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ASTRONOMY AND
ASTROPHYSICS NEWSLETTER
Volume 2, Number 3, May – June 2021
Journal devoted to current developments in astronomy

Editor-in-chief: Prof. C. Sivaram Editors: Kenath Arun and Kiren O. V.

CONTENTS

Continuous gravitational waves 2

The advance of Mercury perihelion in Newtonian gravity 4

Hubble tension: A case for modified gravity? 5

Ancients in the Sky 6

- Louise Rebecca

Discovery of reconnection nanojets in solar corona 8

- Avijeet Prasad

Chinese rover successfully lands on Mars 10

High energy light from small galaxies 12

Cache of dwarf galaxies detected 12

DESI: Search for dark energy 13

Answer to “An Astronomical Puzzle” 13

 CONTINUOUS GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
A recent study (K. Wette et al., Physical Review D, 103, 083020, 2021) pursued a novel
method to detect continuous gravitational waves from rapidly rotating deformed neutron stars.
They hypothesised that there would be continuous gravitational waves detected near pulsar
radio waves. Using existing observational data from the second observation run of LIGO, they
spent about 6000 days of computer time searching in the vicinity of the pulsar, hoping to detect
these elusive continuous gravitational waves. Although their search proved negative, there are
innumerable sources of radiation which are continuously emitting gravitational waves of all
frequencies. These include a whole mass range of compact binary and isolated compact objects
as well as close planetary stellar entities.
Gravitational waves have been detected in the past few years from several transient
events such as merging stellar mass black holes, binary neutron stars, etc. These waves have
frequencies in a band ranging from a few hundred hertz to around a kilohertz to which LIGO
type instruments are sensitive. These are long wavelength, low frequency gravitational waves.
However compact stellar objects can generate high frequency thermal gravitational radiation,
which in the case of hot neutron stars can be high. Also white dwarfs and main-sequence stars
can generate such radiation from plasma-Coulomb collisions. Gamma ray bursts could also be
sources of such radiation, as also the terminal stages of evaporating black holes.
Due to Coulomb collisions in the core of the stars, thermal gravitational waves can be
generated. These thermal gravitational waves can arise in white dwarfs and neutron stars due
to the fermion collisions in the dense degenerate Fermi gas. For a typical main sequence star,
power of thermal gravitational waves emitted is, 𝐸̇ ≈ 1016 𝑒𝑟𝑔/𝑠, at a frequency of, 𝜐 ≈
1017 𝐻𝑧. For comparison, the flux of thermal gravitational waves from the Sun, received at
Earth is of the order of half a watt. With the 1011 stars in all the 200 billion galaxies, the power
associated with the thermal gravitational waves from all these stars will be, 𝐸̇ ≈ 1038 𝑒𝑟𝑔/𝑠.
And the total energy emitted due to the thermal gravitational waves by these stars over their
average life span will be, 𝐸 ≈ 3 × 1055 𝑒𝑟𝑔/𝑠.
In the case of white dwarfs, the power of thermal gravitational waves emitted will be
of the order of, 𝐸̇ ≈ 1019 𝑒𝑟𝑔/𝑠, at a frequency of, 𝜐 ≈ 1018 𝐻𝑧. And for neutron star, 𝐸̇ ≈
1029 𝑒𝑟𝑔/𝑠, at a frequency of, 𝜐 ≈ 1021 𝐻𝑧. If one out of every 100 stars is a neutron star, then
the power associated with the thermal gravitational waves from all the neutron stars is, 𝐸̇ ≈
1049 𝑒𝑟𝑔/𝑠. The total energy emitted due to the thermal gravitational waves by these neutron

