1474520131000

astronomy

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DNA Hints at Earlier Human Migration Out of Africa --"Faded Signal Points to About 90,000 Years Ago"

Hints of an early exodus of modern humans from Africa may have been detected in living humans. Present-day people outside Africa were thought to descend from a group that left their homeland 60,000 years ago, crossing through Egypt into the Arabian Peninsula. Now, analysis of nearly 500 human genomes appears to have turned up the faded signal of an earlier migration of Homo sapiens that has all but vanished. So the genetic evidence has shown that every non-African alive today could trace their origins to this fateful dispersal, still holds.

Reporting in the journal Nature, Luca Pagani, Mait Metspalu and colleagues describe hints of this pioneer group in their analysis of DNA in people from the Oceanian nation of Papua New Guinea.

In order to reconcile the faint signature of an earlier migration out of Africa evidence may be found in people from Papua New Guineawith the genetic data from living populations, the prevailing view advanced by scientists was of a wave of pioneer settlement that ended in extinction.

But the latest results suggest some descendents of these pioneers survived long enough to get swept up in the later, ultimately more successful migration that led to the settling of Oceania. "The first instance when we thought we were seeing something was when we used a technique called MSMC, which allows you to look at split times of populations," said co-author Dr Mait Metspalu, director of the Estonian Biocentre in Tartu, told BBC News. "All the other Eurasians we had were very homogenous in their split times from Africans.

"This suggests most Eurasians diverged from Africans in a single event... about 75,000 years ago, while the Papuan split was more ancient - about 90,000 years ago," said first author Dr Luca Pagani, also from the Estonian Biocentre. "So we thought there must be something going on."

It was already known that Papuans, along with other populations from Oceania and Asia, possess some ancestry from Denisovans, an enigmatic sister group to the Neanderthals. The researchers tried to remove this component, but were left with a third segment of the genome which was different from the Denisovan segment and the overwhelming majority which represents the main out of Africa migration 60,000 years ago.

"This third component had intermediate properties which we concluded must have originated as an independent expansion out of Africa about 120,000 years ago," Dr Pagani told BBC News. "We believe this at least 2% of the genome of modern Papuans."

More information: Luca Pagani et al. Genomic analyses inform on migration events during the peopling of Eurasia, Nature (2016). DOI: 10.1038/nature19792

The Daily Galaxy via BBC Science

Image credit top of page arthistoryworld

astronomy

1474520058000

design

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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/19-25-september-2016/new-strohacker-design-school-opened-give-students-alternative-route-design/
New Strohacker Design School hopes to give students an “alternative” route into design

A new design college has been set up to give students hands-on, vocational experience, and has been backed by the likes of Jamie Hewlett and Vince Frost.

The Strohacker Design School is an independent design college set up at Chichester University in Bognor Regis, which aims to provide an “alternative route” into the design industry, says founder Bill Strohacker.

A “new design hub”

The school also aims to create a “new design hub” in the south east of the UK by attracting local and international students, he adds.

Jamie Hewlett is co-creator of virtual band Gorillaz and comic strip Tank Girl, and Vince Frost is the Australian graphic designer behind the 2008 Venice Biennale branding and covers for magazines such as Wallpaper. Other backers include Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin, and fine artist Lady Pippa Blake. Strohacker is hoping backers will work with students on projects and host talks.

Full-time and part-time

The school has just two graphic design courses a three-month full-time course, and a nine-month part-time course.

Both courses are open to A-Level students seeking an alternative to university, and graduates, as well as people who want a career change and current designers.

They aim to “provide students with the exact skills that modern design agencies are looking for”, says Strohacker.

The courses will involve students working in a studio environment tackling live industry design briefs “with more realistic time scales”, says Strohacker.

10 students to a course

Students will work “in small groups” from 9am-5pm, five days a week over three months for the full-time course, or two evenings a week over nine months for the part-time course.

The school will support students after they have completed their studies, by helping them to find employment and providing industry contacts and CV and portfolio workshops for the following year.

It has also partnered with crowdfunding platform Education Aid, which aims to help students from underprivileged backgrounds by enabling them to borrow money to cover course fees interest-free.

