><br />This “complete collapse” occurs when stars collapse under their own weight in the final phases of their lives. <br /><br />"Were one to stand gazing up at a visible star going through a total collapse, it might, just at the right time, be like watching a star suddenly extinguish and disappear from the heavens," said study co-author Alejandro Vigna-Gómez at the Niels Bohr Institute. "The collapse is so complete that no explosion occurs, nothing escapes and one wouldn't see any bright supernova in the night sky."<br /><br />The binary star system that the team looked at, VFTS 243, hangs somewhere at the edge of the Milky Way. It has a large star and a <keyword id="20345779" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="black-hole" source="keywords">black hole</keyword> ten times larger than our Sun orbiting each other every 10.4 days. Here’s where it gets interesting: when they tried looking for signs of a supernova explosion (which might’ve resulted in the black hole), they ran into a brick wall.<br /><br />Usually, a supernova would be accompanied by baryonic mass ejecta or natal kicks — which accelerate orbiting objects. But it was not so in this case. And this lead them to explore the idea of the star losing most of its mass-energy via neutrinos, perhaps even by gravitational waves to some extent, making the extreme scenario of complete collapse into a black hole becomes a possibility.<br /><br />If their hypothesis is right, this could be one of the reasons, probably even the only reason, for the disappearance of large stars.<br />

Case of the missing stars: At least 800 stars have quietly disappeared in the last 70 years, say scientists

31 Nobel Prize winners had ties to the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer isn't on the list.

'Oppenheimer' fact v. fiction: What the movie got right and wrong according to a nuclear historian

<p class="p1"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>"Einstein, stop telling God what to do," physicist Niels Bohr once told Albert Einstein, who in a room full of the world's most notable scientific minds argued "God does not play dice." </p><p class="p1">In 1927, Einstein and Bohr were two of the 29 scientists (more than half of whom were, or would later become Nobel Prize recipients) in attendance at the Fifth Solvay <span><a href="http://www.solvayinstitutes.be/" target="_blank">Institut International de Physique</a> </span>in Brussels to discuss the foundations of the newly formed <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">quantum theory. </span></p><p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">During the conference, Einstein lead a series of 'thought experiments' in which he tried to prove that the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (and hence q</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">uantum mechanics itself) was just plain wrong," according to <a href="http://phys.lsu.edu/~jdowling/" target="_blank">Jonathan Dowling</a>, Co-Director of the Horace Hearne Institute for Theoretical Physics.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">"Each sleepless night, Bohr would worry and fume and ruminate about Einstein's attack, and then he would </span>respond the next day with a keen rebuttal, showing where Einstein has missed something, and salvage Heisenberg's  principle. This debate went on for days at that Solvay conference and continued on 3 years later at the next conference," Dowling writes in his book, <span style="line-height: 1.5em;" id="productTitle"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Schr%C3%B6dingers-Killer-App-Quantum-Computer/dp/1439896739" target="_blank">Schrödinger's Killer App: Race to Build the World's First Quantum Computer.</a></span></p><p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Bohr's counterattack involved using Einstein's own theory of relativity against him  - and it reportedly won the argument. Eight years later, Einstein still struggled to prove that the theory was incorrect, instead describing it as "incomplete."</span></p><p class="p1">Here's the full group of brilliant minds:</p><p><span><span></span></span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><strong><strong>Front row:</strong><span> </span></strong>Irving Langmuir, Max Planck, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1903/marie-curie-facts.html" target="_blank">Marie Curie</a>, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1902/lorentz-facts.html" target="_blank">Hendrik Lorentz</a>, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1921/einstein-facts.html" target="_blank">Albert Einstein</a>, Paul Langevin, Charles-Eugène Guye, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1927/wilson-facts.html" target="_blank">C.T.R Wilson</a>, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1928/" target="_blank">Owen Richardson</a>.</p><p><strong>Middle row:</strong> Peter Debye, Martin Knudsen, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1915/wh-bragg-facts.html" target="_blank">William Lawrence Bragg</a>, Hendrik Anthony Kramers, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1933/dirac-facts.html" target="_blank">Paul Dirac</a>, Arthur Compton, Louis de Broglie, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1954/born-facts.html" target="_blank">Max Born</a>, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1975/bohr-facts.html" target="_blank">Niels Bohr</a>.</p><p><strong><strong>Back row:</strong><span> </span></strong>Auguste Piccard, Émile Henriot, Paul Ehrenfest, Édouard Herzen, Théophile de Donder, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1933/schrodinger-facts.html" target="_blank">Erwin Schrödinger</a>, JE Verschaffelt, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1945/pauli-facts.html" target="_blank">Wolfgang Pauli</a>, <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1932/heisenberg-facts.html" target="_blank">Werner Heisenberg</a>, Ralph Fowler, Léon Brillouin.</p><p><span>Curie, the only woman in attendance, was also the</span><span> only one among them to win a Nobel Prize in </span><span></span><a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1911/marie-curie-bio.html" target="_blank">two separate disciplines</a><span>:</span><span> chemistry and physics.</span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-solve-the-monty-hall-problem-probability-statistics-2015-4">The Monty Hall Problem: There's a right answer but even genius math geeks get it wrong</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="pucnNxazrOZJihAvh0nIPZwytg7Xre9r" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The world's brightest scientific minds posed for this 1927 photo after historic debates about quantum mechanics

