Great Mysteries in Astrophysics. A Guide To What We Don't Know

Great Mysteries in Astrophysics
A guide to what we don’t know
Online at: https://doi.org/10.1088/2514-3433/ac8975

AAS Editor in Chief
Ethan Vishniac, Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA
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Editorial Advisory Board
Steve Kawaler Joan Najita
Iowa State University, USA National Optical Astronomy
Observatory, USA
Ethan Vishniac
Johns Hopkins University, USA Stacy Palen
Weber State University, USA
Dieter Hartmann
Clemson University, USA Jason Barnes
University of Idaho, USA
Piet Martens
Georgia State University, USA James Cordes
Cornell University, USA
Dawn Gelino
NASA Exoplanet Science Institute,
Caltech, USA
Nicole M Lloyd-Ronning
University of New Mexico, Los Alamos, NM 87544
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ISBN 978-0-7503-4051-9 (ebook)

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DOI 10.1088/2514-3433/ac8975
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Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgement xii
Author biography xiii
1 Introduction 1-1
1.1 Solving Scientific Problems 1-3
1.1.1 The Covid-19 Vaccine 1-4
1.1.2 The Higgs Boson 1-6
1.1.3 The Handedness of Dolphins 1-8
1.2 Solving Astrophysical Mysteries—Deep Space Forensics 1-9
1.2.1 The Afterglow of the Big Bang—Cosmic Microwave 1-10
Background Radiation
1.2.2 Solar Neutrinos 1-11
1.2.3 Pulsars 1-12
1.2.4 Exoplanets 1-16
1.2.5 Mysteries Throughout History 1-16
1.3 Further Reading 1-17
References 1-17
2 How We See the Universe 2-1

2.1 Light 2-3
2.1.1 Spectral Lines 2-5
2.1.2 Continuum Light 2-9
2.2 Particles 2-12
2.2.1 Cosmic Rays 2-12
2.2.2 Neutrinos 2-14
2.3 Gravitational Waves 2-14
2.4 Looking Back in Time 2-17
References 2-18
3 Inventory of the Universe—Something Is Missing! 3-1

3.1 A Note about Distance and Scale 3-4
3.2 Baryonic Matter 3-6
3.2.1 Matter Anti-matter Asymmetry 3-10
vii
3.2.2 The Lithium Problem 3-11

3.2.3 Missing Baryons 3-11
3.3 Dark Matter 3-12
3.3.1 Rotation Curves 3-13
3.3.2 Galaxy Clusters 3-15
3.3.3 Gravitational Lensing 3-15
3.3.4 But Maybe We Just Don’t Understand Gravity 3-16
3.3.5 Are You Sure We Aren’t Just Missing a Bunch of Black 3-16
Holes or Maybe Faint Gas or Something that Doesn’t
Emit (much) Light?
3.3.6 So What’s Going On? 3-17
3.4 Dark Energy 3-17
3.4.1 Wha…? 3-20
References 3-22
4 The Expansion of the Universe and the Hubble Tension 4-1

4.1 Standard Cosmological Model 4-1
4.2 Hubble’s Law 4-4
4.2.1 The Roller Coaster that Is the Hubble Constant Debate 4-5
4.2.2 Hubble Constant from the CMB 4-6
4.2.3 Hubble Constant from Type Ia SNe 4-9
4.2.4 Other Observations 4-9
4.2.5 Systematics 4-11
4.2.6 New Physics 4-13
4.3 Where to Go from Here 4-14
References 4-14
5 The First Stars and Galaxies 5-1

5.1 The First Stars 5-2
5.1.1 A Clue: Reionization 5-6
5.1.2 Star Formation Efficiency Problem 5-7
5.1.3 Initial Mass Function 5-7
5.2 The First Galaxies 5-8
References 5-11
viii
6 Couples+ 6-1
6.1 Bound or Interacting Stars 6-2
6.2 Binary Formation 6-3
6.2.1 Born Together 6-3
6.2.2 Mates—Coupling Up Later in Life 6-3
6.2.3 Evolving in a Binary System 6-4
6.2.4 Black Hole Binary Masses 6-5
6.3 Bound or Interacting Galaxies 6-6
6.3.1 Missing (or Too Many!) Satellites Problem 6-7
References 6-9
7 How Massive Stars Die 7-1

7.1 Supernovae 7-3
7.1.1 Other Types of Supernovae 7-6
7.2 Gamma-ray Bursts 7-8
References 7-13
8 Matter at Extreme Densities—Neutron Stars 8-1

8.1 Superdense Matter—The Neutron Star Equation of State 8-2
8.2 Mysteries Associated with ‘Ordinary’ Pulsars 8-5
8.2.1 Magnetars 8-7
8.3 Fast Radio Bursts 8-7
8.4 Neutron Star Mergers and Heavy Element Production 8-10
References 8-12
9 And Then What? … Black Holes! 9-1

9.1 Stellar Mass Black Holes 9-7
9.1.1 The Mass Gaps 9-7
9.2 Intermediate Mass Black Holes—Where Are They? 9-8
9.3 Supermassive Black Holes 9-9
9.3.1 Early Universe Giants 9-9
9.4 Black Hole–Disk Phenomena 9-12
9.5 Primordial Black Holes 9-16
ix