An “alternative” route into design

“What we are trying to offer potential students is an alternative to the normal education route,” says Strohacker. “What happens to the kids who don't make the required entry grades for university, but are no less talented or passionate about design? Or those who cannot afford or do not want the increased debt attached to their education?”

The school's head lecturer is John McFaul, who has 20 years of experience working with brands such as Pepsico, Levi's and New Balance. Other tutors include illustrators, graphic designers and those working in advertising.

“Competent, inspired, dedicated students”

“We are hoping…we can help to produce competent, inspired, dedicated design students ready to walk straight into a junior position,” says Strohacker.

The courses open in September 2016 and are priced at £6,295 for the full-time three-month course, and £5,995 for the part-time nine-month course. The three-month course runs three times a year. Course spaces are limited to 10 students, and all graduates will receive a certificate.

"Gorillaz — Gorillaz illustration, by Jamie Hewlett

"Havaianas — Havaianas wall mural, by John McFaul

"Tank — Tank Girl comic, by Jamie Hewlett

The post New Strohacker Design School hopes to give students an “alternative” route into design appeared first on Design Week.

design

1474520052000

design

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UEFA builds bridges with new Euro 2020 identity

The visual identity for UEFA Euro 2020 has been unveiled in London and features a bridge depicted as “the universal symbol of connection.”

The quadrennial football tournament is normally held in one European city, but in 2020 it will be held in 13 cities across Europe, with London playing a key role as the semi-finals and final will be held at Wembley.

Y&R Portugal won a tender for the project after an international pitch.

Unite all European citizens of football

Y&R Portugal's bridge motif forms part of the main identity and is a symbolic gesture to the uniting of the 13 cities.

Across the brand the bridge has been used in different ways and according to UEFA, acts to “unite all European citizens of football, including countries, cities, players, teams, fans and partners”.

“Bridges become common denominators”

Y&R creative director Hélder Pombinho says across the brand as a whole “bridges become the common denominator that brings host cities together as one”.

Famous bridges from each city feature alongside other monuments, buildings and stadia, and the role of the fans is also reinforced.

Pedro Gonzalez, managing director of the branding team at Y&R Portugal, says that the brand has been shaped by the idea of “United Citizens of Football”, which he says was “a strong insight that led our creative team to an inspired idea: an inclusive bridge that crosses all of Europe, taking football to the fans.”

The host cities are London, Munich, Rome, Baku, St Petersburg, Bucharest, Amsterdam, Dublin, Bilbao, Budapest, Brussels, Glasgow and Copenhagen.

The post UEFA builds bridges with new Euro 2020 identity appeared first on Design Week.

design

1474520049000

design

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Oculus Rift virtual reality headset launches in the UK

The Oculus Rift virtual reality headset has launched in the UK this week, and designers can now get their hands on a pair at a number of retail stores.

The basic pack is available for £549, and comes with the headset, a sensor, a remote and an Xbox One wireless controller. Also included is VR platform game Lucky's Tale, various 3D 360 degree videos and VR movies, and access to the Oculus Store.

Demo presentations in store

The set can now be purchased at John Lewis, Curry's PCWorld, Game Digital and London department store Harrods. It can also be bought online from Amazon.

Oculus Rift is also going to be taking over retail stores across the UK with demo presentations over the next month, where visitors will be able to try out games and films on the headset before they buy.

The product can only run on a PC, and requires an up-to-date operating system of Windows 7 or newer, and a memory of 8GB RAM or above.

Oculus Touch to be released in October

Oculus Touch controllers to cost £190 in the UK. Crikey. pic.twitter.com/zg9JTNiCg8
— Nick Summers (@nisummers) September 20, 2016

Oculus Touch controllers, which will allow greater control and more natural use of the hands during VR experiences, are due to launch in October. Oculus VR is yet to reveal a price, though a store display in Game allegedly proposed the price of £190 for a pair.

Oculus Rift is manufactured by Oculus VR, which originally started out as a Kickstarter campaign in 2012. Facebook acquired the company in 2014.

