#the amount of expectations these professors have is astronomical

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Astronomers discover newborn galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope

With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are now able to peer so far back in time that we are approaching the epoch where we think that the first galaxies were created. Throughout most of the history of the Universe, galaxies seemingly tend to follow a tight relation between how many stars they have formed, and how many heavy elements they have formed. But for the first time we now see signs that this relation between the amount of stars and elements does not hold for the earliest galaxies. The reason is likely that these galaxies simply are in the process of being created, and have not yet had the time to create the heavy elements. The Universe is teeming with galaxies — immense collections of stars and gas — and as we peer deep into the cosmos, we see them near and far. Because the light has spent more time reaching us, the farther away a galaxy is, we are essentially looking back through time, allowing us to construct a visual narrative of their evolution throughout the history of the Universe.

Observations have shown us that galaxies through the last 12 billion years — that is, 5/6 of the age of the Universe — have been living their life in a form of equilibrium: There appears to be a fundamental, tight relation between on one hand how many stars they have formed, and on the other hand how many heavy elements they have formed. In this context, “heavy elements”, means everything heavier than hydrogen and helium.

This relation makes sense, because the Universe consisted originally only of these two lightest elements. All heavier elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and iron, was created later by the stars.

James Webb peers deeper

The very first galaxies should therefore be “unpolluted” by heavy elements. But until recently we haven’t been able to look so far back in time. In addition to being far away, the reason is that the longer light travels through space, the redder it becomes. For the most distant galaxies you have to look all the way into the infrared part of the spectrum, and only with the launch of James Webb did we have a telescope big and sensitive enough to see so far.

And the space telescope did not disappoint: Several has James Webb broken its own record for the most distant galaxy, and now it finally seems that we are reaching the epoch where some of the very first galaxies were created.

In a new study, published today in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy, af team of astronomers from the Danish research center Cosmic Dawn Center at the Niels Bohr Institute and DTU Space in Copenhagen, has discovered what seems indeed to be some of the very first galaxies which are still in the process of being formed.

“Until recently it has been near-impossible to study how the first galaxies are formed in the early Universe, since we simply haven’t had the adequate instrumentation. This has now changed completely with the launch of James Webb,” says Kasper Elm Heintz, leader of the study and assistant professor at the Cosmic Dawn Center.

Fundamental relation breaks down

The relationship between the total stellar mass of the galaxy and the amount of heavy elements is a bit more complex than that. How fast the galaxy produces new stars also has something to say. But if you correct for that, you get a beautiful, linear relationship: The more massive the galaxy, the more heavy elements.

But this relation is now being challenged by the latest observations.

“When we analyzed the light from 16 of these first galaxies, we saw that they had significantly less heavy elements, compared to what you’d expect from their stellar masses and the amount of new stars they produced,” says Kasper Elm Heintz.

In fact the galaxies turned out to have, on average, four times less amounts of heavy elements that in the later Universe. These results are in stark contrast to the current model where galaxies evolve in a form of equilibrium throughout most of the history of the Universe.

Predicted by theories

The result is not entirely surprising though. Theoretical models of galaxy formation, based on detailed computer programs, do predict something similar. But now we’ve seen it!

The explanation, as proposed by the autors in the article, is simply that we are witnessing galaxies in the process of being created. Gravity has gathered the first clumps of gas, which have begun to form stars.

If the galaxies then lived their lives undisturbed, the stars would quickly enrich them with heavy elements. But in between the galaxies at that time were large amounts of fresh, unpolluted gas, streaming down to the galaxies faster than the stars can keep up.

“The result gives us the first insight into the earliest stages of galaxy formation which appear to be more intimately connected with the gas in between the galaxies than we thought.

This is one of the first James Webb observations on this topic, so we’re still waiting to see what the larger, more comprehensive observations that are currently being carried out can tell us.

There is no doubt that we will shortly have a much clearer understanding of how galaxies and the first structures began their formation during the first billion years after the Big Bang,” Kasper Elm Heintz concludes.

The study is published in Nature Astronomy.

TOP IMAGE....The big galaxy in the foreground is named LEDA 2046648, and is seen just over a billion years back in time, while most of the others lie even farther away, and hence are seen even further back in time. CREDIT ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Martel.

CENTRE IMAGE....This plot shows the observed galaxies in an “element-stellar mass diagram”: The farther to the right a galaxy is, the more massive it is, and the farther up, the more heavy elements it contains. The gray icons represent galaxies in the present-day Universe, while the red show the new observations of early galaxies. These ones clearly have much less heavy elements than later galaxies, but agree roughly with theoretical predictions, indicated by the blue band. Credit: Kasper Elm Heintz, Peter Laursen.

LOWER IMAGE....Diffuse gas from intergalactic space plummets toward the center, sparking star formation and becoming part of the galaxy’s rotating disk. When stars die, they return their gas to the galaxy (and the intergalactic space), now enriched with heavy elements. Credit: Tumlinson et al. (2017).

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #astrophysics

[fontaineclafoutis]

Elle's character story

Elle was born to a family of scientists: her mother is an astronomer, her father a microbiologist, and her older sister an engineer. All of them have earned prestige from the Akademiya (Rtawahist, Amurta, and Kshahrewar, respectively), in particular her mother, who graduated at the top of her class and was considered for a Rtawahist sage position. Elle, however, is something of a black sheep.

Growing up in Fontaine, Elle's teachers were aware of her parentage and the STEM-oriented teachers expected similar outstanding results in her academics. Unfortunately, it was quickly found that STEM is... not her forte, to put it nicely. She can retain information/facts and apply it in basic circumstances, but as for utilizing her scientific knowledge in tangent with mathematics and actual practice, she is average in most areas and sub-standard in others. This mildly frustrated her parents, but they also noticed the areas she excelled in: arts and humanities. With subjects like literature, art, philosophy, and history, Elle was a star pupil. While her parents did attempt to spark an interest in STEM somewhere along the line, they further encouraged her love of the subjects she naturally excelled in.

When Elle was about 8 years old, change began to take root in her household. Not a good one, either. Her mother began to drink heavily, embittered from being bound down by her career as well as her family and not being able to travel and live the life she wanted. As her alcoholism became more obvious, she would take her irritation out on her family. She made cutting remarks to Elle's father and she would spontaneously strike little Elle. Elle's older sister was spared this harshness due to being the 'princess' of the house and was instead spoiled by their mother.

Elle was not entirely left to her own devices in this situation. Each time her mother went on a tirade, her father would comfort her afterwards. He would scold her prideful mother (who would feign innocence) the next morning and he would get rid of all the liquor in the house. For a time, he and Elle would be spared. But sooner or later, there would be booze snuck into the house by her mother and the cycle would start up again. Occasionally, there would even be abstract whispers of her father taking Elle and stealing away in the night to a sanctuary away from her mother, but it never came to pass.

When Elle was about 18, with much insistence from her family, she applied and was accepted into the Akademiya as a Vahumana student with a focus on history. Excited to finally leave behind her turbulent house, she packed her bags and headed to Sumeru, exuberant at this chance for freedom. This excitement was short-lived.

When Elle arrived in Sumeru, the very same week that her courses began, she came down with a deadly illness that caused fever, emaciation, and agonizing muscle spasms that rendered her unable to speak or even sometimes breathe. She spent 3 months in Bimarstan as the doctors looked for a cure and she was frequently visited by her parents. During this time, Elle's mother stopped drinking and took on a protective, nurturing role that she had not seen since she was little. Elle said nothing, but was amazed at the transformation. Once her condition had stabilized and the doctors had created a suitable cure, Elle returned to the Akademiya.

In spite of her love of learning and perusing the thousands of available books, Elle did not enjoy the rigor with which her Vahumana professors approached her coursework. Additionally, she learned that the arts were frowned upon by the Akademiya, a concept that she found appalling. She would attempt to write papers arguing for the importance of arts and human expression, but they were shot down each and every time, which resulted in many a failing grade.

After 7 months of sleep-sacrificing effort and finding herself floundering in the ever-growing amount of work that she had to put in, Elle gave up. She submitted her withdrawal form to her disappointed professor and returned home to Fontaine. There, she faced shame from her parents, both of whom were exceptionally passive-aggressive about the amount of support, time, and Mora they had put into having her attend the Akademiya. More often than not, Elle would leave the house early in the morning and return late at night purely to avoid such remarks.

During her excursions, Elle began to explore parts of Fontaine that she had not visited since childhood. It was during this time that she rediscovered the Fontaine Museum of Art. She began to frequent the museum, allowing herself to get lost in the artwork that she had been deprived of in Sumeru. On one occasion, she was approached by an older gentleman and, noticing her interest in a century old painting, he asked her what captivated her about the piece. He was astonished when Elle gave a masterful analysis of the brushwork, palette, material, setting, texture, lighting, mood, time of creation, and regional technique, along with recognizing the artist's identifying mark despite the piece having no indication of the creator. The gentleman turned out to be the grandfatherly Head Curator of the museum and, deeply impressed by Elle's breadth of artistic knowledge and taste, asked if she might consider taking a job as his assistant. Elated but prudent, Elle told him that she would have to sleep on it, but she would give him a timely reply by the same time the next week.

The next couple of days, Elle stayed home to consider how to tell her family of the offer. During the months Elle had been home post-Akademiya, her mother had resumed her drinking habits and unpredictable behavior. Elle attempted to help around the house in order to give her less reason to drink, but it did not stop the cutting remarks her mother made about Elle 'being the family failure'. What her family didn't know was that Elle was packing her bags yet again. She was preparing to leave as well as bracing herself for what she had to do. The night of her departure came suddenly, but not entirely unexpectedly. Elle was confronted by her drunk mother and she finally reached her breaking point;

Elle demanded to know why her mother felt it so necessary to unload her frustrations with herself onto her own child. Why she had found it acceptable to strike an 8 year old girl with no method of defending herself and continue doing so for the rest of Elle's childhood. She demanded to know why her mother's arrogance prevented her from owning up to the fact that she could have left at any time, thus sparing everyone else the heartache and humiliation she dealt Elle and her father. She demanded to know why her mother had chosen to drown herself and her pity parties in booze when she could have taken the time to appreciate the tranquility and love of being with their family instead of throwing it out the window and making everyone endure the pain of a loving parent becoming an unpredictable, belligerent narcissist.

Shocked and enraged, Elle's mother reached out and slapped her. And just like that, Elle's choice was sealed. She left, her mother yelling obscenities after her, and marched off into the night with her luggage. Where was the fairness? When would Elle get back the childhood she had lost? Elle could have struck her mother back. She wanted to. She wished she could have inflicted the same years of abuse onto her mother as she had taken. But she did not, because she knew that by doing so, it would only confirm that her mother's rotten bitterness had wormed its way into Elle's behavior. And by acting on it, Elle would continue the vicious cycle of abuse. Walking out was Elle's revenge. This was her just desserts. This was her version of justice. As she walked through the darkened streets, lugging her bags, she barely noticed the new subtle glow just above her chest.

For 2 years, Elle has cut contact with her family. They do not know where she lives, nor what her life is like without them. Elle is happy and healthy, surrounded by art every day as she goes about her job and using her intellect in a way she never imagined she would have the pleasure of performing. At the end of the day, she goes home to a cozy apartment and takes up her latest sewing project, secure in the knowledge that she will never be struck by her mother (or anyone she loves) ever again.

#genshin #genshin impact #elle delacroix #tw abuse #tw alcoholism

[jcmarchi]

NASA’s Fermi Detects Surprise Gamma-Ray Feature Beyond Our Galaxy - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/nasas-fermi-detects-surprise-gamma-ray-feature-beyond-our-galaxy-technology-org/

NASA’s Fermi Detects Surprise Gamma-Ray Feature Beyond Our Galaxy - Technology Org

Astronomers analyzing 13 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have found an unexpected and unexplained feature outside our galaxy.

This artist’s concept shows the entire sky in gamma rays with magenta circles, illustrating the uncertainty in the direction from which more high-energy gamma rays than average seem to be arriving. In this view, the plane of our galaxy runs across the middle of the map. The circles enclose regions with a 68% (inner) and a 95% chance of containing the origin of these gamma rays. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Intriguingly, the gamma-ray signal is found in a similar direction and with a nearly identical magnitude as another unexplained feature, one produced by some of the most energetic cosmic particles ever detected.