2
star cores over the average life span of their nascent hot-core stage of ~108 𝑠 is, 𝐸 ≈ 1057 𝑒𝑟𝑔.
Similar estimates can be made in the case of primordial black holes and gamma ray bursts.
Thermal gravitational waves were also generated in the early Universe as it expands, as
the temperature and particle densities continue to be high. At the Planck epoch in the early
Universe, with 𝑡𝑃𝑙 ≈ 10−43 𝑠, all the interactions were of equal strength so that thermal
equilibrium was maintained between gravitons and other particles. As the Universe expanded,
the gravitational interaction weakened and gravitons decoupled from other particles. It can be
shown that the temperature of the background thermal gravitational radiation of about 1𝐾, for
the present cosmic radiation temperature of 2.7𝐾 (C. Sivaram and K. Arun, Journal of High
Energy Physics, Gravitation and Cosmology, 7, 698, 2021). This result has consequences for
the inflationary model of the Universe.
Detection of such waves through fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background
radiation could verify the existence of such a phase in the early Universe. If inflation had not
taken place, we would be left with a thermal gravitational wave background with a temperature
of ~1𝐾. If at all this can be detected, it would provide evidence against inflation. Also the
detection of these thermal background gravitational waves provides a basis to verify the
validity of the big bang model itself. There are claims that the most convincing evidences of
the big bang, the microwave background and abundance of helium, can be accounted for
without invoking the big bang. But these thermal gravitational waves cannot be generated
without the Universe passing through the super-hot, super-dense Planck epoch.
The gravitational waves detected so far by the LIGO and Virgo collaboration are from
transient events, such as the final stages of mergers of black holes and neutron stars. These
waves have frequencies in a band ranging from a few hundred hertz to around a kilohertz to
which LIGO type instruments are sensitive. Future observations and next generation of
gravitational wave detectors should also look to study various sources of continuous
background gravitational waves. These gravitational wave backgrounds are produced in typical
frequency ranges, over a Hubble time. The fluctuations in the strain due to these background
gravitational waves fall within the sensitivity range of either existing or proposed gravitational
waves detectors.
Such gravitational waves are also associated with close planetary stellar entities. For
instance the total power emitted in gravitational waves by Jupiter as it orbits the Sun is about
a few kilowatts. For a system of a hot Jupiter (10𝑀𝐽 ) orbiting a solar mass star with a period

3
of a day (at a distance of ≈ 0.02 𝐴𝑈) the power emitted in GW is ≈ 7 × 1024 𝑒𝑟𝑔/𝑠, at a
frequency of 10 −5 𝐻𝑧.
Gravitational waves thus provides a testing tool for various theories of gravity, i.e.
general relativity and extended theories of gravity, and will be the definitive test for general
relativity.

THE ADVANCE OF MERCURY PERIHELION IN NEWTONIAN GRAVITY

In a recent paper, written by the Italian physicist Christian Corda (Physics of the Dark
Universe, 32, 100834, 2021), it has been shown via three different approaches that, contrary to
a longstanding conviction older than 160 years, the advance of Mercury’s perihelion can be
achieved in Newtonian gravity with a very high precision by correctly analysing the situation
without neglecting Mercury’s mass. General relativity remains more precise than Newtonian
physics, but Corda’s paper shows that Newtonian framework is more powerful than researchers
and astronomers were thinking till now, at least for the case of Mercury.
The Newtonian formula of the advance of planets’ perihelion, which has been found by
Corda, breaks down for the other planets. The predicted Newtonian result is indeed too large
for Venus and Earth. Therefore, the paper also shows that corrections due to gravitational and
rotational time dilation, in an intermediate framework which analyses gravity between Newton
and Einstein, solve the problem. By adding such corrections, a result consistent with the one
of general relativity is indeed obtained.
Thus, the most important results of the paper of Corda are two:
(i) It is not correct that Newtonian theory cannot predict the anomalous rate of precession
of the perihelion of planets’ orbit. The real problem is instead that a pure Newtonian
prediction is too large.
(ii) Perihelion’s precession can be achieved with the same precision of general relativity by
extending Newtonian gravity through the inclusion of gravitational and rotational time
dilation effects. This second result is in agreement with two recent and interesting
papers in the literature written by Hansen, Hartong and Obers. Differently from such
papers, in Corda’s work the importance of rotational time dilation has been also
highlighted.
As a final remark, it is important to stress that a better understanding of gravitational
effects in an intermediate framework between Newtonian theory and general relativity, which

4
is one of the results of the paper of Corda, could, in principle, be crucial for a subsequent better
understanding of the famous Dark Matter and Dark Energy problems.