The post Oculus Rift virtual reality headset launches in the UK appeared first on Design Week.

design

1474520046000

design

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https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/19-25-september-2016/parliament-inquiry-creative-industries-brexit-eu-referendum/
Parliament calls for creative industries to share views on impact of Brexit

Parliament has launched an inquiry calling for members of the public to submit their thoughts on the impact of Brexit on the creative industries.

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee which oversees the actions of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has published a form on the parliament.uk website asking for written submissions.

The form asks people to submit their opinions on the “impact of Brexit on the creative industries, tourism and the digital single market”.

The digital single market enables free movement of people, services and money across the European Union (EU), and means people and businesses within the EU can use the internet under fair competition and have data protection.

More specifically, the committee is inviting people to submit their views on issues including:

employment in the creative industries and tourism
the effect on number of visitors to the UK
the effect of the fall in value of the pound on business and tourism
copyright, designs, patent and trademark laws
being outside of the EU's single market
the impact of the loss of EU funding, including specialist funds like the Creative Europe Fund and general ones like the Regional Development Fund.

Designers have previously spoken out in opposition of leaving the EU, their main concerns being less access to international talent and to exports, limited collaboration with other designers abroad and potential damage to intellectual property and design registration laws.

But other designers are in support of the vote to leave James Dyson recently told The Telegraph that leaving Europe would give British businesses “huge strength in independence”, and allow them to “make their own decisions”, while “being subservient to Europe…is entirely not in this country's interest”.

Anyone can submit a form, as an individual or as part of an organisation. The website reads that most written submissions will be published on the parliament.uk website, and if anyone wishes for their entry to be confidential or not to be published, they need to provide reasons why.

MP Damian Collins, acting chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, says: “The process of leaving the European Union is one of the greatest challenges that the UK faces today. The creative industries and tourism are two of the most important sectors in our economy, and we have to make sure that Brexit can become a success for them.

“For this inquiry, we want to examine all of the challenges and opportunities that Brexit could bring… we want to hear from people and organisations in the creative and tourism sectors on any concerns or ideas they may have relating to Brexit.”

The deadline for written submissions is 28 October 2016. Access the form here.

The post Parliament calls for creative industries to share views on impact of Brexit appeared first on Design Week.

design

1474519747000

culture

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Maxx Burman: Stepping Away From Hollywood for Personal Creative Satisfaction

If Maxx Burman does his job right, you won't even notice his work because it not only blends into the background it is the background. The Los Angeles-based matte painter and VFX supervisor has digitally painted frozen tundras, alien environments, and other wild virtual landscapes for some of the world's most prominent films. His matte paintings have served as the backdrops for Hollywood blockbusters (Godzilla and Iron Man 3), popular shows (Game Of Thrones and The Walking Dead), and video games (Call of Duty and League of Legends).

However, two years ago Burman realized he was consciously disowning the directorial changes made to his work. While working on blockbusters, he had to let his work go and allow someone else to tinker, shape, or even overhaul what he designed. So for the time being, he has made the choice to step away from focusing on the big titles and to find projects with clients who let him inject his personal style into the work.

After leaving his art director role at Elastic Pictures in June, Burman is committing more hours to personal projects, including his game One More Night and his first solo art show, Disconnect.

We talked with Burman about how he established himself as a go-to matte painter for Hollywood, why he has shelved those gigs at the moment, and how that led him to appreciate his art in a whole new way.

How did your background, both your skills and education, lead you to matte painting?

I fell in love with Photoshop and painting at a young age, so I put a lot of hours into trying new things and teaching myself new tools. I didn't even realize that there was a career around this at first. When I was 18, after high school, I cold-called every visual effects studio I could find online and just said, “I need to be in the studio, on that side of things. I don't care if I have to make the coffee!” That's how I got my first job as an intern at Zoic.

At Zoic, you worked for renowned matte painter Syd Dutton. What did you learn from him?

There is so much that I still use today. He would give me art history classes, and taught me how artists like French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme would use composition to tell a story in a painting, or how the Hudson River School painters used color and light to move your eye around a canvas. One of the big non-art lessons he taught me was about taking pride in my craft and how to present myself. A lot of people in Vfx studios wear shorts and sandals, but when I started working with Syd, that ended. With him, I had to wear a dress shirt, dress shoes, and nice jeans or slacks. He would tell me, “It doesn't matter what everyone else is doing, it's your responsibility to maintain the respect of matte painting, and that means presenting yourself in a professional way.” That never left me.