References 9-17
10 Looking Forward 10-1

10.1 Looking to the Future 10-5
10.1.1 The Future of Space Exploration 10-5
10.1.2 The Future of Instrumentation 10-6
10.2 Final Thoughts 10-7
References 10-9
x
Preface
What are the key things we don’t know about our universe and what are we doing to
solve these great mysteries?
This book stemmed from a class I taught at the University of New Mexico, Los
Alamos, for about 5 years through their Community Education Program. Called
“Modern Astrophysics for Everyone,” it was intended to highlight current, unsolved
problems in astrophysics, and it was open to absolutely everyone, regardless of age,
background, education level, training, etc. Indeed we had a huge range of learners—
from high schoolers to retirees, from those with no background at all in physics to
those with PhDs in physics who had spent their lives dedicated to technical research.
Somehow and amazingly, it seemed as if everyone got something from the class
(without question, everyone certainly contributed to the class!). This book is
intended in that same spirit—hopefully written in a way such that those with no
background, as well as those with training in a technical field, might get something
out of it.
Because a problem cannot be solved until one really understands what needs to be
solved, this book aims to clarify what it is that we do not understand in our current
picture of the universe. Articles and other publications centered on scientific topics—
whether in academic journals or in the popular media—are often focused on
discovery, reporting on an exciting experimental or observational breakthrough.
Additionally, there are many popular science books and technical textbooks that do
a great job of summarizing what we (think we) do know. Here, we do the opposite—
highlighting where we are missing something big and fundamental in our pursuit to
understand the objects in, and behavior of, our universe. After briefly describing
approaches to solving scientific problems as well as how astronomers “see” or gather
information from space, the book will describe several areas where our knowledge is
glaringly incomplete: dark matter, dark energy, the Hubble constant, the formation
of the first stars in our universe, binary/multiple systems, deaths of massive stars,
mysteries associated with neutron stars, black holes, and beyond. This book intends
to take a big-picture approach to these exciting mysteries, presenting them at what I
hope is a level that doesn’t require a lot of background knowledge (but with
additional technical explanation in insets and plenty of references for further
exploration). Each chapter will give a summary of the state of knowledge in a
particular astrophysics research area and then proceed to explain where the
mysteries lie—where we have new territory to explore and much to learn.
An additional aim of this book is to make clear that understanding the physics of
our fascinating universe is an ongoing pursuit, a pursuit that is (or should be)
accessible to everyone, and one that needs all of us participating!
xi
Acknowledgement
My sincere thanks to many people for the inspiration and encouragement that led to
this book. Eternal thanks to Lena, Kamaya, Isaac, and Filip for all of their support
and just generally putting up with me (especially during our pandemic lockdown
days, when I was less than my best self), and a special thanks to my parents, Barb
and Mike Lloyd, for always believing in my dreams of going to space. Registrants of
the UNMLA Community Education “Modern Astrophysics for Everyone” class
were key in making this book happen—thank you for continuing to sign up, for
being so engaged, asking thoughtful questions, and sharing exciting astro-related
news (and a special shout out to Julie for so generously sharing Tomʼs astronomy
books). Continually being reminded why I love astrophysics so much has allowed
me to keep moving forward when the path got particularly bumpy, and I thank all of
the students I’ve worked with throughout the years for that reminder. I thank Agnes
Chavez, Laura San Milan, Mrs. Perry, Sheila Cantrell, Catherine Puranananda and
every other educator out there who works so hard every day to inspire the next
generation of thinkers.
My Dickson Chicks, thank you for always making me laugh and helping me
remember good things like buttercream (Levina, I have yet to perfect Korean
buttercream!) when the world is falling apart. An enormous thanks to the main-
tainers of APOD and the NASA Image Gallery for providing such an incredible
resource that allows anyone with an internet connection to gaze at the wild beauty of
space. Remembering that we have deep personal connections to the telescopes where
we do our work, to the places where these telescopes are located, and to the people
we meet at these locations has helped me see astronomy in a different light, and I’m
deeply grateful to the Arecibo Science Advocacy Partnership and Arecibo
Observatory folks for this. Colleagues all over the world helped me learn the topics
covered in this book, either through their own papers, their talks, or by engaging me
in lively discussions, and for this I am very appreciative. Everyone who provided
comments, a picture, a quote, or a great discussion that helped me improve this book
one way or another (especially Julie Wangler, Naia Butler-Craig, Valeria U.
Hurtado, Carl Fields, Kamaya Ronning, Roseanne Cheng, Aycin Aykutalp,
Czarface, Ishmael and the members of Shabazz Palaces, and the members of
Hieroglyphics), I really thank you. Lastly, I want to express my deep gratitude to my
former advisors and mentors—particularly Martha Haynes, Pat Slane, and Vahe’
Petrosian—who allowed me to take a step forward in the pursuit of understanding
our universe, even when I didn’t yet know how to walk.
xii
Author biography
The author is an astrophysicist based in Northern New Mexico. She
studies the physics behind the bright, spectacular deaths of very
massive stars and the black hole–disk–jet systems they create; she
also uses these luminous events as tools to learn about plasma
physics processes as well as massive star formation and evolution in
our universe. She grew up all over the U.S. and Germany, moving
about every two years on average, and graduated high school in
Honolulu, Hawaii. She received her BA in physics from Cornell
University, her PhD in physics from Stanford University, and held postdoctoral
fellowships at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and Los Alamos
National Lab. In her free time, she likes to run, swim, listen to music, cook, and eat
(primarily tacos).
xiii
Chapter 1
Introduction
In this chapter, we meet our universe. We’ll explore different approaches to solving
its mysteries, using examples across a variety of disciplines. We’ll learn how both
theory and experiment can help us uncover the answers to our deepest questions, but
also how we are limited by seeing these answers through the filter of our human
experience. We’ll then delve into the unique challenge astrophysical research poses:
because we in general cannot travel to or control our experiments, we have to rely on
a more forensic-like analysis when solving the mysteries of our cosmos. We highlight
some special examples of how this is done.
If you’ve ever had the good fortune to gaze upon the countless stars and galaxies
shimmering against a clear night sky, (1) you are lucky, and (2) you probably
appreciate just how vast and fascinating our universe is. It is amazing to try and
wrap our heads around the many stunning and varied components of our cosmos.
From mysterious giant planets orbiting stars that look nothing like our own Sun, to
giant wispy filamentary structures of gas in the far reaches of our universe; from the
relatively small stellar black holes in our galaxy slowly undressing their companion
stars, to the behemoth black holes in the early universe voraciously devouring the
gas around them; from the pristine blobs of hydrogen, slowly coming together to
form the first stars in the universe’s infancy, to the deeply complex molecules that
make up life on Earth … our universe is a stunning melange of interesting wonders!1
It is also mind-blowing (although pretty fun!) to try to comprehend the enormity
of our observable universe (never mind what might lie beyond the reach of what we
are able to observe!). This so-called cosmic horizon is the distance over which light
can travel throughout the universe’s lifetime. We estimate this distance at the present
1
Even more amazingly, this boundless array of beautiful, complex objects and phenomena have emerged from
just a few fundamental building blocks!
doi:10.1088/2514-3433/ac8975ch1 1-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

day to be about 4 × 1028 centimeters.2 How do we understand such a huge number?