HUBBLE TENSION: A CASE FOR MODIFIED GRAVITY?

Recently much controversy has been raised about the cosmological conundrum
involving the discrepancy in the value of the Hubble constant as implied by Planck satellite
observations of the CMBR in the early Universe and that deduced from other distance
indicators (for instance using standard candles like supernovae, tip of the Red Giant branch,
etc.) in the present epoch. The Planck estimate is about 67 𝑘𝑚𝑠 −1 𝑀𝑝𝑐 −1, while that deduced
from distance indicators at the present epoch is around 73 − 74 𝑘𝑚𝑠 −1 𝑀𝑝𝑐 −1. Also the
independent determination of the local value of the Hubble constant based on a calibration of
the Tip of the Red Giant Branch (TRGB) and applied to Type Ia supernovae found a value of
69.8 𝑘𝑚𝑠 −1 𝑀𝑝𝑐 −1.
A recent observational study (M.G. Dainotti et al, Astrophysical Journal, 912, 150,
2021) analysed a catalogue of 1048 supernovae which exploded at different epochs in the
expansion of the Universe. They found that the theoretical models can be made to match the
observations if the Hubble constant is allowed to vary with time. One of the possibility in the
observed discrepancy is the observational biases in the data sample. To account for such biases,
Hyper Suprime-Cam on the Subaru Telescope is used to observe fainter supernovae over a
wide area, which will increase the sample of observed supernovae in the early Universe and
hence reducing the uncertainty. If the current results hold-up with further observations, the
question of what is causing the change in Hubble constant has to be tackled.
In a recent paper (C. Sivaram, Arun Kenath, Louise Rebecca, Indian Journal of Physics,
doi:10.1007/s12648-021-02080-7, 2021) it was proposed that a modification of the
gravitational field on large scales can account for this discrepancy in the value of the Hubble
constant as implied in the above-mentioned method, i.e., by Planck observations of the CMBR
in the early Universe and that deduced from other distance indicators in the present epoch.
This model invokes a minimal acceleration ( 𝑎 0 ) in the gravitational field which implies
a modification of gravity over a scale larger than a critical size, 𝑅 𝐶. This would then imply that
a particular modification of the gravitational field on large scales (low accelerations) could well
provide a possible solution for this discrepancy and perhaps help in relaxing the Hubble
tension. The modified gravity introduces an extra term which is a modification in potential
energy due to gravitational self-energy density. As the Universe expands beyond the critical

5
size, this extra term also contribute causing an increase of the expansion rate, i.e., a change in
Hubble constant (by about five per cent). This could perhaps account for the faster expansion
rate seen at the present epoch.
This modification of gravity was used earlier to account for rotation curves of galaxies
and for cluster dynamics without invoking dark matter. When this model is applied to the recent
observations of super spiral galaxies it reduces the need for copious amounts of dark matter,
which would be required otherwise. The modified term in this model increases slowly
(logarithmically) with the expansion of the Universe, and hence this would give rise to an even
higher value of the Hubble constant at later epochs.