A paper describing the findings was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The team was searching for a gamma-ray feature related to the CMB (cosmic microwave background), the oldest light in the universe. Scientists say the CMB originated when the hot, expanding universe had cooled enough to form the first atoms, an event that released a burst of light that, for the first time, could permeate the cosmos. Stretched by the subsequent expansion of space over the past 13 billion years, this light was first detected in the form of faint microwaves all over the sky in 1965.

In the 1970s, astronomers realized that the CMB had a so-called dipole structure, which was later measured at high precision by NASA’s COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) mission. The CMB is about 0.12% hotter, with more microwaves than average, toward the constellation Leo, and colder by the same amount, with fewer microwaves than average, in the opposite direction. In order to study the tiny temperature variations within the CMB, this signal must be removed. Astronomers generally regard the pattern as a result of the motion of our own solar system relative to the CMB at about 230 miles (370 kilometers) per second.

This motion will give rise to a dipole signal in the light coming from any astrophysical source, but so far the CMB is the only one that has been precisely measured. By looking for the pattern in other forms of light, astronomers could confirm or challenge the idea that the dipole is due entirely to our solar system’s motion.

“Such a measurement is important because a disagreement with the size and direction of the CMB dipole could provide us with a glimpse into physical processes operating in the very early universe, potentially back to when it was less than a trillionth of a second old,” said co-author Fernando Atrio-Barandela, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Salamanca in Spain.

The team reasoned that by adding together many years of data from Fermi’s LAT (Large Area Telescope), which scans the entire sky many times a day, a related dipole emission pattern could be detected in gamma rays. Thanks to the effects of relativity, the gamma-ray dipole should be amplified by as much as five times over the currently detected CMB’s.     

The scientists combined 13 years of Fermi LAT observations of gamma rays above about 3 billion electron volts (GeV); for comparison, visible light has energies between about 2 and 3 electron volts. They removed all resolved and identified sources and stripped out the central plane of our Milky Way galaxy in order to analyze the extragalactic gamma-ray background.

“We found a gamma-ray dipole, but its peak is located in the southern sky, far from the CMB’s, and its magnitude is 10 times greater than what we would expect from our motion,” said co-author Chris Shrader, an astrophysicist at the Catholic University of America in Washington and at Goddard. “While it is not what we were looking for, we suspect it may be related to a similar feature reported for the highest-energy cosmic rays.”

Cosmic rays are accelerated charged particles – mostly protons and atomic nuclei. The rarest and most energetic particles, called UHECRs (ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays), carry more than a billion times the energy of 3 GeV gamma rays, and their origins remain one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics.

Since 2017, the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina has reported a dipole in the arrival direction of UHECRs. Being electrically charged, cosmic rays are diverted by the galaxy’s magnetic field by different amounts depending on their energies, but the UHECR dipole peaks in a sky location similar to what Kashlinsky’s team finds in gamma rays. And both have strikingly similar magnitudes – about 7% more gamma rays or particles than average coming from one direction and correspondingly smaller amounts arriving from the opposite direction.

The scientists think it’s likely the two phenomena are linked – that as yet unidentified sources are producing both the gamma rays and the ultrahigh-energy particles. To solve this cosmic conundrum, astronomers must either locate these mysterious sources or propose alternative explanations for both features.

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by Goddard. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the United States.

Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

#Administration #aeronautics #America #Astronomy news #Astrophysics #atomic #atomic nuclei #atoms #background #billion #challenge #circles #Collaboration #comparison #cosmic rays #cosmos #data #direction #effects #electron #energy #Features #Fermi #flight #form #Forms #France #Fundamental physics news #Galaxy #Gamma rays

[xtruss]

A New, Thin-Lensed Telescope Design Could Far Surpass James Webb! Goodbye Mirrors, Hello Diffractive Lenses —

A thinner, lighter, cheaper lens could be our way to study the Universe further.

— Daniel Apai | The Conversation | ARS Technica

A light, cheap space telescope design would make it possible to put many individual units in space at once.

Astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 planets outside of the solar system to date. The grand question is whether any of these planets are home to life. To find the answer, astronomers will likely need more powerful telescopes than exist today.

I am an astronomer who studies astrobiology and planets around distant stars. For the last seven years, I have been co-leading a team that is developing a new kind of space telescope that could collect a hundred times more light than the James Webb Space Telescope, the biggest space telescope ever built.

Almost all space telescopes, including Hubble and Webb, collect light using mirrors. Our proposed telescope, the Nautilus Space Observatory, would replace large, heavy mirrors with a novel, thin lens that is much lighter, cheaper, and easier to produce than mirrored telescopes. Because of these differences, it would be possible to launch many individual units into orbit and create a powerful network of telescopes.

Exoplanets, like TOI-700d shown in this artist’s conception, are planets beyond our solar system and are prime candidates in the search for life.

The Need For Larger Telescopes

Exoplanets—planets that orbit stars other than the Sun—are prime targets in the search for life. Astronomers need to use giant space telescopes that collect huge amounts of light to study these faint and faraway objects.

Existing telescopes can detect exoplanets as small as Earth. However, it takes a lot more sensitivity to begin to learn about the chemical composition of these planets. Even Webb is just barely powerful enough to search certain exoplanets for clues of life—namely gases in the atmosphere.

The James Webb Space Telescope cost more than $8 billion and took over 20 years to build. The next flagship telescope is not expected to fly before 2045 and is estimated to cost $11 billion. These ambitious telescope projects are always expensive, laborious, and produce a single powerful—but very specialized—observatory.

A New Kind of Telescope

In 2016, aerospace giant Northrop Grumman invited me and 14 other professors and NASA scientists—all experts on exoplanets and the search for extraterrestrial life—to Los Angeles to answer one question: What will exoplanet space telescopes look like in 50 years?

In our discussions, we realized that a major bottleneck preventing the construction of more powerful telescopes is the challenge of making larger mirrors and getting them into orbit. To bypass this bottleneck, a few of us came up with the idea of revisiting an old technology called diffractive lenses.

Conventional lenses use refraction to focus light. Refraction is when light changes direction as it passes from one medium to another—it is the reason light bends when it enters water. In contrast, diffraction is when light bends around corners and obstacles. A cleverly arranged pattern of steps and angles on a glass surface can form a diffractive lens.

One of the benefits of diffractive lenses is that they can remain thin while increasing in diameter.

The first such lenses were invented by the French scientist Augustin-Jean Fresnel in 1819 to provide lightweight lenses for lighthouses. Today, similar diffractive lenses can be found in many small-sized consumer optics—from camera lenses to virtual reality headsets.

Thin, simple diffractive lenses are notorious for their blurry images, so they have never been used in astronomical observatories. But if you could improve their clarity, using diffractive lenses instead of mirrors or refractive lenses would allow a space telescope to be much cheaper, lighter, and larger.

A Thin, High-Resolution Lens

A diffractive lens bends light using etchings and patterns on its surface.

After the meeting, I returned to the University of Arizona and decided to explore whether modern technology could produce diffractive lenses with better image quality. Lucky for me, Thomas Milster—one of the world’s leading experts on diffractive lens design—works in the building next to mine. We formed a team and got to work.

Over the following two years, our team invented a new type of diffractive lens that required new manufacturing technologies to etch a complex pattern of tiny grooves onto a piece of clear glass or plastic. The specific pattern and shape of the cuts focuses incoming light to a single point behind the lens. The new design produces a near-perfect quality image, far better than previous diffractive lenses.

Because it is the surface texture of the lens that does the focusing, not the thickness, you can easily make the lens bigger while keeping it very thin and lightweight. Bigger lenses collect more light, and low weight means cheaper launches to orbit—both great traits for a space telescope.

In August 2018, our team produced the first prototype, a 2-inch (5-centimeter) diameter lens. Over the next five years, we further improved the image quality and increased the size. We are now completing a 10-inch (24-cm) diameter lens that will be more than 10 times lighter than a conventional refractive lens would be.

Left: The James Webb Space Telescope is just barely able to search exoplanets for signs of life, NASA. Right: Diffractive lenses, left, are much thinner compared to similarly powerful refractive lenses, right. Pko/Wikimedia Commons

Power of a Diffraction Space Telescope

This new lens design makes it possible to rethink how a space telescope might be built. In 2019, our team published a concept called the Nautilus Space Observatory.

Using the new technology, our team thinks it is possible to build a 29.5-foot (8.5-meter) diameter lens that would be only about 0.2 inches (0.5 cm) thick. The lens and support structure of our new telescope could weigh around 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms). This is more than three times lighter than a Webb–style mirror of a similar size and would be bigger than Webb’s 21-foot (6.5-meter) diameter mirror.

The lenses have other benefits, too. First, they are much easier and quicker to fabricate than mirrors and can be made en masse. Second, lens-based telescopes work well even when not aligned perfectly, making these telescopes easier to assemble and fly in space than mirror-based telescopes, which require extremely precise alignment.

Finally, since a single Nautilus unit would be light and relatively cheap to produce, it would be possible to put dozens of them into orbit. Our current design is in fact not a single telescope, but a constellation of 35 individual telescope units.

Each individual telescope would be an independent, highly sensitive observatory able to collect more light than Webb. But the real power of Nautilus would come from turning all the individual telescopes toward a single target.

By combining data from all the units, Nautilus’ light-collecting power would equal a telescope nearly 10 times larger than Webb. With this powerful telescope, astronomers could search hundreds of exoplanets for atmospheric gases that may indicate extraterrestrial life.

The thin lens allowed the team to design a lighter, cheaper telescope, which they named the Nautilus Space Observatory

Although the Nautilus Space Observatory is still a long way from launch, our team has made a lot of progress. We have shown that all aspects of the technology work in small-scale prototypes and are now focusing on building a 3.3-foot (1-meter) diameter lens. Our next steps are to send a small version of the telescope to the edge of space on a high-altitude balloon.

With that, we will be ready to propose a revolutionary new space telescope to NASA and, hopefully, be on the way to exploring hundreds of worlds for signatures of life.

— Daniel Apai, Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Photographs: Daniel Apai, University of Arizona CC BY-ND

#The Conversation #Thin-Lensed Telescope #Thinner & Lighter #Universe #Astronomers #James Webb Telescope #Nautilus Space Observatory #Northrop Grumman #NASA Scientists #Diffractive Lenses #Cheaper Lighter and Larger Diffractive Lenses #Thomas Milster

[tastydregs]

AI Is Speeding Up Astronomical Discoveries

Photo: John Moore (Getty Images)

First Full-Color Images From Webb Space Telescope

The famous first image of a black hole just got two times sharper. A research team used artificial intelligence to dramatically improve upon its first image from 2019, which now shows the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy as darker and bigger than the first image depicted.

I’m an astronomer who studies and has written about cosmology, black holes and exoplanets. Astronomers have been using AI for decades. In fact, in 1990, astronomers from the University of Arizona, where I am a professor, were among the first to use a type of AI called a neural network to study the shapes of galaxies.

Since then, AI has spread into every field of astronomy. As the technology has become more powerful, AI algorithms have begun helping astronomers tame massive data sets and discover new knowledge about the universe.

Better telescopes, more data

As long as astronomy has been a science, it has involved trying to make sense of the multitude of objects in the night sky. That was relatively simple when the only tools were the naked eye or a simple telescope, and all that could be seen were a few thousand stars and a handful of planets.

A hundred years ago, Edwin Hubble used newly built telescopes to show that the universe is filled with not just stars and clouds of gas, but countless galaxies. As telescopes have continued to improve, the sheer number of celestial objects humans can see and the amount of data astronomers need to sort through have both grown exponentially, too.

For example, the soon-to-be-completed Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile will make images so large that it would take 1,500 high-definition TV screens to view each one in its entirety. Over 10 years it is expected to generate 0.5 exabytes of data – about 50,000 times the amount of information held in all of the books contained within the Library of Congress.

There are 20 telescopes with mirrors larger than 20 feet (6 meters) in diameter. AI algorithms are the only way astronomers could ever hope to work through all of the data available to them today. There are a number of ways AI is proving useful in processing this data.

One of the earliest uses of AI in astronomy was to pick out the multitude of faint galaxies hidden in the background of images.

ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Rigby, CC BY

Picking out patterns

Astronomy often involves looking for needles in a haystack. About 99% of the pixels in an astronomical image contain background radiation, light from other sources or the blackness of space – only 1% have the subtle shapes of faint galaxies.