We can try to express this size in different ways: 42 billion lt-yr;3
1, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 Empire State Buildings stacked end to
end; the distance you’d cover if you went back and forth between San Francisco and
Tokyo 20,000,000,000,000,000,000 times, and so on. Regardless of how exactly you
state its size, there is no doubt that it is overwhelmingly huge. And it—that is, the
size of our universe—is growing (at a faster and faster rate, no less!4). Astounding.
And in the grand scheme of it all, we are just a little speck on a planet that is a
little speck in our solar system, which is a little speck in our Galaxy, which is a little
speck in our cosmos. Figure 1.1 shows just a teeny, tiny patch of our sky observed by
the Hubble Space Telescope, and it is absolutely packed with other magnificent and
varied worlds. The figure says “You are here” but we observed this patch of sky
from the Hubble telescope orbiting Earth, so we are not really “there”’; nonetheless,
this is a fair way to illustrate that we are just one tiny bit in our expansive universe.5
What do we know about this beautiful universe, really? How do we make sense of
it from our tiny vantage point? It is sometimes difficult to step back and digest all of
the information out there—in textbooks, on TV, in movies, in articles, on TikTok—
and figure out what it is we understand about our cosmos. What are the scientific
claims for which we have strong evidence, and which claims need a closer
examination and more robust support from our data? What are the puzzles we still
have left to solve, ones where we might be missing truly fundamental pieces? There
are plenty of anomalies in our observations, weird things that pop up and look a bit
strange, data that are a little (or a lot!) off from what we expect—but these don’t
necessarily constitute a mystery!6
Hopefully this book can help to clarify this issue, presenting (what I feel are) the
true mysteries of our cosmos. We’ll cover some of the biggest open questions in
astrophysics, ones in which our understanding of basic physics is challenged, in
which our data inexplicably do not line up with the predictions from our equations.
2
You might think a centimeter is a bit of an odd unit to measure the size of our enormous universe. And you’d
be right. But the unit system that uses centimeters for distance, grams for mass, and seconds for time—
so-called cgs units—is the common one that astronomers employ. We are not afraid of giant numbers and so
don’t bat much of an eye when measuring the universe in centimeters!
3
This number often causes pause—since our observable universe is only about 13.7 billion yr old, how is it
possible that the universe’s size could be larger than 13.7 billion lt-yr? But remember the universe has been
expanding since the first light was emitted 13.7 billion yr ago. Our best estimate for the rate of its expansion
tells us its current radius is indeed about 42 billion lt-yr. A great and more detailed explanation of this can be
found on Ned Wright’s Cosmology FAQ page: https://www.astro.ucla.edu/wright/cosmology_faq.html#ct2.
4
More on that in Chapters 3 and 4.
5
When my code crashes, or the Lakers lose, or my mile time at the track is slower than usual, I take solace in
this—our annoyances are just blips in the wider significance of what is out there. This allows me, to quote Pep
Love of Hieroglyphics in the excellent song Soweto (credit: Pep Love/Tajai), “‘find my inner peace in a place so
callous.” But what brings not just calm, but real hope and joy, is the thought that every one of us on this speck
of a planet is here together—a team working to solve our universe’s greatest mysteries, from our little spot in
the cosmos!
6
Sometimes they arise from flaws in our detectors, spurious signals from satellites that fly in front of our
telescopes as we make our observations, or any number of other rather mundane reasons.
1-2
Figure 1.1. The Hubble Deep Field—a patch of sky observed by the Hubble telescope that covers an angular
area of about 12’ squared. To give a sense of how tiny that is, it would take about 12,913,983 of those size
patches to cover our whole sky. Note that the “You are here” marker is not really marking our location (we
made this observation from Earth!), but is meant to illustrate that we are positioned in but one of the billions of
galaxies in our universe, in no particularly special location. Image credit: S. Beckwith & the HUDF Working
Group (STScI), HST, ESA, NASA.
Before we get into all of that, however, let’s remind ourselves how scientific
problems are approached and how we work toward solutions.
1.1 Solving Scientific Problems

I live at an altitude of about 2200 m (7200 feet); I also love to eat cake. When I lived
near the ocean, I figured out the perfect ratio of ingredients to make fluffy, delicious
cakes. When I moved to the mountains and made my cakes, they were not so fluffy
and only moderately delicious. I needed to fix this disastrous problem, and there
were a couple of ways I could approach a solution. I could guess that my cake might
need some additional ingredient (e.g., more baking powder, an extra egg), add that
to my batter, bake, and watch the cake rise (or fail to rise). I could see if adding
chocolate chips might help.7 I could test what adding more flour to the batter would
do. I could try each of these things, one by one or in combination, while controlling
for other variables (that is, keeping other variables/ingredients the same) in order to
7
I figured probably not, but they do make me feel better, either way.
1-3
isolate the thing (or things) that really affect(s) the rising of my cake. I could have
friends try these things too,8 to see if my solutions work for them. If I find a fix that
works, and it is reproducible by me and others, I can probably feel fairly confident in
my solution for a proper, fluffy, delicious cake at high altitude.
I could have also approached my flat cake problem by going to chemistry books
and cook books, learning the theory behind what chemical reactions are happening
as a cake bakes, attempting to understand the physics and chemistry of how a cake
rises. At high altitude, air pressure and density are a little lower (including in the
oven), and it turns out that matters for the chemistry of your cake. The lower air
pressure causes baked goods to rise more easily—paradoxically causing them to
collapse more readily—as well as lose moisture more quickly (since water boils at a
lower temperature). I could try changing some of the input to the equations—for
example, using the value for air pressure at high altitude rather than that at sea level
in my cake-baking equations—and then figure out what other variables I need to
adjust to get a “cake-answer” similar to the answer I get at sea level. That is, based
on well-established and tested previous knowledge and theory, I could work out on
paper9 what I need to help my cake rise at altitude (but then test it, of course!).
Such is the process for many things we don’t understand in a wide range of
scientific fields. First we define or figure out what the problem is. Then, we search for
solutions—either experimentally or theoretically (or, ideally, both). If a solution is
not readily available, we can try things and see how that affects our “system.” We
make informed guesses about what to try based on our previous knowledge and
experience, using previous trials (and anything we have available, really) to help us
choose better input for subsequent trials. We hope this process allows us to narrow
in on a solution that will help us understand our system and figure out our problem
(be it cake at high altitude, a complicated circuit, the best treatment for cancer, or
the physics behind an exploding star). This is how science works in practice.
1.1.1 The Covid-19 Vaccine

Although the time it took to develop an effective Covid-19 vaccine was truly
amazing and unprecedented, the technology that led to its production was first
discovered and explored quite a while ago. Katalin Karikó proposed in the 1990s
that synthetic messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA for short), the molecule that tells
our cells what proteins to make,10 could be programmed to spur the body to create
very particular (and desired) proteins. In the case of the Covid-19 vaccine, the
desired products are the spike proteins on the surface of the SARS-Covid virus.
Once our body detects those proteins, it then responds by making antibodies that
protect against the virus.
The story is now widely told, but when Dr Karikó first proposed this method, she
was met with rejection after rejection, and dismissal by many of her colleagues. The
8
More cake for everyone!
9
Most theoretical physics these days is really done on a computer, rather than on paper—we program our
computers to work out the equations for us!
10
Proteins are large, complex molecules that regulate the function of our tissues and organs.
1-4
Figure 1.2. Vials of the Covid-19 vaccine developed using novel mnRNA technology in 2020. Image credit:
Daniel Schludi, Unsplash License, CC-BY-SA4.0 License.
technology was challenging to be sure—the synthetic mRNA is itself foreign to our

