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The Trumpire Strikes Back

The European Space Agency has designed their space observatory Euclid to hunt for the invisible but crucial components of the universe: dark matter and dark energy. Its first science release is now out and it shows that the observatory is more than up to the task. And it can do so much more than that.Five images and 10 accompanying papers are the tip of the iceberg of what the observatory can do. The early catalog was produced in a single day and it contains more than 11 million objects in visible light and 5 million more in infrared light. It can see free-floating rogue planets only four times bigger than Jupiter, observe star clusters with unprecedented detail, as well as discovering new dwarf galaxies. But the goal remains to study galaxies with high precision to indirectly constrain the properties of the dark universe.“Euclid is quite amazing. Everything on earth, all the galaxies, all the stars, everything that we see makes up only 5 percent of the universe. So there's 95 percent we cannot see. One wants to understand what is out there and how this functions. That's why we launched this mission,” ESA Director General Dr Josef Aschbacher teased us about this science release during a previous interview about the upcoming launch of Ariane 6.“Euclid will help us measure the indirect effect of dark energy and dark matter so that we can better understand how they function and how they work. We will still not see them, but we can measure their impact indirectly. And this is actually quite exciting!”The stunning Abell 2390 cluster is in the middle, amid thousands of galaxies further away in the universe. There are a few stars too with equally stunning artifacts, like the diffraction spikes and blue rings.Image credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGOEuclid had some teething problems last year (which somehow produced some incredible art) but the first images published in November showed the capabilities and potential of the telescope. And this new batch builds up the well-deserved hype. In particular, astronomers are looking at gravitational lensing.The cluster images centered around the clusters Abel 2390 and Abel 2764 show some arcs of light and distorted galaxies. That is called strong gravitational lensing, when a massive object such as a galaxy cluster warps space-time so much to act like a massive magnifying glass.[In these images] you see the impact of gravitational lensing and how sharply, how efficiently, and at what high-performance Euclid can detect the arcs, which are evidence that the background galaxies are magnified.Roland Vavrek, Euclid Deputy Project ScientistBut there is also more subtle lensing happening in the universe. This weak gravitational lensing is a more toned-down distortion, created by any mass between the object and the observers. All this lensing can be used to trace dark matter, since this hypothetical substance is supposed to interact only through gravity and not with light.On the top right, there is the Abell 2764 cluster, and this image show just how many galaxies Euclid can snap in a single exposure.Image credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO“Gravitational lensing is core to the core science,” Roland Vavrek, Euclid Deputy Project Scientist, told IFLScience. “In this fantastic environment [the cluster images], which of course has very massive systems, you see the impact of gravitational lensing and how sharply, how efficiently, and at what high-performance Euclid can detect the arcs, which are evidence that the background galaxies are magnified.”What makes Euclid a great dark matter telescope is its ability to measure the shape of galaxies with high precision. In distortions to those shapes, astronomers can reconstruct the distribution of dark matter in the universe in three dimensions. But you also need a wide field of view to capture a huge amount of galaxies. And a telescope that keeps steady during these precise observations.“The guiding system of Euclid is a masterpiece of engineering. It ensures that we can we can keep the telescope on target over the almost 600 seconds of exposure,” Vavrek explained. “It’s a very small detail, but it ensures that we don't get the galaxies blurred by technical effects. So we can really measure the blur due to the weak lensing effect.”Merging galaxies forming part of the Dorado Group. Euclid has shown the shells and tails of these interacting objects.Image credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGOThese extraordinary capabilities are present in every single image we see from Euclid. Beyond the two galaxy clusters, we see details in the Dorado Group of galaxies. This is one of the richer galaxy groups visible in the Southern Hemisphere. We can see here the double ability of Euclid to study the cosmic distribution of dark matter but also the local distribution. Here two galaxies are in the process of merging, with shells and tidal tails of gas visible, influenced by the gravity of the whole system both visible and invisible.Star-forming region Messier 78 in the constellation of Orion.Image credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGOAnd on the subject of galaxies, let’s take a look at NGC 6744. It is one of the largest spiral galaxies seen in the sky. Euclid can track the formation of stars in this object, adding more information to the evolution of galaxies and the history of star formation across the ages of the universe. Euclid is capable of looking at those star formation regions in detail if they are much closer to us. Take Messier 78. Euclid delivers an unprecedented image of this stellar nursery. Thanks to its infrared camera, it shows where stars are being born for the first time as well as clearly revealing the distribution of gas and dust.  The images are extraordinary and the science is building the foundations for a clearer understanding of the whole universe. Euclid is living up to its promise, and we can’t wait to see more.Explore the papers from the release, which have been made available on preprint server arXiv, here.