AI algorithms – in particular, neural networks that use many interconnected nodes and are able to learn to recognize patterns – are perfectly suited for picking out the patterns of galaxies. Astronomers began using neural networks to classify galaxies in the early 2010s. Now the algorithms are so effective that they can classify galaxies with an accuracy of 98%.

This story has been repeated in other areas of astronomy. Astronomers working on SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, use radio telescopes to look for signals from distant civilizations. Early on, radio astronomers scanned charts by eye to look for anomalies that couldn’t be explained. More recently, researchers harnessed 150,000 personal computers and 1.8 million citizen scientists to look for artificial radio signals. Now, researchers are using AI to sift through reams of data much more quickly and thoroughly than people can. This has allowed SETI efforts to cover more ground while also greatly reducing the number of false positive signals.

Another example is the search for exoplanets. Astronomers discovered most of the 5,300 known exoplanets by measuring a dip in the amount of light coming from a star when a planet passes in front of it. AI tools can now pick out the signs of an exoplanet with 96% accuracy.

AI tools can help astronomers discover new exoplanets like TRAPPIST-1 b.

NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI), CC BY

Making new discoveries

AI has proved itself to be excellent at identifying known objects – like galaxies or exoplanets – that astronomers tell it to look for. But it is also quite powerful at finding objects or phenomena that are theorized but have not yet been discovered in the real world.

Teams have used this approach to detect new exoplanets, learn about the ancestral stars that led to the formation and growth of the Milky Way, and predict the signatures of new types of gravitational waves.

To do this, astronomers first use AI to convert theoretical models into observational signatures – including realistic levels of noise. They then use machine learning to sharpen the ability of AI to detect the predicted phenomena.

Finally, radio astronomers have also been using AI algorithms to sift through signals that don’t correspond to known phenomena. Recently a team from South Africa found a unique object that may be a remnant of the explosive merging of two supermassive black holes. If this proves to be true, the data will allow a new test of general relativity – Albert Einstein’s description of space-time.

Image: Medeiros et al 2023, CC BY-ND

The team that first imaged a black hole, at left, used AI to generate a sharper version of the image, at right, showing the black hole to be larger than originally thought.

Medeiros et al 2023, CC BY-ND

Making predictions and plugging holes

As in many areas of life recently, generative AI and large language models like ChatGPT are also making waves in the astronomy world.

The team that created the first image of a black hole in 2019 used a generative AI to produce its new image. To do so, it first taught an AI how to recognize black holes by feeding it simulations of many kinds of black holes. Then, the team used the AI model it had built to fill in gaps in the massive amount of data collected by the radio telescopes on the black hole M87.

Using this simulated data, the team was able to create a new image that is two times sharper than the original and is fully consistent with the predictions of general relativity.

Astronomers are also turning to AI to help tame the complexity of modern research. A team from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics created a language model called astroBERT to read and organize 15 million scientific papers on astronomy. Another team, based at NASA, has even proposed using AI to prioritize astronomy projects, a process that astronomers engage in every 10 years.

As AI has progressed, it has become an essential tool for astronomers. As telescopes get better, as data sets get larger and as AIs continue to improve, it is likely that this technology will play a central role in future discoveries about the universe.

Want to know more about AI, chatbots, and the future of machine learning? Check out our full coverage of artificial intelligence, or browse our guides to The Best Free AI Art Generators and Everything We Know About OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

[myfeeds]

JWST confirms giant planet atmospheres vary widely

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the researchers discovered that the atmosphere of exoplanet HD149026b, a ‘hot Jupiter’ orbiting a star comparable to our sun, is super-abundant in the heavier elements carbon and oxygen — far above what scientists would expect for a planet of its mass. These findings, published in “High atmospheric metal enrichment for a Saturn-mass planet” in Nature on March 27, provide insight into planet formation. “It appears that every giant planet is different, and we’re starting to see those differences thanks to JWST,” said Jonathan Lunine, professor in the physical sciences at Cornell University and co-author of the study. The giant planets of our solar system exhibit a nearly perfect correlation between both overall composition and atmospheric composition and mass, said Jacob Bean, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago and lead author of the paper. Extrasolar planets show a much greater diversity of overall compositions, but scientists didn’t know how varied their atmospheric compositions are, until this analysis of HD149026b — also known as Smertrios. Smertrios is super-enriched compared to its mass, Lunine said: “It’s the mass of Saturn, but its atmosphere seems to have as much as 27 times the amount of heavy elements relative to its hydrogen and helium that we find in Saturn.” This ratio, called metallicity — even though it includes many elements that are not metals — is useful for comparing a planet to its home star, or other planets in its system, Lunine said. Smertrios is the only planet known in this particular planetary system. Another key measurement is the ratio of carbon to oxygen in a planet’s atmosphere, which reveals the “recipe” of original solids in a planetary system, Lunine said. For Smertrios, it’s about 0.84 — higher than in our solar system. In our sun, it’s a bit more than one carbon for every two oxygen atoms (0.55). While an abundance of carbon might seem favorable for chances of life, a high carbon to oxygen ratio actually means less water on a planet or in a planetary system — a problem for life as we know it. Smertrios is an interesting first case of atmospheric composition for this particular study, said Lunine, who has plans in place to observe five more giant exoplanets in the coming year using JWST. Many more observations are needed before astronomers can discover any patterns among giant planets or in systems with multiple giant planets or terrestrial planets to the compositional diversity astronomers are beginning to document. “The origin of this diversity is a fundamental mystery in our understanding of planet formation,” Bean said. “Our hope is that further atmospheric observations of extrasolar planets with JWST will quantify this diversity better and yield constraints on more complex trends that might exist.” The study was supported by NASA and the University of Chicago.

[xaracosmia]

ꕥ — WELCOME TO EXO COSMIA, WARREN WORTHINGTON III. 🌑

ꕥ  — OOC INFORMATION;

name / alias: Swerve age: 24 pronouns: he/she/they ooc contact: swearthling on tumblr and twt other characters in xc: brainiac 5, lancer

ꕥ  — IC INFORMATION;

Name: Warren Worthington III

Age: 33

Pronouns: he/him

Series: Marvel comics (X-Men)

canon point: um. circa uncanny x force 2010. that’s what i’m going with

app triggers: implied suicide, mind control, invasive medical procedures, blood mentions

personality:

 Warren has been a lot of different, contradictory things. Fundamentally, he’s an honest person, someone who listens to his heart. He might be fully capable of stretching the truth, playing an angle - and he is an expert schmoozer, as a born rich bitch - but when it comes to the important stuff, what you see is what you get.

Under the best circumstances, what you get is a confident, outspoken, and compassionate person, sometimes prone to arrogance or hot-headedness, but with his heart in the right place. He wants to make the world a better place, and a lot of the time, he manages to pursue that goal without getting caught up in the self-doubting moodiness some of his peers suffer from. Under the worst circumstances, his transparency puts his worst thoughts on full display. He can be defeatist, bitter, downright resentful, and apocalyptically violent. 

He deserves some benefit of the doubt, as he has some very literal demons to battle. When all is said and done, he has an astronomical amount of restraint and self control, capable of keeping his cool in difficult situations.

His honesty and emotional awareness used to make him a remarkably free person, having lived a charmed life, relatively free of worries. As hardships came, Warren was brave enough to face them without losing himself, until he wasn’t. Nowadays, he’s a person defined by suffering, even after time to heal and grow away from that definition. 

something your muse struggles with: His stubbornness. Usually, he’s a reasonable person, but once Warren gets it in his head that something is important, it can be hard to talk him down. Prone to pointlessly tackling problems alone, and frequent source of arguments.

your muse’s greatest strength: His convictions. He believes deeply in a lot of good things, and he’s pretty good at making those things happen. It’s saying a lot that he remains (relatively) uncompromised despite the horrible, ungodly power that he’s been cursed with (being rich).

background:

Angel was born into exactly the kind of life you’d expect “Warren Worthington the Third” to have. Warren grew up as the heir to a large and very wealthy corporation, destined for all the luxury and privilege that came with his station. The first thing to divert him from that destiny was his mutation manifesting when he was a teenager - in Warren’s case, in the form of the giant bird wings that grew from his back.

Warren decided on three things. One, this would be a secret, from everyone. Two, once he learned that his wings actually did allow him to fly, he decided that they could and should be used to help people. And three (the only of these three that has never changed), flying is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to him, and the greatest joy of his life. Many mutants resent their differences, but from the very beginning, Warren loved his wings more than anything.

Professor Xavier found Warren through the news of a mysterious angel showing up to help with disasters, and recruited him into the first class of students at his school for gifted youngsters. Now with a place where he could be himself, and surrounded by mutant peers, Warren continued to use his gift to help, for the good of the world and et cetera.

Years later, he’d lose the luxury of getting to keep his wings hidden, and life as a public mutant brought its own complications. Warren and his fellow X-Men were able to continue their vigilante hero work, but for Warren, things came to an end when his wings were horrifically injured in a fight. They were amputated against his will, and that loss more or less broke him. 

His friends thought he took his own life, as they watched him go up in flames, and he wasn’t far from it. Fortunately or otherwise, Warren had caught the eye of a supervillain recruiting underlings, and Apocalypse saved him from death. In a way. He forced Angel to become one of his Horsemen, fitted with lethal metal wings and the title of Death.

Warren’s friends were able to save him eventually, and defeat Apocalypse (for a while), but the damage had already been done, and Angel would never be the same. Over time, he’s healed from the loss of his wings and his personhood - with his natural wings miraculously regrown and everything - and he’s been able to resume a life as close to normal as a once-dead bird man can have. He remains an occasional superhero, and an occasional monster. 

powers / abilities: 

Archangel - The form given to Angel by Apocalypse, which Warren can shift into at will (ish). Archangel’s wings are made out of techno-organic metal, with feathers that can be launched like throwing knives, coated in paralyzing poison. Archangel is faster and stronger than plain old Angel, but usually only shows up for activities involving murder. Most of the time, this is on purpose, and is used for good. Sometimes, it is not on purpose, and is used for copious amounts of bloody violence.

Healing Blood - Angel’s blood has healing properties, the main benefactor of which is obviously himself. He heals faster than a human, and he can also donate to share the effect with others.

inherent abilities: 

Mutation: Those big ole bird wings. His mutation allows him to fly, and comes with other little fringe benefits, like eagle-eyed sight, superhuman stamina for long flights, and (according to some) inhumanly good looks ✌️😔

items / weapons: 

none

starting ability: Archangel

starting item: nope

extra:  

i am not a marvel stan but i am an x men stan

i am closing my eyes to the vast majority of romance plots he’s had. some of them deserve to be forgotten but most of them are just tedious and way too much information lol

marvel canon is a nightmare and i’m doing whatever i want

i hc that warren is a little dead. just a teeny bit undead. just a wee bit not living.

babey i can be your angle or yuor fucked up and evil angle

bigly inspired by early x force and x men first class. mwah

discord id: angel.#6742

passcode; healing blood. just like cata. that’s crazy! put him in cata

#xc application #mun: swerve #exo cosmia

[mopidevi]

The End of astronauts, Robotics space machine and life on earth and beyond with Martin Rees

Introduction: -

Researcher: Professor Martin J Rees.

He is a fellow of Trinity College and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics from University of Cambridge.

He is the author or co-author of 500 papers of research.

His main current research are High energy astrophysics, Cosmic structure formation General cosmological issues.

 In the field of High Energy Astrophysics, he is the leading theoretician.

Apart from his research publication he has also written general articles and ten books.

https://www.cser.ac.uk/team/martin-rees/

Topic:

The Topic is about the end of astronauts in the view of Prof Martin Rees where he explains the difference between robots and astronauts and their performance.

I have selected this discussion because I am quite curious about what happens in the space and how the Artificial Intelligence work and the role played by astronauts and the risks they go through in this process. So, this topic caught my eye while going through.

The discussion is about the author describing what he wrote in his book named “The End of Astronauts”.

Discussion About the Title of the book: -

                       Author clearly explained that robots are much more efficient than human astronaut’s in the face of testing Mars because of some expected failure’s using human astronaut’s which is clearly stated as a note by the author. Which can be replaced if we choose robots on a private funded project.

                        Author states that sending human astronauts is more expensive than robotic astronauts which amounts to ten times less when compared to human astronauts. So, the author states that robots are the future.

Progressing and developing better and smarter robots: -

            Author describes that other than the robots from the past, the later upgraded robots has enough AI to figure out itself how to change course if there is any object on its path.