body and can therefore trigger a response from our bodies to get rid of it. It would be
destroyed before it could do its work, and she had not yet figured out a way to
prevent this. She wrote grant proposal after grant proposal to secure funding to
address this challenge, suggesting that it could in fact be surmounted if she and
collaborators were given the time and resources to perform a series of experiments
that might test possible solutions. But, once again, she was met with one “no” after
another. In fact, she was denied basic opportunity to advance her career at her
institution—she and this revolutionary idea were mostly pushed to the side and
ignored.
However, Dr Karikó did not give up. She saw promise and the potential in her
work and eventually so did others. She and her close collaborators forged ahead,
even with limited funding. In 2005, after many thoughtfully designed trials and a lot
of experimentation, they figured out a way to create mRNA that would sidestep the
body’s destructive immune response to it! (Karikó et al. 2005). This new technology
to fight disease just might work!11
Dr Karikó’s novel method of using synthetic mRNA to spur the body to create
desired antibodies was first tested in animals, and shown to be extremely effective.
However, it needed to be tested in humans and the prospect of this was initially very
slow to progress. But then, in 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic hit. The urgent need to
fight this devastating virus opened the opportunity for a groundbreaking
11
When they first published this pioneering work, it went mostly under the radar. Two companies—Pfizer and
Moderna—did notice, however.
1-5
experiment: throughout 2020, 74,000 people of different ages, genders, races,

ethnicities were given either a vaccine against Covid-19 using this mRNA technol-
ogy, or a placebo, and monitored for ten weeks as they went about their daily lives.
Almost all of the Covid-19 cases that arose were in people who received the placebo.
This innovative new way of helping our bodies overcome a virus worked! The
development of the Covid-19 vaccine is an excellent example of how careful, well
thought-out experimentation (and a lot of perseverance!) can help us solve a difficult
scientific problem (often to our great personal benefit).
1.1.2 The Higgs Boson

If you step on a scale, it will give you a measure of how much mass you have—how
much “stuff” you are made of. But what is mass and why do you (or, to break it
down, the elementary particles from which you are made) have it? One of the biggest
mysteries in fundamental physics is why certain particles (electrons, protons, and
neutrons12) have mass and others (like photons and gravitons) do not.
The Standard Model—the set of equations that describes three of the four
fundamental forces between elementary particles13—originally predicted that some
of the fundamental particles we know of should not have mass. These particles, in
particular particles called W and Z bosons,14 were shown experimentally that they
absolutely do have mass. Despite what the equations predicted, experiments showed
that these particles have masses of about 10−22 g (which seems tiny but is about
100,000 times more massive than an electron!). What was going on?
In 1964, several independent groups came up with a solution (Englert & Brout
1964; Higgs 1964; Guralnik & Hagen 1964). Rather than approach things from an
experimental let’s-try-things-out-in-our-particle-accelerators sort of way, they
approached the problem theoretically. In other words, they took a good hard
look at the equations that describe the particles’ behaviors (i.e., our Standard
Model) and searched for a solution. They added something to these equations—an
extra term which corresponded to introducing the existence of a new particle, now
known as the Higgs boson. Adding this term into the Standard Model caused a
change in the way the other particle terms showed up in the equations—somewhat
like changing the term x 2 to (x + y )2 . In the latter case, when we add the y to x and
square it, we don’t just get x 2 + y 2 , with x and y each going about their independent
ways. Instead, we have a cross term: (x + y )2 = x 2 + 2xy + y 2 , giving us a piece in
our equation where x and y “interact” (the cross, or interaction, term being 2xy ).
The interaction terms in the Standard Model between the Higgs boson and other
particles are what gives these particles mass. Figure 1.3 shows a schematic of the
different types of particles that interact with the Higgs boson. Some particles, like
12
Neutrons and protons are themselves made up of particles called quarks, whereas electrons are particles that
cannot be broken down into further pieces.
13
This model does not (yet) account for gravity; more on that in Chapter 10.
14
Just as the photon is the particle that communicates/carries/mediates the electromagnetic force, the W and Z
bosons are particles that communicate/carry/mediate one of the fundamental forces called the weak force, the
force responsible for radioactive decay.
1-6
Figure 1.3. Diagram of the types of particles that interact with the Higgs boson (symbolized by the purple
symbol in the center) and therefore have mass. Image credit: DOE courtesy of Symmetry magazine, a joint
Fermilab/SLAC publication. Artwork by Sandbox Studio, Chicago. CC-BY 4.0.
the photon, don’t have this interaction or cross term with the Higgs, so they have no
mass.
But what does it mean to “give” mass? How does this interaction term work? One
way to think about it is that the Higgs particle is really a field (somewhat like the
photon being an electromagnetic field; more on that in Chapter 2). Think of
the Higgs particle as sort of a spacetime molasses. Some particles fly through the
molasses without slowing down at all, without interacting. Some particles, on the
other hand, do interact with the Higgs field, getting weighed down by this molasses,
so to speak. The more strongly a particle interacts with the Higgs field, the more
mass it has.
Mathematically, adding this term was a beautiful and consistent way to allow our
equations to align with our experimental results of the masses of W and Z bosons
(and many other particles). However, this proposed Higgs field/particle had not been
seen or detected itself. For years, scientists searched for this particle. They built
experiments in big particle colliders trying very hard to detect it, to no avail (Carroll
2013). But finally, in 2013 March, the Higgs particle was detected at the powerful
1-7
CERN collider, with exactly the predicted mass needed to make things consistent
with the added theoretical term in Standard Model!
There is a history of particle physicists adding terms to the Standard Model to fix
discrepancies between what the equations predict and what our experiments are
telling us. And, as was the case with the Higgs particle, sometimes these added terms
tell us there are new particles or new types of interactions out there (for which we
should go searching in our experiments!).15 This is another approach to solving
scientific problems: we think something should exist because it makes sense in our
equations, and then we check whether there is any experimental evidence or
confirmation for its existence. If and when we do indeed find evidence for this
something—when we confirm that we had our math right and our physical intuition
to add an extra term to the equation is verified—it is not only very satisfying indeed,
but a step toward improving our understanding nature.
1.1.3 The Handedness of Dolphins