"maxx-article-text-2"

Tell us about the craziest major entertainment production experience you had.

One of my early jobs as a concept artist was designing a Coca-Cola commercial tying in to the first Avatar movie. There was so much mystery and hype around the 10-year production of Avatar, and everything was top secret. I was given a couple hours in a room with a book that had all of the concept art for the film. I had to memorize the look of different environments before painting 10 concepts for this commercial.

For four straight days I was at the studio, and I finished the 10 paintings. On the night before the pitch, slightly delirious and sleep deprived, my producer and I went to Kinko's to print out all of the art work. We left the files with a Kinko's employee and grabbed a couple coffees while we waited for the printing to finish. We returned to the studio at 7 a.m., and dropped off the printed boards of paintings that we had gift wrapped with a huge bow. Then we both went home for the day and passed out.

I woke up that night to tons of voicemails and missed calls. They were from the receptionist at the studio, saying that FBI agents were there looking for me. The producer I was working with, and I rushed back into the studio, to find that Kinko's had flagged us for leaking “top secret” material and reported it to the FBI who went to investigate and tracked it back to us.

By the time we made it back to the studio, everything had been handled. It was shown that the “top secret” work was work from the film. There weren't any consequences, but it was one hell of a scare.

When working on these major entertainment productions, you are asked to produce someone else's vision while also applying your own style to the experience. How do you balance these two responsibilities?

I've actually spent my whole career trying not to have a style and to adapt to whatever a client wants, while trying to do something different every time. I've learned over the years how to communicate visually and understand what a director is looking for so I can nail a look quickly and with precision. Now that I've done thousands of paintings, I've started to pay attention more and more to my tendencies and taste, and I realize what my personal style actually is, even if it's hidden underneath surface styles of different projects. Lately, I've been more interested in working with people who trust me to give them something good and let me inject a bit more of myself in my work.

"maxx-article-text-1"

Do you find it is harder or easier to find work without a set style?

I've found that being able to adapt to any style broadens your range of possible clients. That's one of the reasons why I never got too attached to a single style, and why I've always tried to hit every end of the spectrum, whether it's animation, abstract, or photo-real. Right now, however, I'm focused on developing my signature style. It's not all I do, but I see the benefit of it. Having your own style broadcasts to the world what you enjoy doing. That might narrow down the possible clients, but that's not a bad thing. You're honing in on the clients and projects that you enjoy most, and there's a lot of value in that.

Why do you begin creating these virtual worlds by hand?

It's really easy to lose yourself in the tools technology gives us. I start by sketching because it allows me to forget about all of the clutter and focus on the important foundation that any image needs to be built on: composition, shape, and light. I know I have the tools to make something look beautiful, detailed and real, but that's all for nothing if it's not built on solid design choices.

In addition to your current work for Elastic Pictures, you have created independent shorts like ***Portal No Escape*. Do you approach these indie projects differently?**

Not at all. I approach every project the same way, whether it's a commercial, a short film, or a big blockbuster. It's all in or nothing for me! I try to get all the business stuff out the away at the beginning and then we can focus on creating the best visuals possible. When a project doesn't have a budget, I have to call in favors and I have to make sure that those people are ready to go down that rabbit hole with me. We did one a couple of years ago called Polis with director Steven Ilous, which was pretty much a freebie project where I called in every favor I had. We ended up having a team of 50 people in five countries working for four months on it as a passion project. You do a project for different reasons: sometimes you do it for the money and sometimes you do it for the excitement. This one I did to work with all my favorite people, in all my favorite studios gathered around one big project.

How does your work for these major entertainment properties compare to your work for lesser known clients, and how important is it for you to have major clients like movie studios on your resume?