He says in next twenty to thirty years ahead we can expect the power of AI to be Artificial pro which means they could attain enough intelligence of what humans could do.

How to Prioritise Space Exploration:

Professor Martin says to prioritize space exploration we should use machines rather than human astronauts which are sent by using high risk, adventure and by taxpayers’ money.  We should use machines to build anything for instance telescope to the back of moon. He also mentioned that by cutting the cost of launches can also help in prioritizing space exploration.

He also Says that they are not adequately prepared for Risk Management Processes and procedures.

Future on Earth:

He says that in the coming future some species might be living on mars, but he says it cannot be compared with earth in any circumstances. And it is quite difficult to adopt with changes in the mars. To develop and make more changes and predict the climatic changes which effect the people and other important things which need to be done can only be done with the help of political system which need to be helpful, and nation should be together to deal with these energy productions.

According to the Discussion I have known that the Robots play an important role compared to the human astronauts and learnt that the expenses for the human astronauts are 10 times more than the robots. I have learnt that for the future the nation should be together to deal with energy production.

[sellmyhouseforcashmiami]

Miami-Dade housing market finally cooling, as prices dip for the first time since 2021

For the first time in Miami-Dade County since the fall of 2021, home prices fell in July, offering a silver lining for priced-out buyers who are desperately searching for a break in an increasingly competitive housing market. Single-family homes in Miami cost on average $570,000 last month, down 2% from $579,000 in June. Condominiums in Miami-Dade fell 7% to $380,000 this July, from $410,000 the previous month. Since September when the median for houses hit a record high of $485,000 per month and increased on a monthly basis through June. The increase in median values started around October when they rose each month until reaching an all-time peak of $326,790 this past April. “It’s gotten to a point where buyers aren’t willing to pay an astronomical price,” said Jonathan Vega, a real estate broker with ONE Sotheby’s International Realty in Miami. “Some sellers think they can get whatever they want. Then you realize the market is not what it was. I am seeing price reductions and negotiations that were not happening before.” Broward County residents who are looking to purchase a property have not yet found relief, as the median sales price for single-family homes was $600,000 last month. This is up from $590,000 in June, and condos remain at a steady $265,000. After prices for houses in South Florida have risen rapidly over the last several months, there has been a considerable slowing down. The primary questions now are when will prices drop and how long will it take for buyers and sellers to recover.

Does the real state Market in Florida slowing Down

Mariya Letdin, a business professor at Florida State University, said the real estate market in South Florida is slowing down and that there will be a “small price correction” over the next few months. Still, house median prices are expected to exceed those seen in most of 2021 by a considerable amount. Miami-Dade's $570,000 median house price rose 11% from July 2021 and 12 percent for condos to $380,000 last month, compared with July 2021. Broward's median sales price for single-family homes is $600,000, 21% greater than this time last year. Condos have increased 23%, with a current median sale price of $265,000. The current state of South Florida's housing market has been greatly influenced by the recent arrival of wealthy individuals from various parts of the United States. The already severe housing crisis in Miami-Dade County has only gotten worse due to rapid price growth during the pandemic. Following the lead of the Federal Reserve, which is expected to keep increasing its benchmark interest rate to prevent inflation, regional home sales dropped in June. Though the sales decline is less severe in South Florida due to the large cash-only home purchases, 41.3% of total Miami-Dade homes and 41.8% in Broward were bought with cash in July-- significantly higher than the 24% national average. In August 2021, Miami-Dade saw a total of 2,375 home sales, a significant decrease from the 3,632 sales in July. Broward's numbers weren't much better with only 2,575 sales last month compared to the 3679 sales in July. As Weston Finn (a lawyer) and Diana Correa (also a lawyer) tried selling their condo near Fort Lauderdale in Lighthouse Point, they noticed the dramatic slowdown of transactions firsthand. The husband and wife welcomed numerous attendees during their open houses when they first listed their condo in May. They were able to sell their condo for the list price of $565,000 the following month and started searching for a new residence. After an extensive three-month search, they found a house in The Roads which was much less competitive than what they experienced trying to buy their Lighthouse Point home--they hardly saw any prospective buyers! In addition, house hunters in South Florida are now seeing more house choices in the market, with inventory growing every month since February. Miami-Dade has 3.1 months of houses for sale and 3.3 months of condos. Broward has 2.4 months of houses and two months of condos. According to real estate professionals, a balanced market between buyers and sellers exists when there are 5 to 7 months of inventory on the market (aside from distressed properties). Though a lot of residence buys in the area are still cash-only, that is starting to change for one primary reason. In the past, having all cash was seen as vital to winning the competition against other potential buyers. However, now local purchasers are finding that by using cash they can avoid racking up costly interest charges on 15 and 30-year mortgages.

#miami florida #real estate #housing market

[howlingday]

Jaune's Tragic Backstory (TM) AU

By refusing to listen to Jaune and trusting him in regards to rumors, RWBY_NPR have unlocked (one of) the true tragic backstories of Jaune which is! DUN DUN DUNNN Contently being the recipient of endless rumors and hearsay that reduced both his self esteem and public image to the point that any attempt to fix them resulted in even more rumors and hearsay which ultimately led to hyper risk taking actions such as lying to get into Beacon academy without proper training just to prove that he isn't a worthless waste of space. Ironically Jaune now has to deal with the rumors and hearsay lifting the bar too high which might lead to even more hyper risk taking actions just to stay ahead of the rumor mill. Can our heroes learn their lesson before the final test? Will Glynda and Winter's ship become AU Cannon? Can James resist the urge to use Jaune as a propaganda tool? Tune in next time on Jaune's Tragic Backstory (TM) AU!

Tragic BS (tm)

What defines a person's life? Is it the legacy he leaves, the stories he makes, or is it the actions he takes? Are we destined by our past, or do the actions of the now guide our fate in the future? None can say for certain until the last breath is drawn, and the legend is told anew.

Yang: Phew! (Slumps in her seat) That was rough! Who knew Professor Port could take a beating?

Ruby: At least you didn't have to deal with Professor Peach. She may not be around a whole lot, but she's one heck of a Huntress!

Weiss: Now do you see why I like her?

Yang: So, who's next?

Pyrrha: It should be Jaune going against...

Oobleck: Mister Arc! I was instructed by the Headmaster himself to be your opponent, so I have nothing but high expectations for our bout.

Jaune: (Sighs) What else is new?

Oobleck: Is something on your mind, Mister Arc?

Jaune: It's nothing. It's not like there's a lot of pressure on me, right?

Oobleck: Quite the contrary. It would appear you have an astronomical amount of pressure, as evident by both the Council of Vale, as well as the Vale Historical Society observing our duel.

Jaune: (Gulps) Uh, I was being sarcastic.

Oobleck: I was not. Prepare yourself, Mister Arc! (Levels his cane) En guarde!

Winter: Jaune and my sister would make a nice couple.

Glynda: Please, she barely gives him the time of day! If anyone should be involved with Mr. Arc, it should be someone to bring him out of his comfort zone, like that Neon girl.

Winter: Ha! And when was the last time Mr. Arc even been to a party? No, he needs someone stern, and unbending. Perhaps that glasses girl?

Glynda: Unfortunately for you, Coco has no interest in Mr. Arc, or any male student whatsoever. Perhaps he needs to help someone out of their shell, like that May girl?

Winter: So that's how it feels to not be aware of someone's alternative interests. No, he needs someone who can take charge, and guide him to a superior self. Someone like-

Glynda: Like you?

Winter: (Blushing) I never! If he were interested in older women, it would be you!

Glynda: (Blushing) H-How dare you?!

Jacques: Perhaps... I was too hasty, and perhaps... I was too brash. I see now the error of my ways, and if you'll agree to meet with me, I will gladly provide and recieve an apology for my behavior. Please respond within three business days of recieving this message, in regards to your agreement. Sincerely, Jacques Schnee, CEO of the Schnee Dust Company.

Whitely: (Stops writing) Anything else, Father?

Jacques: No, that will be all. Bring it here so I can sign it, and I can end this PR nightmare. First, he insults my company and everything I have suffered for, then has the gall to make me appear foolish in front of all of Remnant, and now he has the nerve to appear as some hero of an attack perpetrated by the very beasts he defends?! (Takes his pen, Signs the letter) It's enough to drive one to violence, much like those disgusting animals! (Huffs) Thankfully, I am above such measures. Now, deliver that letter post-haste, Whitely. The sooner it arrives, the sooner I can end this headache.

Whitely: Of course, Father. (Leaves)

Jacques: (Pulls up an article on Jaune Arc) Mark my words, boy, you will know the full wrath of a Schnee.

Jaune: (SHINK!) Grgh! (Kicked by Doctor Oobleck)

Oobleck: Your skills are impressive, Mr. Arc, but you will find I am neither Grimm nor Adam Taurus. (Zips to Jaune's side, Strikes his backside) I am faster. (Whap!) Stronger! (Whap!) And if I may boast, more intelligent.

Jaune: (Thinking) He's making me look like an idiot! But he's moving too fast, so I can't keep up! (Closes his eyes, Breathes) Just stay calm, Jaune. Just stay-

Oobleck: FOCUS!

Jaune: GAH! (Dazed from the strike to his head)

Oobleck: Tsk, tsk, tsk... A shame, Mr. Arc. I was hoping to get a taste of that prowess you showed in the attack? But alas, the game is over, and I'm afraid you fail. One more strike should do. (Jabs)

Jaune: (Sways out of the way)

Oobleck: Hm? (Jabs again)

Jaune: (Sways again)

Oobleck: Fascinating...

Pyrrha: Incredible!

Ruby: Jaune's dodging all his attacks! How is he doing that?!

Yang: I don't know, but he's actually giving the doc a workout! Just look at his aura!

Blake: It's only a theory I have, but...

Weiss: Here we go...

Blake: I think... Jaune is giving up. (Everyone looks at her) Or, more specifically, his mind is giving up. He believes he can't win this, so he's detached himself from the fight. But Jaune's spirit is pushing his body further! It's a war of the mind against spirit, his logic versus his desires!

Weiss: That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!

Ruby: But look at him now. JAUNE! FIGHT BACK!

Yang: YOU CAN DO IT, JAUNE! HIT HIM HARD!

Weiss: Would you two keep it down?! You're going to get us into trouble!

Pyrrha: KEEP FIGHTING, JAUNE!

Blake: BELIEVE IN YOUR SPIRIT!

Oobleck: (Turns around) TEAM RWBY! While I admire your drive to cheer on your fellow student, please refrain from doing so in a manner that distracts him from contending in his final exam!

Jaune: (Comes to, Thinking) Huh? His back is turned? Now... Now's my chance! (Charges forward, Sword ready) HAAAAAAAAGH! (Swings, Catches Antiquity's Roast on his sword) RRRRRAH!

Oobleck: (Blocks, Skids out of the ring) My word... A stroke of luck, or genius tact? In either case, you have proven victorious Mr. Arc! You pass your final exam! Perhaps you are as excellent as they claim! (Thinking) And perhaps the rumors are also true?

Jaune: I won? I won! I won! (Laughs) Yes! I passed my final exam! Nothing can stop me now!

Nora: INCOMING!

Jaune: Huh? (Turns, Smashed into the ground by Professor Port)

Port: ...You win, Miss Valkyrie. (Passes out)

Nora: I won! Hey, where did Jaune go?

#rwby au #rwby #tragic backstory (tm) au #yang xiao long #ruby rose #weiss schnee #jaune arc #bartholomew oobleck #glynda goodwitch #winter schnee #pyrrha nikos #jacques schnee #whitely schnee #nora valkyrie #peter port #blake belladonna

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Faintest known star system orbiting the Milky Way discovered

A team of astronomers led by the University of Victoria and Yale University has detected an ancient star system traveling around our galaxy named Ursa Major III / UNIONS 1 (UMa3/U1)—the faintest and lowest-mass Milky Way satellite ever discovered, and possibly one of the most dark matter-dominated systems known. The team conducted the study from Hawaiʻi using two Maunakea Observatories on Hawaiʻi Island—W. M. Keck Observatory and Canada-France-Hawaiʻi Telescope (CFHT)—as well as the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) on Haleakalā, Maui; the findings are published in a recent edition of The Astrophysical Journal.