ANCIENTS IN THE SKY

Louise Rebecca 1
Department of Physics, Christ Junior college, Bangalore

Those fascinating luminous spheres in the night sky are not just a treat to the eyes but
they are key to our galaxy’s past. Stars are classified into three categories based on their age,
metallicity and spatial distribution. Contrary to their nomenclature, the oldest stars belong to
what is termed as Population III. Formed from just hydrogen and helium when the Universe
was just 100-250 million years old, these were the first specks of visible light in the Universe
after it went through what is known as the ‘dark ages’. Though their presence is theorised to
account for the composition of the stars born after them, they remain more of a mystery as none
have yet been observed. A probable theory is that these stars exhausted their fuel rapidly and
exploded as supernovae thus becoming extinct to observations. The thermonuclear-fusion
reactions at their cores could produce heavier elements such as carbon, oxygen, etc. which
would get thrown into space during their explosion. These heavier elements would wind up in
the next generation of stars, dubbed Population II.
Elements heavier than helium are termed as ‘metals’ in Astronomy. With the passage
of time, future generation of stars got enriched with metals. Thus, the oldest stars (Population
III) consist of zero metals, the next generation (Population II) possess very low metallicity and
the youngest of the lot (Population I) possess high metallicity. Population II are identified by
their extremely low abundances of elements such as carbon, oxygen, iron, lithium, etc. Being
closest in composition to the ‘missing’ Population III stars, they play a significant role in

1
louise.rheanna@cjc.christcollege.edu

6
understanding their progenitors. The supernovae of Population II stars are energetic enough to
form heavier elements such as gold, silver, uranium, etc. These elements would wind up in the
next and the youngest generation of stars.
Population I stars are concentrated at the disk of our galaxy, although few old stars are
also found there. The bulge and the halo consist of Population II stars with the halo dominated
by the oldest of the lot. Thus, gazing at the stars helps in contemplating the formation and
evolution of the galaxy that holds them. Here is a journey through some of the most ancient
stars observed.
HD 140283 or otherwise dubbed as “Methuselah Star” after the biblical patriarch who
is said to have lived up to 969 years (making him the oldest human figure in the bible) is one
of the oldest stars yet observed. It is located 200 light-years away in the constellation Libra.
Precise measurements of its distance by the Hubble Space Telescope imply that the star is
around 14.27 billion years old, making it not just the oldest star but older than the Universe
itself. This might be puzzling at first glance but measurements of stellar luminosity, surface
temperature, and composition of field stars like Methuselah are rarely accurate and are subject
to uncertainties. Also, studies of its composition show an excess of oxygen and a very low iron
content that is a factor of 250 times lower than that of the Sun. It also possesses a detectable
amount of lithium, making it a rare member of the metal-poor stars. This very low non-zero
metallicity makes it a Population II star whose heavy-element content could have possibly
come from Population III stars which remain invisible to observations.
HD 122563 is another member of the Population II stars. It is the brightest metal-poor
red giant which when looked through the telescope appears pale orange in colour. It was known
as the most metal-poor star for more than twenty years post its discovery. HD 122563 is 12.6
billion years old and is located 950 light-years away in the galactic halo making it one of the
easily observable stars among the extreme population II stars. Like all metal-poor stars, it plays
a crucial role in understanding galactic chemical evolution. It has an abundance of oxygen,
whereas the relative abundance of other elements such as yttrium, zirconium, barium, and
lanthanide suggest that the slow neutron-capture process did not contribute to the material
present in the star. All these elements present in the star were the result of the r-process instead.
A possible theory is that the star was formed at the time when the previous generation stars had
not enough time to produce s-process elements though there were r-process elements present.
Another ancient residing 7500 light-years away in the constellation Libra is a red giant
named HE 1523-0901. It was discovered in the sample of bright metal-poor halo stars from the
Hamburg/ESO survey and is estimated to be around 13.2 billion years old. This makes it one

7
of the oldest stars observed, almost as old as the Universe. It is also the first star whose age
was estimated using the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium along with measurements
of various neutron-capture elements.
Sneden’s star is another old faint red giant situated about 17,000 light-years away in
the constellation Aquarius. It is an ultra-metal-poor (UPM) star belonging to a rare subclass of
rapid neutron capture enhanced stars. It takes its name after Chris Sneden who, with his team
determined the abundances of 53 elements. The comparison of the observed abundances to that
calculated for r-process abundances in a type II supernova explosion has led observers to
estimate the age of the star to be about 13 billion years old.
A recent study (V.M. Placco et al, Astrophysical Journal Letters, 912, L32, 2021)
discovered another massive red ‘oldstar’ SPLUS J210428.01−004934.2 about 16,000 light-
years away from the Earth using photometric analysis. The chemical composition of the star
shows average metallicity as that of a UMP star consisting of elements that could be best
produced by a single first-generation star. Along with low metallicity, it also shows the lowest
carbon abundance for a UMP known so far. This throws new insights on stellar evolution for
very low metallicity and its progenitor star. The discovery opens the possibility of detecting
more UMP stars directly from narrowband photometric surveys thus getting closer to
understanding the earliest stars in the Universe, the first generation, which are yet to be
discovered.