I always thought it would be different working on large projects, but at the end of the day you are still in front of your computer doing your thing and it doesn't really change. I spent a lot of time working to get the big projects, and then the only thing that got me would be a little ego trip for a while. I hope that my work speaks for itself without the project title on it. That's always my goal. I haven't worked on a film in around two years. I spent so long going after blockbusters, and once I got them I realized that I was doing that for my own ego, and I wasn't really satisfied. I worked on Iron Man 3 a couple of years ago, and leading up to it you think, This is going to be huge. And it was. It was big and awesome, but you lived that for six months and then it comes out and you have opening weekend and you celebrate with your friends and then it's forgotten. Because of that I took a step away from chasing the big titles and focused on the projects that would let me live the life I wanted to live and create the paintings I wanted to create no matter what they were for. That has bought me a lot more happiness and satisfaction.

How has your relationship to your art changed as a result?

The hardest things I've had to learn in my career so far is changing the relationship I have to a painting. There's a point when my work is no longer my work, I have to let go and realize it belongs to someone else. I might get notes I don't agree with, or the painting might be composited into a shot differently than I intended. It almost never happens that I see a final image on the screen that is exactly what I painted. There's always a point with client work that I have to disown the artwork, and allow it to become whatever it's going to become. Through the years, I've learned how to fall out of love with my work.

What would you say to someone who feels they need blockbuster projects to define their career as a success?

Everyone is on their own path, and we all have different measures of success. For me, blockbusters are fun. I enjoy working on them, but they don't define my career. That's just me and my journey. If someone wants to define their career by their credits, and it makes them feel successful, thats awesome.

culture

1474519596000

astronomy

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China's Space Officials Confirm: 'Heavenly Palace' Space Station is Hurtling Towards Earth -- "It's Out of Control"

Tiangong 1, China's first space laboratory, will come to a fiery end. Most decommissioned satellites either burns up over aa ocean or is ejected to a far-off orbital graveyard, but the 8-ton Tiangong 1's end is shaping up to be something very different. Chinese officials reported during a Sept. 14 news conference in Jiuquan that they had lost control of the station.

“You really can't steer these things,” Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told the Guardian. “Even a couple of days before it re-enters we probably won't know better than six or seven hours, plus or minus, when it's going to come down. Not knowing when it's going to come down translates as not knowing where it's going to come down.”

“Based on our calculation and analysis, most parts of the space lab will burn up during falling,” Wu Ping, a director at China's space engineering office, said during the conference. A day later China launched Tiangong 2, the lab's successor, aboard a Long March 7 rocket. Wu added that China is monitoring the space station for collisions with other orbiting satellites. According to Wu most of the debris will not hit Earth, but there is some chance of it happening.

larger spacecraft destined for re-entry, usually follow a planned descent. The wreckage that survives re-entry splashes down far from human habitation. About 2,500 miles to the east of New Zealand, for instance, is a patch of the Pacific Ocean informally known as the spacecraft cemetery. Remains of the Mir station and more than 100 other Russian, European and Japanese satellites sit in this area. Although much of Tiangong 1 will disintegrate, McDowell predicted that 200-pound pieces — the tougher remnants of, say, rocket engines — could withstand the trauma of re-entry.

Tiangong 1 is currently orbiting the planet more than 200 miles above Earth's surface. China launched Tiangong 1, which translates to “Heavenly Palace,” in 2011, serving as China's base of space experiments for roughly 4½ years, two years longer than originally anticipated. The last crewed mission was in 2013, although the station continued to autonomously operate until it was decommissioned in March 2016.

This June, amateur satellite tracker Thomas Dorman of El Paso warned Space.com that, based on his observations, the eight-ton space lab was out of control. “If I am right,” Dorman said at the time, “China will wait until the last minute to let the world know it has a problem with their space station.”

The Daily Galaxy via The Guardian, Wired, and Washington Post

NASA Recovers "Flying Saucer" in Pacific

Weekend 'Galaxy' Insight --"We May be One of the Early Advanced Species in the Universe"

NASA 'Flying Saucer' Launch Set for Today --"A Soft Mars Landing for Manned Exploration"

astronomy

1474519593000

astronomy

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NASA Astronomers Observe a Supermassive Black Hole Destroying a Star

"The black hole has destroyed everything between itself and this dust shell," said Sjoert van Velzen, at Johns Hopkins University. "It's as though the black hole has cleaned its room by throwing flames." Supermassive black holes, with their immense gravitational pull, are notoriously good at clearing out their immediate surroundings by eating nearby objects. When a star passes within a certain distance of a black hole, the stellar material gets stretched and compressed -- or "spaghettified" -- as the black hole swallows it.