"UMa3/U1 is located in the Ursa Major (Great Bear) constellation, home of the Big Dipper. It is in our cosmic backyard, relatively speaking, at about 30,000 light-years from the sun," says Simon Smith, an astronomy graduate student at the University of Victoria and lead author of the study. "UMa3/U1 had escaped detection until now due to its extremely low luminosity."

Observations reveal the stellar system is tiny, with only about 60 stars that are over 10 billion years old, spanning just 10 light-years across. UMa3/U1 has an extremely low mass—at 16 times the mass of the sun, it is 15 times less massive than the faintest suspected dwarf galaxy.

UMa3/U1 was first detected using data obtained from the Ultraviolet Near Infrared Optical Northern Survey (UNIONS) at CFHT and Pan-STARRS.

The team then studied the star system in finer detail using Keck Observatory's Deep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph (DEIMOS) and confirmed UMa3/U1 is a gravitationally-bound system, either a dwarf galaxy or a star cluster.

"There are so few stars in UMa3/U1 that one might reasonably question whether it's just a chance grouping of similar stars. Keck was critical in showing this is not the case," says co-author Marla Geha, professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University. "Our DEIMOS measurements clearly show all the stars are moving through space at very similar velocities and appear to share similar chemistries."

"Excitingly, a tentative spread in velocities among the stars in the system may support the conclusion that UMa3/U1 is a dark matter-dominated galaxy—a tantalizing possibility we hope to scrutinize with more Keck observations," says Yale University graduate student Will Cerny, the second author of the study.

How these stars have managed to stay a tight-knit group is remarkable. One possible explanation is that dark matter may be keeping them together.

"The object is so puny that its long-term survival is very surprising. One might have expected the harsh tidal forces from the Milky Way's disk to have ripped the system apart by now, leaving no observable remnant," says Cerny. "The fact that the system appears intact leads to two equally interesting possibilities. Either UMa3/U1 is a tiny galaxy stabilized by large amounts of dark matter, or it's a star cluster we've observed at a very special time before its imminent demise."

With the former scenario, achieving direct confirmation of UMa3/U1 as a faint, ancient, dark matter-dominated satellite star system would be an exciting feat because it would support a prediction in the leading theory for the universe's origin.

Under the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model, scientists hypothesize that when galaxies like the Milky Way first formed, they created a gravitational pull during their assembly process that attracted hundreds of satellite star systems that continue to orbit galaxies today.

A companion study on UMa3/U1's implications on the LCDM theory has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available in preprint format on the arXiv server.

"Whether future observations confirm or reject that this system contains a large amount of dark matter, we're very excited by the possibility that this object could be the tip of the iceberg—that it could be the first example of a new class of extremely faint stellar systems that have eluded detection until now," says Cerny.

Conclusive evidence of the presence or lack of dark matter in UMa3/U1 is key to determining whether the star system is a dwarf galaxy or a star cluster. Until its classification becomes clear, Ursa Major III / UNIONS 1 has two names. Ultra-faint Milky Way satellites are typically named after the constellation they are discovered in (in this case, Ursa Major), whereas ultra-faint star clusters are generally named after the survey project they were discovered in (UNIONS).

While this star system's identity is still ambiguous, UMa3/U1 paves the way for new perspectives in cosmology.

"This discovery may challenge our understanding of galaxy formation and perhaps even the definition of a 'galaxy'," says Smith.

IMAGE....Hidden in this deep sky image (left) is Uma3/U1, a minuscule group of stars (right) bound together by their own gravity (and possibly even dark matter!) in orbit around the Milky Way. Credit: CFHT/S. Gwyn (right) / S. Smith (left). The Astrophysical Journal (2024). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad0d9f

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #astrophysics

[mysticstronomy]

BLACK HOLES MAY BE GROWING AS THE UNIVERSE EXPANDS??

Blog# 142

Saturday, November 20th, 2021

Welcome back,

A new hypothesis suggests the universe's expansion could be causing all material objects to grow in mass.

The universe's black holes are bigger than astrophysicists expected them to be. Now, a new study suggests why: Every single black hole may be growing as the universe expands.

The new hypothesis, called "cosmological coupling," argues that as the universe expands outward after the Big Bang, all objects with mass grow with it too. And black holes, as some of the most massive objects to exist, grow the most. 

This hypothesis stems from the gravitational ripples in space-time that occur when two massive black holes get locked in orbit, spiral inward and collide. Since 2015, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Virgo interferometer, which are designed to detect these gravitational waves, have observed many of these black hole mergers.

But the waves contain a mystery. Based on the estimated size distribution of stars in the universe, black holes should have masses less than roughly 40 times the mass of the sun. But data taken from these gravitational waves show that many black holes are more than 50 solar masses, and some approach 100 solar masses. 

A common explanation for this mismatch is that black holes grow over time by gorging on gas, dust, stars and even other black holes. But because black holes often form after giant stellar explosions called supernovas, many black holes emerge in regions of space without any of this material. Astronomers have suggested alternative explanations, but all propose unseen changes to scientists' current understanding of star life cycles. And none can explain the staggering size diversity of merged black holes that gravitational wave observatories have detected.

The new paper, published Nov. 3 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, proposes an explanation of both the large and small merged black hole masses: The ballooning masses of the black holes aren't a result of anything they're eating but are instead somehow tethered to the expansion of the universe itself. 

This would mean that all of the universe's black holes — including the merging black holes detected in gravitational wave experiments, the wandering black holes at the outskirts of our galaxy and even the enormous supermassive black holes at the centers of most galaxies — are growing over time. 

To investigate their hypothesis, the researchers chose to model two merging black in a growing universe, rather than the static universes other research teams build for the sake of simplifying the complex equations (derived from Einstein's theory of general relativity) that provide the foundations for black hole merger models.

It takes just a few seconds for two spiraling black holes to merge, so assuming a static universe over that short time frame, as past work has done, seems sensible. But the researchers disagree, they say that if scientists assume a static universe in their models, they could be ruling out potential changes to the two black holes over the billions of years they existed before reaching the point of collision.

"It's an assumption that simplifies Einstein's equations, because a universe that doesn't grow has much less to keep track of," study first author Kevin S. Croker, a professor in the University of Hawaii at Mānoa Department of Physics and Astronomy, said in the statement. "There is a trade-off, though: Predictions may only be reasonable for a limited amount of time."

By simulating millions of pairs of stars — from their births to their deaths — the researchers were able to study the ones which died to form paired black holes and link how much they grew in proportion to the universe’s expansion. 

After comparing some predictions made by the model universe they had grown with LIGO-Virgo data, the researchers were surprised to see they matched well.

"I have to say, I didn't know what to think at first," co-author Gregory Tarlé, a professor of physics at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. "It was such a simple idea, I was surprised it worked so well."

Originally published on www.space.com

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, November 24th, 2021)

“ALIEN WORLDS HOLD MINERALS LIKE NOTHING IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM!!”

#astronomylover #astronomyclub #astronomyfacts #astronomy #outer space #spacecraft #spaceX #white universe #Parallel Universe #alternate universe #universe #Dark Matter #strange matter

[jcmarchi]

Asteroid Samples Reveal Origins of Organic Molecules in the Early Solar System - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/asteroid-samples-reveal-origins-of-organic-molecules-in-the-early-solar-system-technology-org/

Asteroid Samples Reveal Origins of Organic Molecules in the Early Solar System - Technology Org

Carbon is the building block of biological life on Earth. The element is present in many compounds, such as sugars, proteins, and carbohydrate molecules, that comprise everything from animals to plants to bacteria.

Schematic describing potential PAH formation processes: one around a hot star, and one in the cold interstellar medium. Image credit: S. Zeichner

One particular carbon-based molecule, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), is both ubiquitous on Earth and abundant in space. Astronomers have observed signals of these honeycomb-shaped molecules in the space between stars, and estimate that PAHs constitute a significant percent of all carbon in the Milky Way galaxy and others. Understanding where and how astronomical PAHs form is crucial to understanding how this important biological building block found its way to Earth, but there are multiple theories regarding the environments that can form PAHs in space.

Now, a new Caltech-led study examining PAHs extracted from samples that were returned from the asteroid (162173) Ryugu finds the first evidence to support the theory that PAHs were formed within cold molecular clouds in interstellar space. The research required novel techniques in analytical chemistry developed at Caltech by postdoctoral scholar Sarah Zeichner (MS ’20, PhD ’24), the study’s first author.

The work was primarily conducted in the laboratory of John Eiler, the Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology and Geochemistry. A paper describing the research appears in the issue of the journal Science.

Molecular clouds are very cold regions of gas in interstellar space, billions of miles across. Their frigid temperatures—which get down to -440 degrees Fahrenheit—mean that there is not much energy to generate chemical reactions. PAHs are relatively large molecules, so if they do form within cold molecular clouds, as some theories have suggested, their formation must occur through chemical reactions that require minimal thermal energy or are helped by absorbing light energy.

Most carbon on Earth consists of the common isotope carbon-12, the nucleus of which contains six protons and six neutrons. However, a small fraction of Earth’s carbon has seven instead of six neutrons in its nucleus, and is known as carbon-13. The extra neutron makes carbon-13 heavier than carbon-12; importantly, when chemical bonds are formed with carbon-13, the overall energy of the molecular system is lowered, which is preferred in cold, low-energy environments such as molecular clouds. Likewise, two carbon-13 atoms bonded together, creating so-called isotopic “clumps,” are even more energetically preferred in such environments. Thus, if PAHs were formed in a low-energy environment like a cold molecular cloud, researchers would expect to see an excess of carbon-13 clumps within them, as compared with the amount of clumps that are expected for PAHs that formed within high-temperature, high-energy environments such as the regions around stars.

In 2020, the Japanese space agency’s Hayabusa2 mission returned five grams of samples from the asteroid Ryugu. Seven milligrams of these samples were allocated to the study of carbon-containing molecules, also known as organic molecules. After various compounds were extracted and shipped to various teams around the world, an even smaller amount remained for studying the isotopic contents of PAHs.

“There were literally only six drops left,” says Zeichner. “And within these few drops, the concentrations of PAHs were 1,000 times less than what you need for traditional isotope analysis. So, I developed a unique method for this study. It uses the Orbitrap, an emerging technology in the study of isotopic properties, and tailors methods we had recently developed to be able to observe the isotopic properties of PAHs in very low abundance.”

Using these new analytical tools, Zeichner and her team determined that the PAHs isolated from the asteroid contained excesses in clumps of carbon-13, providing the first quantitative evidence that PAHs may have formed in the cold, low-energy regions of interstellar space.

The asteroid Ryugu belongs to a particular class of space rocks that are representative of the composition of an average solar system, and thus gives clues to the environment in which Earth and other planets of our solar system formed, and also, possibly, those of planets around other stars resembling our sun.

“Sample-return missions are broadly important for studying organic compounds,” says Zeichner. “Meteorites bring samples of space to Earth, but because they fall through the atmosphere, they undergo some terrestrial contamination. These special samples offer an opportunity to look at organic molecules that have never experienced uncontrolled exposure to the terrestrial biosphere. And, hopefully, these methods can now help us better understand samples from meteorites and other extraterrestrial bodies that are returned by future missions.”

Written by Lori Dajose

Source: Caltech

You can offer your link to a page which is relevant to the topic of this post.