Are dolphins left handed or right handed? I know, I know—dolphins don’t have
hands! But for years, there were many research papers published claiming a strong
“right-handedness” of dolphins—a tendency for them to to spin “to the right” when
they jumped out of water. (Figure 1.4 shows an image of a dolphin in the midst of a
spin.) If you google “handedness of dolphins,” those are the claims that show up first
(at the time I’m writing this book).
But not so fast. What an open-minded, questioning research group showed
(Jaakkola et al. 2021; Jaakola 2021) is that this “result” was really a by-product of
human perception, and not an absolute trait of dolphins! Try this: stand up straight
Figure 1.4. A dolphin captured mid-spin. For many years, scientists thought there was a preference for
dolphins to spin “to the right.” Recent research has upended that claim. Image credit: NASA and NOAA.
15
Something similar was done with the top quark (Abe et al. 1995) one of six quarks predicted (and now
confirmed) to mediate the strong nuclear force.
1-8
and turn to the right. Now lie on your stomach and turn to the right. For most
people, in the first case, turning to the right means putting your right shoulder back
and left forward. In the second case, for most people, it means to roll to the right, so
that your left shoulder went back and the right went forward. In other words,
spinning two different ways, in two opposite directions, both mean “turning to the
right.” These researchers found that there was no consistent, standard definition for
the way scientists were defining how dolphins were spinning—they were classifying
both left and right turns as “to the right.” In addition to highlighting humans’ huge
preference or bias toward right-handedness, it shows how human experience can
greatly affect how we interpret data and what we think are objective scientific
results.
When these researchers devised other ways of examining handedness in a dolphin—
for example, the direction they swim (on average)—they found no strong preference
for right-handedness, upending previously established scientific results. It can be scary
(and indeed it has ruined some careers!) to challenge the status quo and question what
the majority of the community takes as an established result. However, this example
emphasizes not only how important the constant questioning and re-evaluation of our
results are, but how important it is to remember how our human bias plays a role in
these results. It is crucial that we continue to try to look at our science from different
perspectives and other points of view.
In each of the scientific problems above, we were able to design experiments to
test a hypothesis. Importantly, the results of the experiments were (and still can be!)
reproduced by others.16 Doing astrophysics relies on these same principles, but in
practice usually has to work a little bit differently.
1.2 Solving Astrophysical Mysteries—Deep Space Forensics

For the most part, astrophysicists don’t have the luxury of directly tinkering with—
or even being remotely near—our experiments.17 It is challenging enough to reach
the planets in our own solar system in a reasonable amount of time (it took the
Voyager Probes about 45 years to reach the end of our solar system and they are
traveling roughly 60,000 km h−1!), much less other stars in our Galaxy, other
galaxies in our universe. No current spacecraft would make it to even our nearest
stars in a human lifetime (it would take the Voyager probes another 76,103 years to
reach our very nearest star, alpha-Centauri, at their current speeds). In other words,
we cannot be at, control, or repeat our astrophysical experiments as we can in a
traditional laboratory setting.
What can add an extra layer of difficulty to all of this is that the astro-
physical objects or phenomena we are trying to understand are often transient
16
In the case of the non-fluffy cake, it’s relatively easy and cheap to buy ingredients and test whether results are
reproducible. Not so much for detecting the Higgs boson—the Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs was
first definitively detected, cost almost 5 billion dollars to build! But the point is that all of the experiments
described above are testable by others.
17
In some cases, like going to the Moon, or sending robotic probes to Mars, Venus, asteroids, we do have this
option!
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(i.e., they “turn on” and “turn off,” or may even be just one-time events). We are
therefore at the mercy of the timescale of that object, which we don’t necessarily
know! In some cases, this timescale is extremely short and if we aren’t looking in the
right direction at the right time, we’ll miss the “on” and “off” completely. In other
cases, the universe “experiments” on timescales much too large for us to measure
the changes we are investigating. For example, I would love to observe how a star
or a galaxy forms and grows, but this process takes hundreds of millions to billions
of years. I cannot sit at my telescope (or computer) for that long!18 So, we have to
gather the bits of clues, the snapshots in time as things are happening, the coded
messages that objects in space send us, and then use the physics we know to try to
piece together a reasonable picture of what is going on. And over the thousands of
years of practiced, recorded astronomy, we have figured out some ways to do this
(and uncovered some great mysteries along the way)!
1.2.1 The Afterglow of the Big Bang—Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

When Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson cleaned the pigeon excrement out of their
radio horn antenna to try to get rid of the annoying “noise” they were seeing in their
data, they didn’t know they were sitting on one of the biggest discoveries in the
history of astrophysics. At the time, they were working for Bell Labs and
experimenting with a new type of radio receiver. They saw a constant low energy
signal in their antenna that just wouldn’t go away. They tried cooling it to just above
absolute zero, getting rid of any other radio signals in the area, looking at all times of
day and night to check for variation, and—as mentioned above—cleaning the
pigeon poop off the receiver. But the signal was still there, all of the time. Something
was constantly emitting these low energy light waves in every direction they looked
(Penzias & Wilson 1965).
When a friend told Penzias about work by Jim Peebles (Dicke et al. 1965) and
others (Alpher et al. 1948) predicting that the universe should have a pervasive
microwave signal corresponding to a temperature of about 3° above absolute zero,
Penzias paused and listened. If the universe we observe today had expanded from a
hot, dense region, it would have cooled as it expanded; at the present age of the
universe (i.e., 13.7 billion yr later, also known as right now), it should have cooled to
about 3 K.19 In other words, if this “Big Bang” picture of the universe were correct,
there should be a roughly three degree20 glow everywhere. And indeed this is exactly
the frequency of the pervasive noise that Penzias and Wilson were seeing! This
discovery—a beautiful collaboration between theory and experiment—is perhaps
the greatest confirmation of the Big Bang.
18
Sometimes it feels like I’m sitting there for that long.
19
Kelvin is a temperature scale that is commonly used in science. Zero Kelvin is what defines the temperature
of absolute zero. This corresponds to −273.15 ◦C or −459.67 ◦ F.
20
This temperature corresponds to the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum; more on that in
Chapter 2.
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1.2.2 Solar Neutrinos