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:480px"><div class="image"><p class="source"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfVx0NFM2ic">YouTube Screenshot</a></p><p class="caption">Professor Eugene Polzik</p></div></div>We're hanging out at the International Conference On Quantum Technologies in Moscow this week and grabbed some time to speak to Professor Eugene Polzik of the Niels Bohr Institute Of Copenhagen University.</p>
<p>Professor Polzik is noted for his work in quantum teleportation, the transmission of quantum data (called qubits) from one place to another at the speed of light.</p>
<p>This smacks of science fiction, but it happens every single day – electrons "teleport" by themselves all the time by way of a process called quantum tunneling.</p>
<p>Our biggest question for him was a straightforward one: Why are the rules for the quantum world so drastically different from the rules for the macroscopic world that we see with our naked eye?</p>
<p>Polzik smiled and said, "The rules <em>are</em> the same. You just have to look closely."</p>
<p>Indeed, those weird electrons that constitute every part of your very body (and all matter) are doing all kinds of non-obvious things that defy understanding at the surface level – they're engaging in quantum tunneling, they're existing in multiple places at once, they're moving forwards and backwards in time.</p>
<p>If the very stuff that makes us up can do all this, then why can't we teleport and time travel ourselves?</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It's because probability plays a very large role in the quantum world. <span>Theoretically you could push your hand through a wall if your hand's atoms passed through the empty spaces between the wall's atoms. </span>Maybe even every particle of your body "teleport" themselves around the world and assemble themselves to re-make you in another place.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But this would require the organized participation of every single particle in your body. T</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">he odds of this happening are so infinitesimal that it might as well be a statistical impossibility.</span></p>