A black hole destroying a star, an event astronomers call "stellar tidal disruption," releases an enormous amount of energy, brightening the surroundings in an event called a flare. In recent years, a few dozen such flares have been discovered, but they are not well understood.

Astronomers now have new insights into tidal disruption flares, thanks to data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Two new studies characterize tidal disruption flares by studying how surrounding dust absorbs and re-emits their light, like echoes. This approach allowed scientists to measure the energy of flares from stellar tidal disruption events more precisely than ever before.

"This is the first time we have clearly seen the infrared light echoes from multiple tidal disruption events," said van Velzen, postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and lead author of a study finding three such events, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. A fourth potential light echo based on WISE data has been reported by an independent study led by Ning Jiang, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Science and Technology of China.

Flares from black holes eating stars contain high-energy radiation, including ultraviolet and X-ray light. Such flares destroy any dust that hangs out around a black hole. But at a certain distance from a black hole, dust can survive because the flare's radiation that reaches it is not as intense.

After the surviving dust is heated by a flare, it gives off infrared radiation. WISE measures this infrared emission from the dust near a black hole, which gives clues about tidal disruption flares and the nature of the dust itself. Infrared wavelengths of light are longer than visible light and cannot be seen with the naked eye. The WISE spacecraft, which maps the entire sky every six months, allowed the variation in infrared emission from the dust to be measured.

Astronomers used a technique called "photo-reverberation" or "light echoes" to characterize the dust. This method relies on measuring the delay between the original optical light flare and the subsequent infrared light variation, when the flare reaches the dust surrounding the black hole. This time delay is then used to determine the distance between the black hole and the dust.

Van Velzen's study looked at five possible tidal disruption events, and saw the light echo effect in three of them. Jiang's group saw it in an additional event called ASASSN-14li.

Measuring the infrared glow of dust heated by these flares allows astronomers to make estimates of the location of dust that encircles the black hole at the center of a galaxy.

"Our study confirms that the dust is there, and that we can use it to determine how much energy was generated in the destruction of the star," said Varoujan Gorjian, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and co-author of the paper led by van Velzen.

Researchers found that the infrared emission from dust heated by a flare causes an infrared signal that can be detected for up to a year after the flare is at its most luminous. The results are consistent with the black hole having a patchy, spherical web of dust located a few trillion miles (half a light-year) from the black hole itself.

JPL manages and operates WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode in 2011, after it scanned the entire sky twice, thereby completing its main objectives. In September 2013, WISE was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE and assigned a new mission to assist NASA's efforts to identify potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.

The Daily Galaxy via http://www.nasa.gov/wise

The Most Luminous Galaxy in the Universe --"May Harbor a Behemoth Black Hole"

"The Observed Alien Planets in the Milky Way" --A NASA Image of the Kepler Mission Discoveries

Two-Faces of Pluto --"Dark Mysteries of the Unexplored Planet"

astronomy

1474519591000

astronomy

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Dwarf Galaxies Orbiting the Milky Way --"The Enigma At the Heart of the Dark Matter Mystery"

Dwarf galaxies are enigmas wrapped in riddles. Although they are the smallest galaxies, they represent some of the biggest mysteries about our universe. While many dwarf galaxies surround our own Milky Way, there seem to be far too few of them compared with standard cosmological models, which raises a lot of questions about the nature of dark matter and its role in galaxy formation.

New theoretical modeling work from Andrew Wetzel, who holds a joint fellowship between Carnegie and Caltech, offers the most accurate predictions to date about the dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way's neighborhood. Wetzel achieved this by running the highest-resolution and most-detailed simulation ever of a galaxy like our Milky Way. His findings, published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters, help to resolve longstanding debates about how these dwarf galaxies formed.

One of the biggest mysteries of dwarf galaxies has to do with dark matter, which is why scientists are so fascinated by them. "Dwarf galaxies are at the nexus of dark matter science," Wetzel said.