In the 1930s, physicist Hans Bethe worked out the atomic reactions in the interior of
our Sun that cause it to shine (Bethe 1939). We’ll revisit this in later chapters, but the
basic idea is that hydrogen atoms are fused into helium atoms and this process gives
off light and other fast moving particles. The physics behind this process is known
pretty well and has been tested and confirmed repeatedly. One of the by-products—
one of the types of fast moving particles that come out of this reaction—is a neutrino.
Neutrinos are fundamental particles (meaning they are not made up of other particles)
that come in three so-called flavors—electron, muon, and tau flavored neutrinos.21
When hydrogen is fused into helium, electron neutrinos are created (see the pink
squiggles in Figure 1.5). Given our measurements of the Sun, we can make pretty
confident predictions of exactly how many electron neutrinos are created there. In
other words, we can look at how bright the Sun is shining—which is telling us the rate
at which hydrogen is being fused into helium—and get an estimate of how many
electron neutrinos should be streaming toward Earth at any given moment. Again,
Figure 1.5. A diagram of the fusion reaction that occurs in main sequence stars. Four hydrogen atoms
combine to produce a helium atom. Light (indicated by the Greek letter γ) and neutrinos (indicated by the
Greek letter ν and the pink squiggles) are produced in this reaction. Image credit: Wikimedia, Sarang; Pink
lines added by author.
21
They are sadly not as delicious as your favorite ice cream brand’s flavors. Flavor is the term particle
physicists use to describe different varieties of the same type of particle.
1-11
there is not a lot of room for error in this number, because it is directly tied to the
luminosity of the Sun, and other things we can measure and determine very, very well.
Mysteriously, we were not seeing as many electron neutrinos in our detectors as
we should have! Now, neutrinos don’t interact with matter very well—they are
pretty hard to catch in a detector, and for many years people thought perhaps we
just needed better instruments to see them. But multiple excellent detectors, using
different techniques for capturing these particles, kept coming up with the same
result. These detectors were only seeing about one third of the number of electron
neutrinos we expect to be produced in the Sun.
Maybe our theory was off, and we were missing something fundamental in our
equations. Again, we felt pretty sure about the processes going on in the Sun and had
exquisitely accurate data on the rate of these processes and how many electron
neutrinos should be produced. So what was going on? It turns out already in 1957
(even before we had the “missing” solar neutrino problem) Bruno Pontecorvo
suggested that neutrinos could oscillate—transform back and forth into the other
flavors of neutrinos (Gribov & Pontecorvo 1994). An electron neutrino could be
flying along and suddenly turn in to a tau neutrino for a while and then into a muon
neutrino and then maybe back to an electron neutrino. This sounds a little wild to
me (like something out of a science fiction movie, really), but it is absolutely allowed
and totally consistent with the Standard Model and the laws of physics, as long as
we allow neutrinos to have a little bit of mass. Up until then, however, most
physicists thought the neutrino was massless, so there was some resistance to this
solution to the missing neutrino problem.
However, in the late 1990s, detectors (particularly Super Kamiokande in Japan and
the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Canada), using complementary techni-
ques, showed strong evidence for neutrino oscillation (Ahmad et al. 2001). These
detectors allowed us to measure all three flavors of neutrinos coming from the
direction of the Sun (not just electron neutrinos as had been done previously). They
confirmed that the total number of neutrinos from the Sun is indeed the number
predicted by theory for electron neutrinos, and that the oscillation of one neutrino type
into the other perfectly explains the observational deficit of electron neutrinos. In other
words, when we count up the tau, muon, and electron neutrinos coming from the Sun,
it matches what our theory predicts for the number of electron neutrinos that should
be produced in the Sun. This meant that the electron neutrinos were “oscillating” into
tau and muon neutrinos on their trip from the Sun to our detectors on Earth. And this
meant neutrinos have mass!! A tiny mass to be sure (2 × 10−37 kg, about 5 million
times less than the super tiny electron mass!), but there nonetheless. This was a new,
exciting addition to our Standard Model and we are still working out the implications
of this. It’s also a good illustration of a combination of theory and experiment working
in unison to solve a scientific problem.
1.2.3 Pulsars
In 1934 two physicists, Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky, suggested (Baade & Zwicky
1934) that when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses under its own weight, it
1-12
can create a small, dense star made mostly of neutrons (aptly named a neutron star;
more on this in Chapters 7 and 8). They predicted the star would have a radius of
only about 10 kilometers, but with a mass of about one and half times the mass of
our Sun. One teaspoon of this star would therefore weigh more than 4 billion tons
(just one teaspoon!). Fast forward to 1967, when graduate student Jocelyn Bell went
to analyze her data from the Jodrell bank telescope, which was collecting radio light
from a particular spot in the sky. She noticed something odd: periodic blips in her
data. In other words, her data showed a spike of radio emission; then the emission
stopped; then it spiked again, then stopped … over and over, at exactly the same time
interval. It was such a regularly timed signal, that it was joked (or maybe not-so
joked) that some sort of alien civilization was transmitting this signal.22 Meanwhile,
another radio telescope looked in that direction and confirmed this periodic emission
coming from the same spot in the sky. She and her advisor Anthony Hewish
continued to work and think about this signal, and soon after discovered another
such regularly timed on and off radio blip in a different part of the sky. They realized
that this was probably a new class of astrophysical phenomena! They named these
objects pulsing quasars23 or “‘pulsars” for short (Hewish & Okoye 1965). But what
were these things? What could make them flicker on and off so very regularly?
One way to have such a regular flicker is to have a spinning beam of light coming
in and out of our telescope view.24 The right panel of Figure 1.6 shows the on and off
blip of light from a pulsar. The left panel shows an illustration of the “lighthouse
Figure 1.6. Left: An artist’s illustration of a pulsar, with the blue line showing the beam of light that emerges
along the pulsar’s magnetic poles. Right: An observation of light from a pulsar, with the number of photons on
the y-axis and the time on the right axis. Note the periodic on and off pulsing, due to the light beam sweeping
in and out of our view as the pulsar spins. Left image credit: Chandra (X-ray): NASA/CXC/Univ. di Palermo/
E. Greco; Illustration: INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo/Salvatore Orlando. Right image credit:
NASA/EXOSAT.
22
In fact, the data were originally named “Little Green Men.”
23
The term “quasar” originally stood for “quasi-stellar object”’; we now associate this term with a type of
active galactic nucleus (AGN). More on AGN in Chapter 9.
24
A light beam emanating from a spinning object, much like a lighthouse spinning around, will create this
regularly timed blip every time the light sweeps across our field of view.
1-13
beam” scenario for these pulsars. But what was making this beam, what exactly was
doing the spinning?
A big clue came in 1968 when Richard Lovelace and collaborators discovered
(Comella et al. 1969; Lovelace & Sutton 1969) with the Arecibo telescope in Puerto
Rico, another pulsar blipping regularly every 33 milliseconds. This signal was
coming and going so rapidly that it had to be coming from something fairly small.
Imagine a beam of light emitted from the surface of a ping pong ball and another
from a giant beach ball. Now imagine the speed at the surface of each spinning
object is the same (that is, if I look at the spot on the surface where the beam is
coming out and measure how much distance it covers per second, it would be the
same for both beams). So, the spot from which the beams emanate are moving at the
same speed, but the beach ball beam has to cover a much wider arc as it spins,
because it is so much larger. As a result, the rotational rate (how many revolutions it
makes per second) of the beach ball is much lower than the ping pong ball, and we
therefore see its beam of light less frequently. Similarly, the rotation rate of the ping
pong is much higher because the distance an object on the surface has to travel to
make one revolution is so much smaller than the beach ball.
For the rapid blips seen by Dr Lovelace, only something as small as a theorized
neutron star would allow for such a quick on and off signal.25 The neutron star, it
was posited, has a magnetic field and magnetic poles, much the way the Earth does.
Light is emitted along the magnetic poles, creating the light beam; as the star spins
and the light beam sweeps past Earth, we measure that signal (at very regular
intervals corresponding to the spin period of the neutron star).26
More data were gathered, and the spinning neutron star model continued to be
confirmed. The Arecibo telescope in particular made unprecedented discoveries of
these objects, which opened new fields of astronomy and astrophysics, as these
neutron stars (as we’ll see in Chapter 8) harbor some of the most extreme physics
and exotic states of matter in our universe!
1.2.3.1 Hulse–Taylor Binary Pulsar and General Relativity