We Can Teleport Ourselves Anywhere In The World, We're Just Really Bad At It

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container full"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">NASA/Swift/Cruz deWilde</p><p class="caption">A gamma ray burst produced this jet that emerged nearly at the speed of light.</p></div><p></p></div>A mysterious blast of light spotted earlier this year near the constellation Leo was actually the brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, and was triggered by an extremely powerful stellar explosion, new research reports.</p>
<p>On April 27, several satellites - including NASA's Swift satellite and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope - observed an <a href="http://www.space.com/20979-record-breaking-gamma-ray-burst-captured-by-fermi-video.html">unusually bright burst of gamma radiation</a>. The explosion unleashed an energetic jet of particles that traveled at nearly the speed of light, researchers said.</p>
<p>"We suddenly saw a <a href="http://www.space.com/13838-nasa-gamma-ray-targets-blazars-fermi.html">gamma-ray burst</a> that was extremely bright - a monster gamma-ray burst," study co-author Daniele Malesani, an astrophysicist at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said in a statement. "This [was] one of the most powerful gamma-ray bursts we have ever observed with the Swift satellite." [<a href="http://www.space.com/9699-top-10-strangest-space.html">Top 10 Strangest Things in Space</a>]</p>
<p>The gamma-ray burst was described in a series of studies published online today (Nov. 21) in the journal Science.</p>
<p>Gamma-ray bursts, or GRBs, are the most powerful type of explosions in the universe and typically mark the destruction of a massive star. The original stars are too faint to be seen, but the <a href="http://www.space.com/10411-supernova-destroyer-creator.html">supernova explosions</a> that signal a star's death throes can cause violent bursts of gamma radiation, researchers said.</p>
<p>Gamma-ray bursts are usually short but extremely bright. Still, ground-based telescopes have a tough time observing them because Earth's atmosphere absorbs the gamma radiation.</p>
<p>The extremely bright gamma-ray burst seen earlier this year, officially dubbed GRB 130472A, occurred in a galaxy 3.6 billion light-years away from Earth, which, though still far away, is less than half the distance at which gamma-ray bursts have previously been seen. This closer proximity to Earth enabled astronomers to confirm for the first time that one object can simultaneously create a powerful GRB and a <keyword id="517558" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="supernova">supernova</keyword> explosion.</p>
<p>"We normally detect GRBs at great distance, meaning they usually appear quite faint," study co-author Paul O'Brien, an astronomer at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "In this case, the burst happened only a quarter of the way across the universe - meaning it was very bright. On this occasion, a powerful supernova was also produced - something we have not recorded before alongside a powerful GRB - and we will now be seeking to understand this occurrence."</p>
<p>The jet produced by the gamma-ray burst was formed when a massive star collapsed on itself and created a <a href="http://www.space.com/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html">black hole</a> at its center. This generated a blast wave that caused the stellar remnants to expand, producing a glowing shell of debris that was observed as an extremely bright supernova explosion.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container full"><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">NASA/Swift satellite</p><p class="caption">You can tell that the gamma ray burst is the brightest object in NASA's Swift satellite's field of view.</p></div><p></p></div>After analyzing properties of the light produced by the gamma-ray burst, scientists determined that the original star was only three to four times the size of the sun, but was 20 to 30 times more massive. This extremely compact star was also rapidly rotating, the researchers said.</p>
<p>The GRB was the brightest and most energetic ever witnessed and triggered dynamic internal and external shock waves that are still not well understood. Though scientists have a clearer view of the violent explosion, mysteries remain. For instance, space telescopes detected more photons and more high-energy gamma-rays than theoretical models predicted for a gamma-ray burst of this magnitude.</p>
<p>Researchers are still investigating why the energy levels seen with GRB 130472A do not quite match predictions from <a href="http://www.space.com/18823-space-bursts-provide-insight-to-theory-of-everything.html">existing models of gamma-ray bursts</a>. Their results could lead to more refined theories about how particles are accelerated, which could help astronomers better predict the behavior of cosmic events.</p>
<p>"The really cool thing about this GRB is that because the exploding matter was traveling at [nearly] the speed of light, we were able to observe relativistic shocks," study co-author Giacomo Vianello, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University in California, said in a statement. "We cannot make a relativistic shock in the lab, so we really don't know what happens in it, and this is one of the main unknown assumptions in the model. These observations challenge the models and can lead us to a better understanding of physics."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table full"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source">NASA/Swift satellite</p><p class="caption">Close-up image of the brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen, taken in April 2013 by the ultraviolet/optical telescope on NASA's Swift satellite.</p></div><p></p></div></div><em>Follow Denise Chow on Twitter </em><a href="http://twitter.com/denisechow"><em>@denisechow</em></a><em>. Follow us <a href="http://twitter.com/spacedotcom">@Spacedotcom</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/spacecom">Facebook</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/+SPACEcom/posts">Google+</a>. Originally published on</em> <a href="http://www.space.com/23684-brightest-gamma-ray-burst-mysteries.html"><em>SPACE.com.</em></a></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.space.com/20378-stars-quiz-space-trivia.html">Star Quiz: Test Your Stellar Smarts</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.space.com/11425-photos-supernovas-star-explosions.html">Supernova Photos: Great Images of Star Explosions</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.space.com/31-black-holes-universe.html">Images: Black Holes of the Universe</a></li>
</ul><p class="tagline">Copyright <a href="http://space.com/" target="_blank">SPACE.com</a>, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. </p>

You Searched For "Niels Bohr Institute" and got 6 results

Case of the missing stars: At least 800 stars have quietly disappeared in the last 70 years, say scientists

Ashmita Gupta

31 Nobel Prize winners had ties to the Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer isn't on the list.

Jenny McGrath

'Oppenheimer' fact v. fiction: What the movie got right and wrong according to a nuclear historian

Jenny McGrath

The world's brightest scientific minds posed for this 1927 photo after historic debates about quantum mechanics

Amanda Macias

We Can Teleport Ourselves Anywhere In The World, We're Just Really Bad At It

Dylan Love

Astronomers Spot The Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Ever Seen But Can't Explain It

Denise Chow

Popular Keywords

Buying Guides