DISCOVERY OF RECONNECTION NANOJETS IN SOLAR CORONA

Avijeet Prasad1
Center for Space Plasma & Aeronomic Research, The University of Alabama in Huntsville,
Huntsville, Alabama

Coronal heating problem and nanoflares

Around the year 1940, it was realized by Grotrian (1939) and Edlen (1942) that the
emission lines observed during a total solar eclipse in 1869 were not owing to a new element
(dubbed as Coronium), but were result of highly ionized states of iron. The temperature
necessary for achieving such a high degree of ionization corresponded to a few million degrees
(Parnell et al. 2012). This puzzled the physicists since this temperature was several hundred
times hotter than the underlying photosphere (Klimchuk 2006). Now bright coronal loops that

1
ap0162@uah.edu

8
trace the magnetic field lines in the corona are often observed in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV)
and ultraviolet (UV) images taken by with the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) of the
Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). This is because the plasma contained in these loops are
heated up to appropriate temperatures to emit at these wavelengths. In order to maintain the
corona at hot temperatures against the combined radiative and conductive losses, energy needs
to be constantly sourced from the lower atmospheric layers. It is thought that the source of this
energy is the convective motion of the plasma at and below the photosphere, which is then
channelled into the corona through the magnetic fields. Two possible mechanisms through
which the magnetic fields act as a conduit of this energy transfer are as follows. Due to the
random motion of the foot points of the magnetic loops, stresses are generated in the magnetic
field. If the motions are slow (compared to the end-to-end Alfvén travel time), then these result
in formation of current sheets, while fast motions result in generation of waves. The heating
through the dissipation of current sheets through magnetic reconnection is known as DC
heating, while the dissipation of waves is known as AC heating.
Parker (1988) suggested that the heating of the solar corona could be due to a large
number of small-scale magnetic reconnection arising out of small misalignment of braided field
lines (formed through their random foot point motions). These tiny outbursts of energy were
termed as nanoflares, since the expected energy release was of the order of 10 24 erg, which is
approximately nine orders of magnitude smaller than that released in the larger X-type solar
flares. A popular theory for nanoflares is the avalanche model, which suggests that an
“avalanche” of small-scale reconnection events can cascade through a highly stressed coronal
magnetic structure, producing a nanoflare storm that can heat the entire loop (Charbonneau
2001).
Discovery of reconnection nanojets
Although there has been observations of non-flare related high temperature coronal
loops which have been attributed to nanoflares (Ishikawa et al. 2017), there were no direct
reports of coronal nanoflare-like event as pictured by Parker (Parker1988). A recent work
(Antolin et al. 2021) reported the discovery of “nanojets”, which is a reconnection based
nanojet signature that accompanies the coronal heating process. For the analysis, they used
coordinated observations with the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) of the Solar
Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) and the
HINODE/Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on 3rd April, 2014 targeting a loop-like structure at
the limb of the Sun. The observations focused on the flow of plasma material as coronal rain
which traced the magnetic field lines. They found that the observed strands presented a small