Tidal pressures have been observed pushing (relatively) warm water under the Thwaites Glacier, exposing a much larger area of ice to warming pressure. The observations indicate a catastrophic sea level rise could be coming much sooner than almost anyone is preparing for.Rising temperatures are contributing to higher sea levels by making the existing water in the ocean expand, as well as by melting alpine glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet. All of these are virtually certain to increase, and spell trouble for coastal cities worldwide. There is much more uncertainty, however, about the rate at which Antarctic ice will melt, potentially multiplying existing estimates for flooding threats. Despite the vastness of Antarctica, one glacier, the Thwaites, is considered key, earning the name “The Doomsday Glacier”.The Thwaites Glacier is 120 kilometers (75 miles) wide where it reaches the ocean and extends from West Antarctica into an offshore basin. The warming of air above and the water in front of the Thwaites are causing it to melt, but there are fears of something much worse. Water underneath the Thwaites where it currently sits upon the bottom of the ocean would expose the ice to much more heating, greatly speeding up the melt rate.This is where observations by Professor Christine Dow of the University of Waterloo and colleagues come in. They have seen evidence in satellite imagery that the water is getting beneath the glacier daily and lifting it off the seabed, before the weight of the 1.2-kilometer (4,000-foot) thick glacier causes it to settle back down. The cycle repeats with the tides over the front 2-6 kilometers (1.2-3.7 miles) of the glacier, but when Sun and Moon align to create extreme tidal conditions they can reach up to six kilometers further.This causes brief accelerated warming, but the shape of the basin means that if, or more realistically when, the glacier’s front retreats deeper into the basin the underside melting will become continuous. Two ridges on the seabed are the planet’s last lines of defense against accelerated melting. The question for humanity is how long we have before both are breached.False coloring of a satellite images shows the flexing experienced by the Thwaites Glacier as tidal pressures rise and fall, as water penetrates for kilometers beneath the ice, accelerating warming.Image credit: ICEYE; ERIC RIGNOT / UC IRVINEDow and co-authors estimate this will occur in 10-20 years’ time, and with it will come a greatly accelerated rise in sea level. “Thwaites is the most unstable place in the Antarctic and contains the equivalent of 60 centimetres [24 inches] of sea level rise,” Dow said in a statement. “The worry is that we are underestimating the speed that the glacier is changing, which would be devastating for coastal communities around the world.” The wealthiest locations might install dykes like the Netherlands or tidal barrier like London, but for much of the world this will mean the drowning of homes and prime agricultural land.Dow is hoping to achieve more precision on how soon we can expect to see these events occur by refining models of the way water flows in and out of the basin, and how saltwater and glacial melt mix there. “At the moment we don't have enough information to say one way or the other how much time there is before the ocean water intrusion is irreversible,” she said.   However, modeling can only take one so far without direct observations to calibrate it. Scientific data from Antarctica once advanced at a pace comparable to the one at which glaciers moved. Eyes in space have turned some aspects into a flood, but the same isn’t true for operations that require boots on the ground.“We operate at the same budget in 2024 in real dollars that we were in the 1990s,” said lead author Professor Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine. “We need to grow the community of glaciologists and physical oceanographers to address these observation issues sooner rather than later, but right now we’re trying to climb Everest in tennis shoes.” The study is published open access in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Over recent years, astronomers have investigated an unusual phenomenon: stars apparently disappearing, leaving behind few clues as to what made them vanish from our view.In 2019, the Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project attempted to catalog how many stars have disappeared from view in the last 70 years and found around 100 that had gone missing without a concrete explanation.Stars may dim like Betelgeuse or explode as a supernova before collapsing into a black hole or neutron star, but generally do not simply vanish from view. "In the delayed neutrino-driven mechanism, neutrinos revive the stalled shock wave, eventually leading to a successful explosion," the author of a new study write. "In this case, the stellar mantle is successfully ejected and the compact-object remnant is a neutron star (NS) in most cases. However, if the explosion mechanism fails, continuous accretion of matter onto the transiently stable proto-NS pushes the latter over its mass limit and a black hole (BH) forms."Smaller stars take longer to use up their fuel. Our own sun (a yellow dwarf) will become a red giant as it depletes its supply of hydrogen, and then a tiny white dwarf as it depletes its supply of helium. These tiny remnants – comprised mainly of carbon and oxygen – may eventually collapse into theoretical black dwarf stars, though there hasn't been enough time in the universe for this to have happened yet.           So why do some stars appear to just vanish? One possible explanation, which has been tentatively supported by evidence in a new study, is that stars of a sufficient mass can undergo collapse into a black hole without going supernova – they turn directly into a black hole, without a massive explosion we have come to expect.The team looked at a binary star system at the edge of the Milky Way known as VFTS 243, comprising of a main sequence O star and a back hole orbiting each other every 10.4 days. The team attempted to look for signs of the black hole having emerged following a supernova explosion, including baryonic mass ejecta and "natal kicks" accelerating orbiting objects."In the extreme scenario of complete collapse into a BH, the ejecta mass and natal kicks are thought to be very low," the team explains in their paper. "In this case, mass-energy is lost via neutrinos and, to a lesser extent, gravitational waves. This differs from the archetypical scenario in which anisotropic baryonic ejecta are the main carriers of momentum."The team found evidence for the idea that the black hole formed with little baryonic ejecta, suggesting that it could have formed via a total collapse."Our calculations provide constraints on the total natal kick and mass loss, which we find to be largely in agreement with mass loss exclusively through neutrino emission and an associated natal kick," the team wrote, "rather than baryonic mass ejecta".While cool in its own right, the team suggested the possibility that this could explain the sudden disappearance of some (large) stars."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. The collapse is so complete that no explosion occurs, nothing escapes and one wouldn't see any bright supernova in the night sky," Alejandro Vigna-Gómez, co-author of the study, said in a statement. "Astronomers have actually observed the sudden disappearance of brightly shining stars in recent times. We cannot be sure of a connection, but the results we have obtained from analyzing VFTS 243 has brought us much closer to a credible explanation."As always, further study is needed, but the observations are quite exciting."Our results highlight VFTS 243 as the best observable case so far for the theory of stellar black holes formed through total collapse, where the supernova explosion fails and which our models have shown to be possible," Professor Irene Tamborra from the Niels Bohr Institute, co-author of the study, added. "It is an important reality check for these models. And we certainly expect that the system will serve as a crucial benchmark for future research into stellar evolution and collapse."The study is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.