#000 #Analysis #Animals #Asteroid #Astronomy news #atmosphere #atoms #Bacteria #Building #caltech #carbon #chemical #chemical reactions #chemistry #Cloud #clouds #Composition #contamination #earth #Emerging Technology #energy #Environment #Experienced #extraterrestrial #Featured Space news #form #Fraction #Fundamental physics news #Future #Galaxy

[spacenutspod]

Astronomers have discovered two known interstellar objects (ISO), ‘Oumuamua and 21/Borisov. But there could be thousands of these objects passing through the Solar System at any time. According to a new paper, the upcoming Vera Rubin Telescope will be a fantastic interstellar object hunter, and could possibly find up to 70 objects a year coming from other star systems. The Rubin Observatory is a ground-based telescope located high in the Chilean Andes. It is expected to see first light sometime in 2025, a timeline that has already been pushed back a few times. The observatory’s 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope will take images of the sky using the highest resolution digital camera in the world, a 3,200-megapixel camera that includes the world’s largest fish-eye lens. The camera is roughly the size of a small car and weighs almost 2800 kg (6200 lbs). This survey telescope is fast-moving and will be able to scan the entire visible sky in the southern hemisphere every few nights. One of the main projects for Rubin Observatory is the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), expected to last at least 10 years. Researchers anticipate this project will gather data on more than 5 million asteroid belt objects, 300,000 Jupiter Trojans, 100,000 near-Earth objects, and more than 40,000 Kuiper belt objects. Since Rubin will be able to map the visible night sky every few days, many of these objects will be observed hundreds of times. Because of the telescope’s repeated observations, there will be an enormous amount of data to calculate the positions and orbits of all these objects. With all that data and mapping, it is expected that Rubin will be able to detect faint interstellar objects – and these speedy ISOs might even actually stand out among all the other objects.  Basically, the LSST will be able to capture a timelapse view of interstellar objects on their fast journeys through our Solar System.   ‘Oumuamua (l) and 2I/Borisov (r) are the only two ISOs we know of for certain. Image Credit: Left: By Original: ESO/M. Kornmesser; right, Hubble Space Telescope/NASA/ESA. Various estimates and predictions have been coming from various astronomers about how many interstellar objects Rubin will be able to detect. One estimate said five a year, another 7, another 21. A new pre-print paper published on arXiv suggested that LSST could find up to 70 interstellar objects every year. “The annual rate at which LSST should discover ’Oumuamua-like interstellar objects ranges from about 0?70 detected objects per year,” write astronomers Dusan Marceta and Darryl Z. Seligman. To come up with this number, they applied recently developed tool called the Object In Field (OIF) algorithm. A rendering of the LSST Camera with a cut away to show the inner workings. Credit: LSST. “It serves as an observation generator that simulates a real LSST campaign,” Marceta told Universe Today via email, “providing time and coordinates for every LSST field of view (FOV) and exposure time. It also allows for the inclusion of an arbitrary population of moving solar system objects, such as asteroids or comets. It then propagates their motion, determines their positions in the sky, and detects whether some of them appear in the mentioned FOVs.” Marceta, a professor at the University of Belgrade said that they developed a method to generate a population of interstellar asteroids and utilized the OIF to assess how many of these objects can be detected by LSST under various conditions. “Given the unconstrained nature of the interstellar objects’ population, we considered a wide range of possibilities for critical parameters,” he said. “This encompassed size distributions, the range of albedo, and their assumed motions in interstellar space. Taking all these factors into account, we arrived at a range of 0-70 objects per year.” This assumes that at least that many interstellar objects actually exist.  Marceta said they assumed a number density of 0.1 object per cubic astronomical unit, a value implied by the detection of ‘Oumuamua, “which remains highly uncertain, similar to other parameters associated with this population,” he said. However, because ISOs move so fast, they might be easier to detect with the Rubin Observatory because of an effect called ‘trailing loss.’ “It’s an effect that occurs when a rapidly moving object is within the telescope’s FOV,” Marceta explained. “To excite a pixel on the CCD, a certain number of photons must land on it during the exposure time (which is 15 seconds in our simulations). For stationary objects like stars, all photons during the exposure time hit the same area of the CCD. However, for an object that changes its position during the exposure time, the photons land on different pixels as it moves.” The complete focal plane of the future LSST Camera is more than 2 feet wide and contains 189 individual sensors that will produce 3,200-megapixel images. Crews at SLAC have now taken the first images with it. (Jacqueline Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory) Marceta said that even if the total number of photons may be sufficient to excite a pixel, if they are spread across a large number of pixels, it’s possible that none of the pixels receive enough photons to exceed the background noise. “The faster the object moves, the greater the number of pixels that receive the photons, making trailing loss more noticeable,” he said. “Our simulation shows that interstellar objects can appear in the telescope’s field of view with velocities significantly exceeding those of the fastest solar system populations, which makes this issue particularly important.” But of course, this is a chicken-and-the-egg type conundrum. Because of a sample size of only two, scientists can now only make loose predictions of how many interstellar objects Rubin will reveal. Once a larger sample of interstellar objects are able to be counted and analyzed, astronomers will have a much better idea of the population of these objects … which will likely only happen after the Rubin Observatory is up and running. But Marceta and Seligman are hopeful that Rubin and the LSST will change everything. “It is possible that the number density of ‘Oumuamua-like objects is higher than currently estimated due to a large fraction of interstellar objects currently undetectable due to trailing loss and rapid sky motions,” they write. The more we can find, the better, because some of these will be in the perfect trajectory for an interstellar interceptor mission. Learning details about objects from other solar systems could fundamentally change our view of the universe and our place in it. The post Vera Rubin Observatory Could Find Up to 70 Interstellar Objects a Year appeared first on Universe Today.

#space #astronomy #news #science

[silver-starlight-99]

Monsters at Work:  The Jokester Generation  Part Four: Steps to an Uncertain Future

Be prepared for one doozy of an info-dump

One of the proudest moments of Tylor Benjamin Tuskmon’s life was the day he graduated Scarer Cum Laude from Monsters University.  It was a hallmark moment for the entire Tuskmon family in fact; as he was the first in his familial line to graduate from college.  Bernard and Millie Tuskmon couldn’t have been prouder of their son, and both were more than happy to share that act.  From as young as five years old, little Tylor was awestruck by the Scarers of Monsters Inc., I imagine like many Monster children his age.  But it wasn’t until the fourth grade that he made the decision to become a full-fledged Scarer once he came of age. 

The boy was a natural talent, with his height and horns giving him quite the intimidating profile.  But much like a certain green, one-eyed monster, Tylor wasn’t afraid to study like mad to perfect his skills, and made a hobby of collecting/memorizing every Scarer Card he could get his claws on.  His parents, despite coming from more of a lower middle-class background, wanted to do everything they could to support their child when they saw the dedication he was putting into his dream-career.  Bernard worked long nights at his family’s hardware store for years, and Millie even pawned off a number of family heirlooms, just to make enough to put their boy through college once the time came.  Add on the special scholarship he received from one of the most prestigious Scaring Schools in the country, and it looked like everyone’s hard work paid off after all.  Sure, that kind of laser-focussed dedication meant he wasn’t as sociable as most his age, but it was worth it if it meant being that much closer to his childhood dream. 

Besides his graduation, the last time Tylor had this much attention on him was during the party hosted by Dean Knight in celebration of him breaking an old MU Scaring record as a part of his final exam.  Beating even James P. Sullivan’s numbers on the Simulation Room, recorded from the monster’s time during the Scare Games. A fact that made its way across the school campus in record time, reaching the ears of a certain brother duo working in MU’s theater department.  They were both friends with the infamous college dropout, and thought he’d be interested to hear his old title was being taken over by this new blood.   

Even if he couldn’t remember the names of most of the people in attendance, despite having been in classes with them for years, Tylor couldn’t have been prouder, knowing all that hard work had been worth it.  Especially so because before leaving the party, his teacher, Professor Shade, pulled him aside to tell him he’d received a letter of recommendation from Monsters Incorporated.  Despite the controversies surrounding the company since the event deemed The Waternoose Scandal, Monsters Inc. was still considered one of the premiere energy factories in the country.  And, looking at the young monster’s impressive list of accomplishments, the Board of Directors wanted to accept him as soon as possible.    

This was everything Tylor Tuskman could’ve wanted.  The chance to live his dream, make his family proud, and make his mark on the world of Scaring.  He thought that after he graduated from college, it would be nothing but smooth sailings.  Little did poor Tylor realize, he would make an astronomical impact on not just the Scaring world, but the Monster world as a whole.  Just… not in the way he expected.  And he had one of his former childhood heroes to thank for that.   

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Most monsters would agree that everything began to change the morning The Waternoose Scandal was released to the public.  Some would argue that it was the initial sighting of the Tiny Terror of Monstropolis at the now famous restaurant Harryhausen’s that got the ball rolling.  Others say that the panic stirred by the escaped child was merely the spark that would ignite the true bonfire that would come to consume the city. 

Tylor Tuskmon was just a bit too young to remember much of the hysteria itself.  The almost two-year-old spent most of the time after the initial sighting held up in his family’s hardware store.  While Bernard worked to keep his family safe and provide his neighboring Monsters tools they could use to defend themselves, should the dangerous creature be spotted in their neighborhood.  It wasn’t until the next morning when Millie saw a televised announcement from the CDA giving a cautionary all-clear that the Tuskmons felt safe enough to take down the boards on their windows.  They, along with many of their other neighbors, spent much of the day in a state of anxiety, with a confused Tylor trying to comprehend why everyone he knew was being so skittish and weird.  By the following morning, it was announced that the CDA had located and returned the child back to it’s world, and their door was shredded for good measure.  The Tuskmon parents heaved a sigh of relief as it seemed things could go back to normal.  However, it wasn’t until three days later that the official story behind the escape was released to the public, and that initial air of dread would be replaced with something new.  

Henry J. Waternoose Ⅲ, during a city-wide energy crisis, was diluting company funds and manipulating his employees to build a prototype for something he’d hoped would reinvent Scream-power extraction.  While effective, it would put Scarers at a higher risk of contamination because of their closer interactions with human children.  And he was willing to put Monster society on-a-whole in danger by kidnapping thousands of kids in order to maintain his machine’s efficiency.  The Tiny Terror was just the guinea pig to test the prototype.  If all this chaos was the result of a single child escaping his grasp, who knows what would befall Monstropolis if a small army of them were able to revolt from their captors?  If not for the courageous, somewhat fool-hearty, actions of Monsters Incorporated’s top Scaring team, the situation could’ve been much worse.  Thankfully, Mr. Waternoose was quickly apprehended, any known conspirators were questioned, and the CDA would remain vigilant in locating any other associates.  One of which being Randal Boggs, another of Monsters Incorporated’s top Scarers, who seemed to have fled the city while James Sullivan and Mike Wazowski focussed their attention on the true head of operations.

Between the media coverage of the CEO’s trial, dealing with the continuing energy crisis, the protests that arose from Monsters angered by the gross negligence of Waternoose’s Scream Extractor plan, and the lingering anxiety from the initial child sighting, things in Monstropolis would remain… let’s say hectic for a while.  Because of The Waternoose Scandal, Anthropophobia was at an all-time high, especially in Monstropolis, where there were more than enough monsters happy to use that lingering paranoia to their advantage.  You’d be surprised by the amount of small and big-budget movies that were produced in response to the whole affair.  Along with Monstropolis politicians that would use this instance to promote themselves as beacons of safety during election campaigns.  Not to mention the dozens of Monsters who’d use The Waternoose Scandal as a way to sell cheap junk to gullible tourists believing they were purchasing actual weapons used against a human.

Meanwhile, as trust in Monsters Inc. was beginning to dwindle, the same could not be said for the CDA.  Mike and Sully may have received the lion’s share of attention and praise for their efforts, but public approval for the Child Detection Agency had reached new heights for their supposed work in apprehending Waternoose and detaining the dangerous child.  And as long as the heroes of the hour were “willing” to vouch for the good work of Roz and her subordinates, she was willing to overlook certain incriminating details that may have fallen through the cracks as she wrote up her report.

It would be two years since The Waternoose Scandal before the dust would truly settle.  While the fear of Humans would remain in the city, much of the initial mania had long-since died down.  Despite receiving a life sentence in the Monstropolis Maximum Security Prison, the former CEO would pass on due to heart complications just a year into his confinement.  Since then, Monsters Inc’s Board of Directors had appointed new CEO, a squirrely fellow named Hunter Tycroft, who was more than willing to comply with the CDA’s occasional sweeps of the factory in hopes of discovering any lingering documents involving Waternoose’s plans for the Scream-Extractor.

As for Mike and Sully, they would eventually go on to continue their good work as the best Scaring team in the city, even breaking the all-time Scaring record; a dream they’d both shared since their first days on the job.  A young Tylor Tuskman, along with many of his peers, would watch in awe from their televisions as mayor Titus Fangmore himself held a ceremony to congratulate the two for their good work.  But to those who truly knew the duo, their fire, that initial passion for their work that drove them to achieve such records, had been fading ever since Waternoose’s arrest.  They did their part to help with the energy crisis, but between Sully’s bout of depression and Mike’s aggravation over the constant harassment by the press, the two were going through the motions for a while.  But with each other’s support, they would eventually get their heads back in the game, and their normally cheerful personalities would return.  To the general public, it seems like things were finally going back to some sense of normal.   

But trust me, in a few years, the duo idolized as heroes, would soon become the center of a cultural upheaval that would drastically affect both Monsters Incorporated and the Monster world as a whole. 