9
apparent misalignment of around (maximum) 25 degrees in the plane of sky. They further
observed localised intensity bursts which were accompanied by jet-like structures moving with
speeds of a few hundreds of kilometres per second. To confirm the observed characteristics of
the observed nanojet scenario, the authors also conducted 3D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD)
simulations and found that it is indeed possible to have reconnections through small-angle
magnetic field misalignments. They estimate the total energy released by the nanojet to be
around 1024 erg, which is in the range predicted from Parker's theory. These results suggest that
observations of such small-scale reconnections would be readily possible through the next-
generation high-resolution instruments that will shed more light on the coronal heating
mechanisms.
References
Antolin, P. et al., Nature Astron., 5, 54, 2021
Charbonneau, P. et al., Sol. Phys., 203,321, 2001
Edlen, B., Zs. Ap., 22, 30, 1942
Grotrian, W., Naturwissenschaften, 27, 214, 1939
Ishikawa, S. et al., Nature Astron., 1, 771, 2017
Klimchuk, J.A., Sol. Phys., 234, 41, 2006
Parker, E.N., ApJ, 330, 474, 1988
Parnell, C.E., De Moortel, I., Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A., 370, 3217, 2012

CHINESE ROVER SUCCESSFULLY LANDS ON MARS

China’s first interplanetary endeavour, Tianwen-1 mission has successfully landed its
rover on the surface of Mars on 14 May 2021. Tianwen-1 was launched in July 2020 and it
reached the Mars orbit in February 2021. After circling the Red Planet for more than three
months, the Tianwen-1 lander, with the rover attached, separated from the orbiter to begin its
plunge toward the planet's surface. Once the lander and rover entered Mars’ atmosphere, the
spacecraft endured a similar procedure to the “seven minutes of terror” that NASA’s Mars
rovers have experienced when attempting soft landings on Mars. A heat shield protected the
spacecraft during the fiery descent, after which the mission safely parachuted down to the
Utopia Planitia region, a plain inside of an enormous impact basin in the northern hemisphere.
Utopia Planitia is believed to contain vast amounts of water ice beneath the surface and is also
the region where NASA’s Viking 2 mission touched down in 1976. Tianwen-1’s landing
platform fired some small, downward-facing rocket engines to slow down during the last few
seconds of its descent.

10
 China’s Mars rover, called Zhurong after an ancient fire god in Chinese mythology,
will part with the lander by driving down a foldable ramp and is expected to last at least 90 Sol
(Mars days). The six-wheeled rover carries six scientific instruments on board, including two
panoramic cameras, a ground-penetrating radar and a magnetic field detector. It also has a laser
that it can use to cut rocks and study their composition, as well as a meteorological instrument
to study the climate and weather on Mars. The Tianwen-1 orbiter will serve as a data relay
station for communications between Zhurong and mission controllers on Earth. The orbiter is
designed to last for at least one Mars year, or about 687 Earth days.

Picture taken by China’s Zhurong Mars rover showing the Tianwen-1 probe system and the
surface of Mars. Image credits: China National Space Administration

China is now the second nation to successfully land a Mars rover (NASA has landed
five rovers on Mars). The successful orbit insertion of the Tianwen-1 mission in February made
China the sixth to do so, following NASA, the Soviet Union, the European Space Agency

11
(ESA), India and the United Arab Emirates. Tianwen-1 is China's first interplanetary mission;
until now, Chinese spacecraft haven’t ventured beyond Earth’s moon, where the nation has
successfully landed two rovers as part of its Chang’e program, which most recently brought
moon rocks to Earth in December 2020. China is also planning to launch an ambitious Mars
sample-return mission in 2028. In the meantime, China is working on building its new space
station, the first piece of which launched in April — and caused global panic last week when
large rocket debris came tumbling to Earth in an uncontrolled fashion.