The theory of General Relativity (GR) envisions spacetime27 as a sort of flexible
fabric, where mass and energy tell the fabric how to stretch and bend; the fabric, in
turn, tells mass and energy how to move through spacetime. So, rather than thinking
about gravity as a pull between two massive objects, as we’re often taught in our
introductory physics classes, you can think of the gravitational force as the warping
25
You might ask why it couldn’t still be a huge object, but just spinning extremely, extremely fast so that the
beam sweeps around at the necessary frequency of once every 33 ms? This cannot be because we have a limit to
the speed of anything and everything in our universe—the speed of light! Any object larger than a neutron star
would require that the surface speed of this object exceed the speed of light. That is why we knew it had to be
something small like a neutron star.
26
We point out that these blips are most often seen in the radio region of the electromagnetic spectrum, but
they are also sometimes seen in X-rays and gamma-rays. In fact, the data shown in Figure 1.6 are from an X-
ray satellite.
27
Note I use the term spacetime because space and time are really one entity, and depend on each other; this is
Einstein’s well-tested and well-confirmed Theory of Relativity.
1-14
of the spacetime fabric. One of the consequences of this more complete theory of
gravity, developed by Einstein and others in the early 1900s, is the prediction that
the fabric can ripple. That is, in some cases, massive objects can create waves in
spacetime—gravitational waves.
In particular, General Relativity predicts that two stars orbiting each other will
ripple the fabric of spacetime, creating these gravitational waves. As they do so, the
system will lose some energy (this energy goes into the creation of the gravitational
waves) and as a result, the stars should migrate closer and closer together at a very
specific rate.
In 1974, Hulse and Taylor discovered such a star system in our galaxy (once
again, at the Arecibo Observatory; Hulse & Taylor 1974)! Figure 1.7 shows an
artist’s impression of a binary pulsar, while the right shows the iconic Arecibo
Observatory.28 They continued to observe this binary pulsar and, over a span of
years, they and others watched as the orbital separation of the stars (around 1
million kilometers) decreased at a rate of about 3.5 m per year (that is, the stars got
about 3.5 m closer each year). The rate at which they observed the stars inspiraling is
exactly what is predicted by general relativity, exactly how fast they should be
inspiraling if they are “giving” some of their orbital energy to gravitational waves.
This was very strong evidence in support of GR and this groundbreaking work
earned a Nobel Prize in physics in the early 1990s.29
Figure 1.7. Left: An artist’s illustration of a binary pulsar. Right: The iconic Arecibo Observatory, which
contributed to the solving of many of the mysteries mentioned in this chapter (and beyond), before its collapse
in 2020. Left Image Credit: Michael Kramer (Jodrell Bank Observatory, University of Manchester) Right
Image Credit: National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Cornell University, National Science Foundation.
28
On 2020 December 1, a cable holding the instrument above the telescope dish snapped, causing the
suspended equipment to fall and destroy this astronomical gem. There are efforts underway to try to rebuild a
new facility which has inspired and contributed to astronomy, planetary science, atmospheric science, and
education/public outreach arguably more than any other astronomical facility in the world.
29
This indirect detection of gravitational waves is amazing evidence for gravitational waves on its own, but
recently these ripples in spacetime have been directly observed—we’ve watched as the two neutron stars in a
system, much like the one Hulse and Taylor discovered, collided and created ripples strong enough to be seen
here on Earth. We’ve also detected these gravitational wave ripples from black holes colliding, and a neutron
star and black hole colliding—more on this in later chapters.
1-15
1.2.4 Exoplanets
For decades astronomers predicted that there should be planets around other stars.
The physics that we think led to the formation of our own solar system, after all, is
not unique—a cloud of gas condensed to form our Sun and the planets that orbit
it.30 These clumps of gas exist everywhere throughout our vast universe—if our solar
system formed, why shouldn’t there be other systems out there like ours?
In 1992, the first extrasolar planetary system was discovered with the (you
guessed it!) spectacular Arecibo radio telescope. Alexander Wolszcan and Dale
Frail saw a peculiar wobble in a pulsar’s regular blipping signal. This unusual
signal is best explained by the presence of several planet-sized objects orbiting this
pulsar, gravitationally wobbling it back and forth with each revolution
(Wolszczan & Frail 1992). Since that discovery, using a variety of clever
observational techniques,31 many more extrasolar planets have been found. To
date there are more than 5000 exoplanets discovered and counting! They are very
difficult to detect, so we think there must be vastly more out there; in fact, most
stars probably have planets around them. We know there are roughly 100 billion
stars in the Milky Way, roughly 100 billion Milky Way like galaxies in the
universe, which means there are probably around 100 billion billion—or at least
about 1018—planets in our cosmos!
1.2.5 Mysteries Throughout History

The stories above are good examples of when we’ve been faced with an observa-
tional or theoretical mystery and then, through a lot of creativity and teamwork,
figured out a solution. But we need to be careful—sometimes we think we’ve solved
a problem, and then discover later that we were in fact very wrong! There are many
examples of times when explanations for astrophysical phenomena turned out to be
incorrect, including the belief that the Earth is the center of the universe (or galaxy,
or solar system), that space is filled everywhere with an invisible “aether” substance
that transmits electromagnetic waves, that the scale of our universe doesn’t extend
much beyond our galaxy (Trimble 1995), that the universe isn’t expanding but is in a
“steady state” (Bondi & Gold 1948) and much more.
But that is ok! It doesn’t mean science is wrong or can’t be trusted—it’s just a
reminder of how we always need to be questioning our understanding, considering
whether we’ve considered everything, repeating our experiments when possible, and
looking at things from different viewpoints. At some point, you may realize you can
really trust your data and your understanding. I know that when I throw my
cellphone up in the air, it is indeed going to fall back down to the Earth,32 and I can
30
Clumps of gas that aren’t quite massive enough to make a star (i.e., to exert enough of a gravitational force
to allow hydrogen to fuse into helium) are what can become planets.
31
For a great summary of ways to detect exoplanets, see https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/ways-to-find-
a-planet/.
32
Don’t try this at home.
1-16
tell you with great precision exactly how fast it will fall and how long it will take to
hit the ground after it leaves my hand. The key to our pursuit of understanding our
universe is knowing when we don’t have the full picture and when we can reasonably
trust what we do have.
Let’s explore where we don’t have the full picture. But first, we need to
understand the messages that space is sending us.
1.3 Further Reading