——————————————————————————————————————————-

By the 10-year anniversary of The Waternoose Scandal, things in Monstropolis had almost returned to normal.  Sure, there would be the occasional conspiracy theorist looking to stir up the populace, something that was becoming easier through the development of technology and social media.  But of course, most Monsters are quick to dismiss the more outlandish stories.  I mean, come on; The CDA blackmailing Mike and Sully into assisting with the capture of a door-hopping child?  It sounds like a fun idea for a movie, but that’s just the kind of speculative fiction Monsters make up to milk whatever nostalgia they can from a big event.  Something like that couldn’t have actually happened and been covered up, right?

Well, whatever the case, Mike and Sully are brought in for an interview on national news to commemorate the anniversary, with many of Monstropolis’ citizens tuning in.  And while some of the two’s answers can’t help but feel a bit… scripted at times, things go smoothly.  That is, until the end, where Mike and Sully decide to make an announcement.  For what feels like the first time since the initial incident, the two choose to be more earnest about their time with the human child.  It’s not enough to technically break the vow of silence they had with the CDA, but it’s enough to talk about one specific experience.

It happened all at once, so they didn’t think much of it at the time, but there was something about that instance that always stood out to them.  Monsters had always believed it was a child’s screams that powered their world, yet a giggle had enough energy that it could blow out an entire apartment’s worth of appliances?  They only had a few experiences to go by, but Mike and Sully were at least open to exploring Laugh power as an alternative energy source for their world.  After living through, and being forced to work to their limits during an intense power crisis, there was something appealing about Monsters being able to harvest ten times the normal amount of energy from a single kid.  Of course, all of this was just working off of theories, but the Scarers were eager to reach out to others who’d help them test their ideas.  After all, if this was as successful as they believed it could be, this could completely revolutionize the power-production industry.  That is, if the higher-ups within that same industry were willing to accept the possibility of treating children as something other than a toxic battery. 

Yeah, unsurprisingly, a majority of Monster society had… let’s say conflicted opinions about this.  This wasn’t the first time the idea of alternative energies was brought to the general public, it’s not even the first time someone proposed something cleaner, sometimes with no necessity for a human.  But in a world where companies like Monsters Incorporated, Fear Co and Scream Industries have a monopoly on power distribution, they made sure to deter any who posed a threat to their bottom line.  Many of said companies have some sort of tie to major media outlets, so it doesn’t take much to persuade certain news stations to… alter the public perception of certain individuals.  Or just scare the populace into a frenzy akin to the Satanic Panic of the 80’s at the mere mention of alternative energies.  Monsters Bernard and Millie’s age can remember reading news articles in their high-school years about some kind of whack-job cult that believed the blood and teeth of human children could be turned into a reusable fuel, but only if pulled directly from the source.  Of course such rumors were eventually debunked, but their purpose was fulfilled, and most major cities would come to totally rely on Scream energy.  Leaving many of those same monsters who proposed a change to be publicly shamed into reconforming, or unable to build a functioning prototype for their idea because of a lack of funding.    

But things were different for Mike and Sully.  They weren’t some crackpot duo out to corrupt Monster society, these were the heroes of Monstropolis, the tops of their field in Scaring, and practically paraded by the CDA at any needed opportunity.  And now, they’re saying they’re willing to give it all up because of a hunch from an incident over ten years ago?  They’re claiming that the beings that have terrorized Monsterkind for hundreds of years are creatures that should be entertained and not terrified?  Are human children even truly toxic?!

So, like I said, many in the monster world were split on this idea.  Many of the older generation were quick to dismiss Mike and Sully’s idea, usually because of their own self-interests or internalized perceptions of humans.  One thing’s for sure, it hurt Tylor when Barnard insisted they get rid of all his Mike and Sully memorabilias after the interview, the elder Tuskmon believing the Scarers were just trying to reclaim their fame from ten years ago by making up nonsense about children not being toxic.  It was a sentiment shared by many Monster adults, unable to comprehend that such a seemingly obvious fact of their world was being challenged.  For Tylor’s generation however… things get a bit complicated.

Of course, for kids like Tylor who grew up in a time where anthropophobia was on the rise in their formative years, a fear of Humans was ingrained pretty early on.  But at the same time, these were kids that grew up during The Waternoose Scandal.  The seemingly-irrefutable truths of their parents’ era were being questioned, or outright exposed for their corruption.  Even if most Monsters of this younger generation were still brought up to be scared of humans, there was more than enough evidence for them to consider that perhaps alternative forms of energy production were worth looking into.  Not to mention, with the total boom of human-themed horror films that were brought about by the The Waternoose Scandal, just as many human horror film fanatics come to root for the monsters in movies, there were many Monsters that became fascinated with humans because of such productions.  While the Tuskmons may have considered their son to be a relatively good kid, in a fit of rebellion in his teen years, Tylor would occasionally sneak into his local movie theater to catch an age-inappropriate human-based horror movie.

As the young Monster would grow to hone his scaring skills, Mike and Sully were doing what they could to make leeway with their plan to bring Laugh power to Monstropolis, while dealing with the public backlash they were receiving as a result of their announcement.  Sure the younger generation was open to the possibility, but they needed individuals with a little more credibility in the corporate field to build a working prototype.  Not to mention the ever-daunting question of where exactly could they find Monsters that would be willing to be the test-subjects for such a project?  Because of their… complicated background with the folks at the MU Scaring school, Sully didn’t think it wise to turn to them for help.  Having the vocal support of a famous Scarer could’ve helped to give credibility to their idea, but as expected, most weren’t exactly willing to forfeit their Scaring careers or reputations on such an outlandish idea.

In the end, the only people they could get to listen to them were a little-known organization called CETHCA (Creatures for the Ethical Treatment of Humans and Children Alike.)  Because the Monster world’s understanding of human behavior is so warped, this group could best be described as a weird human appreciation club that was managed by extraterrestrials.  Unlike the general public, these individuals are actually curious to learn more about the habits of the human race, and have often tried to advocate for the proper treatment and compensation of children for their screams.  Of course, the media does what they can to paint these people as  attention-seeking wackjobs.  Sully himself even remembers listening to Waternoose complain about a CETHCA protest during his early days as a Scarer, with the CEO painting the lot as a group just a few steps up from an organized cult, with its Monsters so desperate for validation they’d believe any dangerous notions their leaders told them.

But when they finally caught wind of Mike and Sully’s proposal, they decided to pull their resources together to try and boost the public’s support for the idea.  It wasn’t quite the compensation for children they were hoping for, it was the first time in what felt like a long time someone in the energy business seemed to take an interest in showing these creatures some respect.  Like I said, these guys are certainly more sympathetic to humans, but that doesn’t mean they have the experience to be able to see children as beings equal to them in sapience and intelligence.  While they still didn’t have the most positive reputation in the eyes of the public, CETHCA had slowly received more members as dissatisfaction with Monsters Incorporated’s practices began to grow.  And with the development of social media, what started as an eclectic group of Monsters was soon enough to form a decent following.  And after getting to meet with Mike and Sully themselves, they took to the streets and the internet to spread the word of the power of laughter.

——————————————————————————————————————————-

It had been fifteen years since The Waternoose Scandal.  While their glory years as Monsters Inc’s top Scarers may have been behind them, Mike and Sully remained figues of interest, for better and for worse.  Their advocacy for Laugh power may have gained more legitimacy because of CETHCA’s efforts, but that didn’t mean many of their co-workers were quiet about their discomfort.  If Scarers didn’t have what it took to make children laugh, many would need to be laid off in exchange for those who better fit the bill.  In fact, a lot of Monster culture is based around a Monster’s scariness; for some it’s considered the measure of a true Monster.  There are many businesses outside of Scream production that only exist to try and make a Monster look more threatening.  If Laugh power proved to be more profitable, it meant not just a max layoff of Scarers, but a decline in the world’s economy, one Monsters may not be able to bounce back from.  A few of Monsters Incorporated’s Scarers decided to transfer to other companies, or outright quit to pursue more stable jobs in these unsure times.  If Mike and Sully weren’t doing their best to maintain Monstropolis’ energy levels, the higher ups probably would’ve fired them just to keep the company out of another scandal.

Which made it all the stranger when the two received a message from the Board of Directors.  Beforehand, Monsters Inc. never gave an official statement on whether they were for or against the idea of Laugh power, still just trying to clean up the mess left behind from The Waternoose Scandal.  But suddenly, Mike and Sully received an email stating that the company was interested in experimenting with Laugh power, if only to see for themselves if it was possible to multiply their energy output with just a few tweeks to the typical method.  While skeptical, Sully was just relieved that someone in the higher ups was finally taking their idea seriously, and agreed.  Mike was equally unsure of the Board’s intentions, but decided to use this to his advantage, managing to squeeze out a few work perks and a raise for him and Sully in exchange for his compliance.

From then on came the process of actually building the experimental “Laugh Floor,” and finding the right Monsters that would inevitably become the new faces of Laugh power production, aptly called Jokesters.  Using one of the older Scare floors reserved for members of the occasionally-used night shift, they would begin to build the first Laugh floor.  All that really needed to be modified for the process of energy extraction were the Scream canisters, to adjust to the larger amounts of output produced.  To do so, the Board pulled some strings with their connections at Monsters University, having some of their Scream-Can focussed students earn extra credit by assisting with the prototypes.  What took a bit more work to explain was the request for a simulation dummy that responded with laughter instead of screams.  But hey, as long as MI was willing to be more lenient in accepting their Scaring school students after graduation, the university saw no need to question things further.

With most of the technical stuff sorted out, then came the difficult task of finding the right Jokesters.  In the end, it was decided to be a mix of old Scaring pros to start things off, and then use them to train the fresher faces, as a way to prove that training was accessible to any who were open enough to try.  Mike of course led the charge in Jokester training, working with Ms. Flint to create a step-by-step training guide to eventually be shared with other companies and Scaring schools.  It was here where Mike saw his first recruit, Brian “Phlegm” Bile, a regular in the company’s simulation room who seemed to make a name for himself as the Monster to look to to see what not to do to Scare.  The pratfalls that seemed to keep him from becoming a true Scarer made Phlegm a perfect Jokester candidate.  

The next two actually reached out to Sully.  Scaring legend Carla “Killer Claws” Benitez was interested in the potential of techniques that could produce larger amounts of energy, so she was willing to do her part, even at her older age, to keep the city she loved from having to deal with another energy crisis.  For Rosie “Roaring” Levin, even if it came from a morbid curiosity than anything else, was curious to see how a more human-friendly form of energy-production would work, and so reached out to Sully to see what he had to say.  Lastly, but definitely the most surprising, was Art.  Yup, Mike and Sully’s old Oozma Kappa brother had certainly lived an interesting life since his graduation.  Part of which included joining up with CETHCA, if only to try and broaden his own understanding of the world.  He was actually the one to get the two Scarers connected with the organization.  And now that they were ready to put things in action, he was happy to lend his services as a Jokester.  

Mike included, that totaled to five Jokesters.  An admittedly small number, but something they could hopefully make up for with their extra energy output.  As Sully worked with the mechanical side of putting together the Laugh floor, Mike and Ms. Flint were using trial and error to turn these Scarers into Jokesters, and organizing their findings into a comprehensive manual for future trainees.

——————————————————————————————————————————-

It’s been twenty years since The Waternoose Scandal.  It’s just days away from Tylor Tuskmon’s first day at Monsters Incorporated.  Just a few days before this Scaring pro has his childhood dream turned on his head.  Just two weeks before the city of Monstropolis learns that one of their biggest companies is going through some big managerial changes.  And just a few days before a certain someone makes their official return to the city that changed their life forever.  Will the Monster world be able to survive this inevitable upheaval?  Who knows.  Either way, I suggest you grab a snow cone, you’re gonna want a snack as we wait for this powder keg to go off.   

——————————————————————————————————————————-

By the Gods!  When I started writing these things, I had no idea it was gonna take me this long just to get through my backstory stuff!  Ugh.  Well, it’s finally done.  And you know what?  Back when I did part one, I said I wasn’t planning on turning my ideas into a full-fledged fan-fiction.  Well guess what?  After all the energy I put into this, I’d feel pretty sh*tty if I didn’t bother paying off all the stuff I was building up to.  Yup, looks like I’m writing a fan-fiction for my Monsters at Work au thingy.  Hopefully it shouldn’t take me a whole month before I make another post about this.  But I won’t try to make promises I know I can’t keep.  To the handful of people who bothered to stick around this long, and to read all of my previous rambly-posts, thank you.  And I ask you to stay tuned.  The Jokester Generation is on its way.