HIGH ENERGY LIGHT FROM SMALL GALAXIES

When the Universe was formed, right after the big bang, it was in an ionised state. This
means that electrons and protons floated freely throughout space. As the Universe expanded,
the temperature dropped, and these electrons and protons combined to form neutral atoms. Now
it has been observed that the Universe has come back to an ionised state, and it is thought that
this energy for reionisation must have come from the galaxies themselves. But this reionisation
requires a lot of light energy to escape a galaxy and that is difficult as the hydrogen clouds
within the galaxy will absorb these lights.
The answer to this problem might have been found using the Gemini telescope. Using
the data from the telescope N.R. Eggen et al. (Astrophysical Journal, 912, 12, 2021), observed
the first-ever galaxy (Pox 186) in a “blow-away” state, meaning that the hydrogen clouds from
this galaxy are removed completely allowing the high-energy light to escape. They suspect that
this blow-away was possible because of its compact size, coupled with its large population of
stars and many supernovas exploding in a short period. This leads to an important conclusion
that small galaxies were primarily responsible for the reionisation of the Universe and this gives
more insight into the present state of the Universe. Understanding the consequences of this
blow-away gives direct insight into the impacts that similar blow-away would have had during
the process of reionisation.

CACHE OF DWARF GALAXIES DETECTED

For the first time, several gas filaments (which are predicted by cosmological models
and from which galaxies are born) of the ‘cosmic web’ have been directly observed using the
MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) instrument installed on ESO’s Very Large
Telescope in Chile (R. Bacon et al., Astronomy and Astrophysics, 647, A107, 2021). These
observations of the early Universe point to the existence of several as yet undetected dwarf
galaxies. One of the major predictions of the big bang model was that of the cosmic web. This

12
cosmic web is a filamentary structure of hydrogen gas in which galaxies form. To date all that
was known about this cosmic web was limited to a few specific regions, especially in the
direction of quasars revealing gas clouds along the line of sight. However, these regions do not
give a comprehensive picture of the whole network of filaments where most galaxies were
born, including the Milky Way.
Bacon and team used the Very Large Telescope, equipped with the MUSE instrument
to look at a single region of the sky for over 140 hours. The region was also part of the Hubble
Ultra-Deep Field, which is the deepest image of the cosmos ever obtained. Their observations
for the first time revealed light from the hydrogen filaments, as also images of several filaments
as they were one to two billion years after the big bang. This epoch is key to understanding the
formation of galaxies from the gas in the cosmic web.
The biggest surprise for the observations was when simulations showed that the light
from the gas came from a hitherto invisible population of billions of dwarf galaxies spawning
a host of stars. Although these galaxies are too faint to be detected individually with current
instruments, their existence will have major consequences for galaxy formation models.

DESI: SEARCH FOR DARK ENERGY

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) began a five-year quest to map the
Universe and hence unravel the mysteries of dark energy on May 17, at Kitt Peak National
Observatory in Arizona. Gathering light from about 30 million galaxies will help in
constructing a 3-dimensional map of the Universe with unprecedented detail. This will provide
insight into the nature of dark energy. Or it could help establish if this cosmic acceleration is
due to a large scale modification of general relativity. DESI will be transformative in the
understanding of dark energy and the expansion rate of the Universe at early epochs.

ANSWER TO “AN ASTRONOMICAL PUZZLE”

In the previous newsletter we had posed a puzzle about finite light speed modifying
Newtonian gravity and consequences for the Earth’s orbit due to additional force in the
𝐺𝑀⨀ 𝑣
direction of Earth motion, of ( ) ( ). This does not seem to affect the earth’s orbit.
𝑟2 𝑐
𝐺𝑀⨀ 𝑣
The answer lies in the fact that there is a gravitomagnetic force ( ) ( ) which
𝑟2 𝑐

precisely cancels the acceleration due to the aberration (of the Sun’s position). Again the
Coulomb (static) gravitational force is not aberrated. Just as the moving charge produces a
magnetic field a moving mass gives rise to gravitomagnetic force (with a 𝑣⁄𝑐 term) in

13
 relativistic gravity. The equations of motion in linearized general relativity resemble the
Lorentz force with the electric (static) part and the moving magnetic part. Potentials are defined
in terms of linearized metric tensors ℎ 00, ℎ 0𝑖.
It can be considered a fortuitous circumstance that this cancelling force contributes to
the stability of orbits. Yet another anthropic principle argument, holds only in 3-space
dimensions. The Gravity B probe has measured such tiny effects of these velocity dependent
and rotation dependent forces (Lense–Thirring precession) etc.

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