Dark matter makes up a quarter of our universe. It exerts a gravitational pull, but doesn't seem to interact with regular matter--like atoms, stars, and us--in any other way. We know it exists because of the gravitational effect it has on stars and gas and dust. This effect is why it is key to understanding galaxy formation. Without dark matter, galaxies could not have formed in our universe as they did. There just isn't enough gravity to hold them together without it.

The role of dark matter in the formation of dwarf galaxies has remained a mystery. The standard cosmological model has told us that, because of dark matter, there should be many more dwarf galaxies out there, surrounding our own Milky Way, than we have found. Astronomers have developed a number of theories for why we haven't found more, but none of them could account for both the paucity of dwarf galaxies and their properties, including their mass, size, and density.

As observation techniques have improved, more dwarf galaxies have been spotted orbiting the Milky Way. But still not enough to align with predictions based on standard cosmological models.

So scientists have been honing their simulation techniques in order to bring theoretical modeling predictions and observations into better agreement. In particular, Wetzel and his collaborators worked on carefully modeling the complex physics of stellar evolution, including how supernovae--the fantastic explosions that punctuate the death of massive stars--affect their host galaxy.

With these advances, Wetzel ran the most-detailed simulation of a galaxy like our Milky Way. Excitingly, his model resulted in a population of dwarf galaxies that is similar to what astronomers observe around us.

As Wetzel explained: "By improving how we modeled the physics of stars, this new simulation offered a clear theoretical demonstration that we can, indeed, understand the dwarf galaxies we've observed around the Milky Way. Our results thus reconcile our understanding of dark matter's role in the universe with observations of dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way's neighborhood."

Despite having run the highest-resolution simulation to date, Wetzel continues to push forward, and he is in the process of running an even higher-resolution, more-sophisticated simulation that will allow him to model the very faintest dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way.

"This mass range gets interesting, because these 'ultra-faint' dwarf galaxies are so faint that we do not yet have a complete observational census of how many exist around the Milky Way. With this next simulation, we can start to predict how many there should be for observers to find," he added.

Astronomers at the University of Cambridge spotted a new dwarf galaxy shown at the top of the page that has never been seen before, just outside the Milky Way. The galaxy is the fourth largest known to be orbiting our galaxy.

The Daily Galaxy via Carnegie Institute for Science

Image credit: NASA

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ESO's ALMA Observatory Uncovers Secrets of Giant Space Blob

An international team using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), along with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) and other telescopes, has discovered the true nature of a rare object in the distant Universe called a Lyman-alpha Blob (LAB). Up to now astronomers did not understand what made these huge clouds of gas shine so brightly, but ALMA has now seen two galaxies at the heart of one of these objects and they are undergoing a frenzy of star formation that is lighting up their surroundings. These large galaxies are in turn at the center of a swarm of smaller ones in what appears to be an early phase in the formation of a massive cluster of galaxies. The two ALMA sources are destined to evolve into a single giant elliptical galaxy.

LABs are gigantic clouds of hydrogen gas that can span hundreds of thousands of light-years and are found at very large cosmic distances. The name reflects the characteristic wavelength of ultraviolet light that they emit, known as Lyman-alpha radiation. Since their discovery, the processes that give rise to LABs have been an astronomical puzzle. New observations with ALMA have now cleared up the mystery.

The negatively charged electrons that orbit the positively charged nucleus in an atom have quantized energy levels. That is, they can only exist in specific energy states, and they can only transition between them by gaining or losing precise amounts of energy. Lyman-alpha radiation is produced when electrons in hydrogen atoms drop from the second-lowest to the lowest energy level. The precise amount of energy lost is released as light with a particular wavelength, in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, which astronomers can detect with space telescopes or on Earth in the case of redshifted objects. For LAB-1, at redshift of z~3, the Lyman-alpha light is seen as visible light.

One of the largest Lyman-alpha Blobs known, and the most thoroughly studied, is SSA22-Lyman-alpha blob 1, or LAB-1. Embedded in the core of a huge cluster of galaxies in the early stages of formation, it was the very first such object to be discovered — in 2000 — and is located so far away that its light has taken about 11.5 billion years to reach us.