For more on the pursuit of solving mysteries in science, taking risks, messing up,
sometimes getting it right, see Livio (2013), Bennett (2001), Loeb (2014), and Mee
(2019) as well as this short online article: https://bit.ly/3nlnuRj.
A wonderful book on the cosmos and our human experience and connection to it
can be found in Prescod-Weinstein (2021).
References
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Ahmad, Q. R., Allen, R. C., Andersen, T. C., et al. 2001, PhRvL, 87, 071301
Alpher, R. A., Herman, R., & Gamow, G. A. 1948, PhRv, 74, 1198
Baade, W., & Zwicky, F. 1934, PhRv, 46, 76
Bennett, J. O. 2001, On the Cosmic Horizon: Ten Great Mysteries for Third Millennium
Astronomy Mysteries for the New Millennium (San Francisco, CA: Addison Wesley
Longman)
Bethe, H. A. 1939, PhRv, 55, 434
Bondi, H., & Gold, T. 1948, MNRAS, 108, 252
Carroll, S. 2013, The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson
Leads Us to the Edge of a New World (New York: Penguin Publishing Group)
Comella, J. M., Craft, H. D., Lovelace, R V E., & Sutton, J. M. 1969, Natur, 221, 453
Dicke, R. H., Peebles, P J E., Roll, P. G., & Wilkinson, D. T. 1965, ApJ, 142, 414
Englert, F., & Brout, R. 1964, PhRvL, 13, 321
Gribov, V. N., & Pontecorvo, B. M. 1994, Neutrino Astronomy and Lepton Charge, in Solar
Neutrinos: The First Thirty Years (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press), 273
Guralnik, G. S., & Hagen, C. R. 1964, PhRvL, 13, 585
Hewish, A., & Okoye, S. E. 1965, Natur, 207, 59
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Jaakkola, K., Loyer, C., Guarino, E., et al. 2021, Behav. Brain Res., 401, 113083
Jaakola, K. 2021, Are Dolphins Right-Handed or Left-Handed, SciAm
Karikó, K., Buckstein, M., Ni, H., & Weissman, D. 2005, Immunity, 23, 165
Livio, M. 2013, Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein–Colossal Mistakes by Great
Scientists That Changed Our Understanding of Life and the Universe (New York: Simon
& Schuster)
Loeb, A. 2014, arXiv:1405.2954
Lovelace, R V E., & Sutton, J. M. 1969, Natur, 222, 231
Mee, N. 2019, The Cosmic Mystery Tour (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press)
Penzias, A. A., & Wilson, R. W. 1965, ApJ, 142, 419
1-17
Prescod-Weinstein, C. 2021, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime,
and Dreams Deferred (New York: Bold Type Books)
Trimble, V. 1995, PASP, 107, 1133
Wolszczan, A., & Frail, D. A. 1992, Natur, 355, 145
1-18
Full list of references
Chapter 1
Abe, F., Akimoto, H., Akopian, A., et al. 1995, PhRvL, 74, 2626
Ahmad, Q. R., Allen, R. C., Andersen, T. C., et al. 2001, PhRvL, 87, 071301
Alpher, R. A., Herman, R., & Gamow, G. A. 1948, PhRv, 74, 1198
Baade, W., & Zwicky, F. 1934, PhRv, 46, 76
Bennett, J. O. 2001, On the Cosmic Horizon: Ten Great Mysteries for Third Millennium Astronomy
Mysteries for the New Millennium (San Francisco, CA: Addison Wesley Longman)
Bethe, H. A. 1939, PhRv, 55, 434
Bondi, H., & Gold, T. 1948, MNRAS, 108, 252
Carroll, S. 2013, The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson
Leads Us to the Edge of a New World (New York: Penguin Publishing Group)
Comella, J. M., Craft, H. D., Lovelace, R V E., & Sutton, J. M. 1969, Natur, 221, 453
Dicke, R. H., Peebles, P J E., Roll, P. G., & Wilkinson, D. T. 1965, ApJ, 142, 414
Englert, F., & Brout, R. 1964, PhRvL, 13, 321
Gribov, V. N., & Pontecorvo, B. M. 1994, Neutrino Astronomy and Lepton Charge, in Solar
Neutrinos: The First Thirty Years (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press), 273
Guralnik, G. S., & Hagen, C. R. 1964, PhRvL, 13, 585
Hewish, A., & Okoye, S. E. 1965, Natur, 207, 59
Higgs, P. W. 1964, PhRvL, 13, 508
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Great Mysteries in Astrophysics. A Guide To What We Don't Know

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Great Mysteries in Astrophysics

A guide to what we don’t know

Online at: https://doi.org/10.1088/2514-3433/ac8975

About the program:

About the American Astronomical Society

IOP Publishing, Bristol, UK

ISBN 978-0-7503-4051-9 (ebook)

Published by IOP Publishing, wholly owned by The Institute of Physics, London

2 How We See the Universe 2-1

3 Inventory of the Universe—Something Is Missing! 3-1

3.2.2 The Lithium Problem 3-11

4 The Expansion of the Universe and the Hubble Tension 4-1

5 The First Stars and Galaxies 5-1

7 How Massive Stars Die 7-1

8 Matter at Extreme Densities—Neutron Stars 8-1

9 And Then What? … Black Holes! 9-1

9.6 Further Reading 9-17

10 Looking Forward 10-1

doi:10.1088/2514-3433/ac8975ch1 1-1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2022

day to be about 4 × 1028 centimeters.2 How do we understand such a huge number?

1.1 Solving Scientific Problems

1.1.1 The Covid-19 Vaccine

technology was challenging to be sure—the synthetic mRNA is itself foreign to our

experiment: throughout 2020, 74,000 people of different ages, genders, races,

1.1.2 The Higgs Boson

1.1.3 The Handedness of Dolphins

1.2 Solving Astrophysical Mysteries—Deep Space Forensics

1.2.1 The Afterglow of the Big Bang—Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

1.2.2 Solar Neutrinos

1.2.3.1 Hulse–Taylor Binary Pulsar and General Relativity

1.2.5 Mysteries Throughout History

1.3 Further Reading

Full list of references

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