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Strange Astronomical Observations that Defy Easy Explanation

publiusr said:
Textures and domain walls are interesting…now I have heard it said that “merging black holes may create bubbles that could swallow the universe”—but my guess is that a true vacuum can only exist where the two event horizons overlap..Venn diagram style.
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Just read the following on New Scientist so you might be onto something:
The area between a pair of large black holes on the verge of colliding could provide the conditions to create dangerous bubbles of "true vacuum".
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Black hole mergers may create bubbles that could swallow the universe | New Scientist
Unfortunately, NS is a paywall site so unless you either have an account or buy the magazine, you'll have to read the original paper. Here is the abstract:
We conjecture that the Higgs potential can be significantly modified when it is in close proximity to the horizon of an astrophysical black hole, leading to the destabilization of the electroweak vacuum. In this situation, the black hole should be encompassed by a shell consisting of a "bowling substance" of the nucleating new phase bubbles. In a binary black hole merger, just before the coalescence, the nucleated bubbles can be prevented from falling under their seeding horizons, as they are simultaneously attracted by the gravitational potential of the companion. For a short time, the unstable vacuum will be "sandwiched" between two horizons of the binary black hole, and therefore the bubbles may collide and form micro-black holes, which will be rapidly evaporated by thermal emission of Hawking radiation of all Standard Model spices. This evaporation, being triggered by a gravitational wave signal from the binary black hole merger, can manifest itself in observations of gamma rays and very high energy neutrinos, which makes it a perfect physics case for multi-messenger astronomical observations.
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[2111.07178] Higgs Induced Triboluminescence in Binary Black Hole Mergers (arxiv.org)
The bubbles of true vacuum are predicted to last for a few milliseconds before being engulfed. The predictions of the conjecture seems to be experimentally falsifiable. That the vacuum state of the universe hasn't been destabilised by such collisions might also offer some insights in how to merge QM and GR.
 
So in short: Black holes REALLY suck and they're REALLY dangerous and can potentionally end the entire universe within a nano second.. fun!
 
^^ Hmm.. so that would IIRC be about 14.3 Billion years at best since that's how far we've been able to "see" and we don't know how much larger the universe actually is.
Also, even if we could detect it then mweh, I assume we can't do much about it.
 
The observable universe is about 93 billion light years across (because it's expanding) and it might well be infinite or fold back on itself eventually - we just don't know. Parts of the universe beyond the horizon, which are regressing at greater than light speed, should be safe from a phase change (I think). Other parts might be undergoing inflation - a transition from a false vacuum phase - as there is apparently no way in theory to supress the inflaton field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflaton
 
More strange goings on, not only with KIC 8462852 but also with a dozen or so other F and G type stars in the same general area of the sky.
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The weirdness of similar dimming being indicated for stars with similar masses to the Sun in the same general area of the sky but not elsewhere is compelling. This is definitely worthy of some observation time being devoted to it by space telescopes such as the JWST.

Here is the original paper:
A Search for Analogs of KIC 8462852 (Boyajian’s Star): A Second List of Candidates 2111.01208.pdf (arxiv.org)
 
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As technology progresses, we are getting better detecting strange things, but we'll never know for sure what these things are until we're able to see them up close. That means either traveling to these places, or somehow being able to see things faster than light can travel. So close, yet so far.
 
I think it is possible to figure out whether a signal is naturally occurring or artificial. That would be a start.
 
"Did We Just Detect a New "Wow" Signal from Proxima Centauri?"

Observed in 2020.

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Yeah, I think that one has been explained last year - I don't recall exactly. This new one is probably just a magnetar in some unfamiliar configuration. Now, if we were to detect modulated, coherent, narrow-band, visible light coming from another planetary system, that would probably be difficult to attribute to anything except aliens with advanced technology.
 
Gingerbread Demon said:
Don't forget Physics Girl her channel is good too
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Yeah, there are lots of good physics and astrophysics channels on YouTube. There are a few crappy ones with clickbait headings though that take 20 minutes to get to the part that turns out to be something you already knew, is pure speculation, is unconfirmed, is about something else entirely, or is just plain incorrect.
 
I liked her video about the moving mud puddle.

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Gingerbread Demon said:
I liked her video about the moving mud puddle.

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Not really a strange astronomical observation though, is it? Here's someone who's more on topic for this thread:

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Asbo Zaprudder said:
Not really a strange astronomical observation though, is it? Here's someone who's more on topic for this thread:

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Oh I like the video....... Yeah I know wasn't astronomical but it was still strange
 
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