A team of astronomers, led by Jim Geach, from the Centre for Astrophysics Research of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, has now used ALMA unparalleled ability to observe light from cool dust clouds in distant galaxies to peer deeply into LAB-1. This allowed them to pinpoint and resolve several sources of submillimeter emission.

Computer simulation above of a Lyman-alpha Blob - This rendering shows a snapshot from a cosmological simulation of a Lyman-alpha Blob similar to LAB-1. This simulation tracks the evolution of gas and dark matter using one of the latest models for galaxy formation running on the NASA Pleiades supercomputer. This view shows the distribution of gas within the dark matter halo, color coded so that cold gas (mainly neutral hydrogen) appears red and hot gas appears white. Embedded at the centre of this system are two strongly star-forming galaxies, but these are surrounded by hot gas and many smaller satellite galaxies that appear as small red clumps of gas here. Lyman-alpha photons escape from the central galaxies and scatter off the cold gas associated with these satellites to give rise to an extended Lyman-alpha Blob. Credit: J.Geach/D.Narayanan/R.Crain |

They then combined the ALMA images with observations from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument mounted on the VLT, which map the Lyman-alpha light. This showed that the ALMA sources are located in the very heart of the Lyman-alpha Blob, where they are forming stars at a rate over 100 times that of the Milky Way.

Infographic explaining how a Lyman-alpha Blob functions - This diagram explains how a Lyman-alpha Blob, one of the largest and brightest objects in the Universe, shines. Credit: ESO/J. Geach | Download image

Deep imaging with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and spectroscopy at the W. M. Keck Observatory showed in addition that the ALMA sources are surrounded by numerous faint companion galaxies that could be bombarding the central ALMA sources, helping to drive their high star formation rates.

The team then turned to a sophisticated simulation of galaxy formation to demonstrate that the giant glowing cloud of Lyman-alpha emission can be explained if ultraviolet light produced by star formation in the ALMA sources scatters off the surrounding hydrogen gas. This would give rise to the Lyman-alpha Blob we see.

Giant space blob glows from within - This image shows one of the largest known single objects in the Universe, the Lyman-alpha blob LAB-1. This picture is a composite of two different images taken with the FORS instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) — a wider image showing the surrounding galaxies and a much deeper observation of the blob itself at the center made to detect its polarization. The intense Lyman-alpha ultraviolet radiation from the blob appears green after it has been stretched by the expansion of the Universe during its long journey to Earth. These new observations show for the first time that the light from this object is polarized. This means that the giant "blob" must be powered by galaxies embedded within the cloud. Credit: ESO/M. Hayes

Jim Geach, lead author of the new study, explains: “Think of a streetlight on a foggy night — you see the diffuse glow because light is scattering off the tiny water droplets. A similar thing is happening here, except the streetlight is an intensely star-forming galaxy and the fog is a huge cloud of intergalactic gas. The galaxies are illuminating their surroundings.”

Closing in on a giant space blob - This sequence of images closes in on one of the largest known single objects in the Universe, the Lyman-alpha blob LAB-1. Observations with the ESO VLT show for the first time that this giant "blob" must be powered by galaxies embedded within the cloud. The image on the left shows a wide view of the constellation of Aquarius. The two images at the upper right were created from photographs taken through blue and red filters and forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. The two images at the lower right were taken using the FORS camera on the VLT. Credit: ESO/A. Fujii/M. Hayes and Digitized Sky Survey 2

Understanding how galaxies form and evolve is a massive challenge. Astronomers think Lyman-alpha Blobs are important because they seem to be the places where the most massive galaxies in the Universe form. In particular, the extended Lyman-alpha glow provides information on what is happening in the primordial gas clouds surrounding young galaxies, a region that is very difficult to study, but critical to understand.

What's exciting about these blobs is that we are getting a rare glimpse of what's happening around these young, growing galaxies. For a long time, the origin of the extended Lyman-alpha light has been controversial. But with the combination of new observations and cutting-edge simulations, we think we have solved a 15-year-old mystery: Lyman-alpha Blob-1 is the site of formation of a massive elliptical galaxy that will one day be the heart of a giant cluster. We are seeing a snapshot of the assembly of that galaxy 11.5 billion years ago.”

The Daily Galaxy via ALMA Observatory

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