#monsters inc #monsters university #monsters at work #monsters at work: the jokester generation #au #tylor tuskmon #sully sullivan #mike wazowski #fanfic #lengthy post

[halcyonstorm]

The Girl at the Library Chapter 1

Short Fic - Levihan

Themes: College AU, Library, Fluff, Slow Burn, Falling in Love, Female Hange Zoe, Student!Levi

Word Count: 5730

Chapter: 1/3

Warning: Mild Language

Read on Ao3 - The Girl at the Library

Summary: Levi is a college student who needs help on his research paper. Luckily, Hange is a book worm and works at the library. 

Levi was stressed and annoyed, mainly because he was in college. Of course with college comes infinite amounts of homework assignments, 100-question exams with astronomical amounts of topics on them, unnecessary research papers, and staying in a dorm room with a kid that happens to have no problem inviting his friends over every night to hang out and party with no regards to his sullen roommate.

Levi had a paper coming up. He had to come up with a topic, find sources, and finish his paper by the end of the semester. With three weeks left to go, he decided he’d rather get it over with. He began his brainstorming in the study lounge at the center of his dormitory floor. He was starting to stress. He sat on the big yellow leather couch in the way-too-bright study lounge with his laptop in his lap. He tapped his pen against his head as he tried to think of an idea. 

“You have to write about a topic related to your major,” The professor explained. “This is the one and only paper you will have assigned this semester. I suggest you get it done as early as possible.”

If only it were that easy. He had the rubric pulled up in one tab, and a ton of “How to pick a research topic” websites in others. His major was pharmaceuticals, a field he was inspired to take on because of his mother. She was very ill when he was very young, so they were in and out of hospitals. He was sitting on the edge of his mother’s hospital bed when a nurse came in the room to administer her medications. 

“This is…” His memory was blurry. “This medication will help… and make you feel better.” And it did. 9 year old Levi was fascinated. This one little pill or bag of what looked like water helped his mother feel better. Within hours, his mother’s skin went from pallor to beige. Her hands were warmer. She looked more awake, more alive. She didn’t wince at Levi’s touch. She was in less pain. She got better, like the nurse predicted.

Since then, Levi always asked questions whenever they visited the hospitals again and again. “What kind of drug is that?” “What does it do?” “How long does it take to take effect?”

Levi recalled the memory with a deep sigh. He missed his mother. She was at home, not too far away. Levi never had the time to travel the hour through the big city to visit her. When he did have free time, he spent it studying or sleeping. He felt his heart twinge at this. She had sacrificed everything to help him attend college and to give him a good life.

Now with his head cloudy, he went to reach his water bottle in his backpack. He opened the lid and took a sip. At that moment, he could hear some obnoxiously loud students throwing tennis balls back and forth to each other. He recognized these kids too, they were some (of many) of the lovely visitors his roommate had over most nights. Suddenly in the blink of an eye, Levi’s water bottle spilled all over his laptop, a tennis ball on the floor next to him, and some worried voices approaching him. Within seconds, the laptop started to steam and the screen went black.

His laptop was fried, he determined. He felt heat start to rise inside of him. 

“Oh my god, man. I am so sorry,” One of the kids said, trying to hold back a laugh. 

“Yeah, man. We didn’t mean to.”

Levi took a deep breath and stood up. These kids… were gonna pay.

He closed his broken laptop and stood up. These kids were much taller than him, but looked to be easily intimidated by Levi’s presence. 

“Do you have the money to pay for this?” He sneered, getting very close to their faces. 

“Eh… no, but we have jobs! We can pay you back over time,” One of the kids trailed off. They seemed to be intimidated by the short man. “You live in 112 right?”

Levi nodded, his face heating up with anger. “This laptop cost me a lot of money.”

“We get it, man! We said we’re sorry,” the other kid explained. “We’ll pay you back or whatever.”

“Tch,” Levi clicked. He was extremely pissed. These kids should not be throwing balls at each other in the hallway. Also, they spilled his water which made a mess. “Which room are you both in?” They responded with 118. The one kid explained they get paid on the 15th and 30th of each month. Luckily, their pay day was 4 days away.

“I’ll stop by Tuesday, the 16th,” Levi decided, before gathering his things and heading to the stairs. He began to walk through the campus. Fuck, now where was he gonna go? How was he gonna find his topics? His computer was fucked. Putting it in rice wouldn’t have helped. He was so occupied having a debate with himself about where to research, he almost missed it. If he looked the other way or even blinked in that moment, he wouldn’t have seen it. It was the campus library. No, not the campus library, but a campus library. It blended into the surroundings, hidden from the passerbyers. There was a sign in the window “We’re Open!”. 

The library was small, to say the least. It was old fashioned, which contrasted the modern aesthetic of the university. It was a small, dark brown, wooden building with four-pane windows. The door was a lighter shade of brown. He decided it was easier to check out this little library instead of walking another 10 minutes to get to the main library. He didn’t have time to waste. He had to get started with his paper right away. He walked up to the door and opened it. When he did, a little bell rang at the doorway. 

“Just a minute!” A woman’s voice called from the back. Levi decided to wander around. There were many books crammed on the shelves. There were two computers on each side when he walked in. They looked out of place, considering they were very modern compared to the architecture of the library itself. The books were all shades of bright, vibrant colors. It was strange. From the outside, it seemed creepy and gloomy. Once he walked in, it was very cozy. The dark walls of the library contrasted the beautiful colors of the books.

Then, he saw the woman come out. She came up to the desk. He expected an elderly lady with her glasses on a chain, but he assumed this woman was a student. She was a young woman who wore thin oval glasses and her brown hair thrown up in a messy half-up-half-down ponytail. 

“Hi!” The woman said. “How can I help you?”

“I want to use a computer, please,” He announced. He glanced at her nametag which hung like a necklace around her neck. “Hange” was the name on the tag. It was strange and unordinary, but it had a nice ring to it. The name seemed to suit her.

“Sure! You are allowed up to two hours a day,” Hange explains. “You can choose whichever computer you’d like.”

The computers were unoccupied. In fact, the entire library seemed vacant except for him and the employee. 

“Does anyone actually come here?” Levi asked, setting his stuff down next to a desk, and looking her way. She looked like someone who would work at a library. 

The brunette chuckled. “You are my third visitor today!” She exclaimed proudly. It was already about 3pm. He remembered the sign in the front says “12pm-6pm weekdays”. 

Levi chuckled silently, air huffed out his nose. “How do you stay in business?”

“Well, the university thinks it’s good to have a small library in the outskirts of the campus so students have access to books and computers because the main campus library is in the center of the plaza. Sometimes we get about ten people a day, and sometimes they don’t even take anything out. Sometimes I wonder how…” She began to ramble now. She definitely has not had anyone else visit her today.

She was starting to get on his nerves. It’s been 20 minutes since he arrived, and she was still talking. He zoned out until she caught his attention.

“Hey,” She said. “What’s your name? I have to track whoever comes in to use the computers.” 

Why? No one else comes in. He noticed her clipboard with the sign-ins was blank.

“Levi Ackerman,” He announced. She scribbled his name down. “Okay, it’s 3:30 now, so you have till 5:30 if needed.” She pointed to the clock with her pen as she explained. He nodded and proceeded to walk towards the table with the computer he claimed. He sat down and began working.

-

He was an hour into his research when he finally threw his hands up in the air in frustration. He still couldn’t think of a topic. He groaned aloud.

Hange was leaning against the main desk, her nose stuck in a book. “How Trees Communicate” was the title. When she heard the young man groan, she looked up. 

“Is everything okay?” She asked, peering over her book at him.

“Yeah, yeah,” He mumbled. “Fine…”

Hange raised an eyebrow. She placed her bookmark at her spot, then strolled around the desk and walked over to him.

“What are you working on?” She asked, sitting in the seat next to him and put her hands on her knees, looking at him curiously. He scoffs. It was none of her business, he thought to himself. And it’s an invasion of privacy.

He was frustrated and desperate. Hoping for a miracle, he managed to tell her anyways.

 “I need a topic for my paper and I can’t think of any…” Levi began. “It needs to be based on pharmaceuticals, my major. It also needs scientific evidence to back up my research…”

She was fully absorbed in what he had to say. She was bored, so helping Levi would’ve been something to do at least. Besides, Levi was in luck. She was an avid reader, always reading about anything and everything. She was studying plants and botanicals, but she found herself frequently taking out books about cooking; religion; war; animals; and medical topics including surgery, pathophysiology, anatomy, and pharmaceuticals.

“What about how diuretics affect blood pressure?” Hange suggested. Levi was taken aback. His eyebrows furrowed, and he shook his head in confusion. “Or if anti-alzheimer drugs actually help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s? Why do you take different medications during certain stages of Alzheimer’s disease? Or how do anti-seizure medications work? That is something I ask myself all the time. You take this little pill and BOOM! You’ll be fine, no seizure! Oh, oh, oh! Or, how certain medications cause certain adverse effects? How come so many medications cause anxiety?” Her eyes started to light up as she talked. They were a dark brown, but when she started to talk, they seemed to morph to a captivating hazel. He felt he could see every color in her eyes. He saw brown and green and the little lines of her iris. Hange’s hands would move as she talked, and her smile grew wide. She couldn’t keep still. She was getting excited by coming up with all these ideas. She seemed so passionate and so willing to help; he was overwhelmed by her.

Levi was in shock. His day started off horrible. Now, he was almost glad his laptop was fucked. This woman was making his mind race with ideas. 

“Are you okay?” Hange asked for the second time within his visit there. Levi nodded slowly. “I am just… How do you know all that? Are you a med student?”

Hange chuckled and waved her hand at him. “No… I am a bookworm! Also, my mom is a nurse, so she used to teach me about nursing stuff all the time. Oh! You could write about the pathophysiology of anticholinergics! Or beta blockers! Or how the body reacts to the use of long-term steroids?”

Levi took a deep breath. He felt euphoric. He had been casually trying to think of topics since last week. All of a sudden, this woman can just ramble off hundreds of ideas? Levi smiled visibly.

“Actually… I really like the final topic you suggested. About steroids.” Levi admitted.

Hange smiled back at him. “Great! I can try to help you find some sources or books.” She directed him to open a new tab and to go to a certain database. “This is where you can find reliable sources. Over here,” She pointed to his screen at the left side. “You can add filters. You can change how old or new you’d like the sources to be, filter out certain words or phrases, et cetera.” She had been closer to him now; she scooted her chair closer so she could explain the database to him. It was hard not to look at her as she explained. She was captivating.

Levi began to type in words for his topic.

“Steroids”, “Long-term use”, “Cushing’s Disease”, “Addison’s Disease”, “Addisonian Crisis”, “Pathophysiology”.

He felt like he was finally getting somewhere. He was finally making progress.

-

As Levi was walking home, he couldn’t get his mind off that girl. He decided to brainstorm about his topic in his room once he got there. The thing was, though, he couldn’t think of any more ideas. He found it funny. Of course he was full of ideas and inspiration when he visited that library, but now he’s void of any.

-

Levi’s weekends were no different than the weekdays. He made it appoint to visit the library again the next day, Saturday. It was a sunny, cool Saturday morning. Levi had inspiration to write. He needed a computer and Hange’s ideas. When he arrived, it seemed busy. There were three other patrons at the library.  He recognized Hange right away, helping a tall blonde man with a big nose. He wondered if she was the only employee there. The man she was helping was taller than her, so she had to reach up on her toes to point to items. She was an average height, but this action made her seem shorter than she actually was.

Hange looked his way and greeted him with a toothy smile. Levi waved at her and started to head down one of the aisles of books. He was in the nonfiction section, but was lost. For now, he just casually browsed the section, but quickly got impatient. He needed Hange’s help to find books for this paper. He heard her laugh with the patron. Maybe he’s a friend, he thought to himself. Her laugh was airy and full of heart. It seemed genuine and passionate. Levi felt an urge to make her laugh, too.

She finally made her way over to him. Levi was looking down at a book when she caught his eye. “Hey, stranger!” She greeted him with a wave. “Whatcha looking for?” She placed her hands on her hips.

“I’m trying to find some sources for my paper. Steroids is the topic,” Levi explained.

“Oh, right. I remember! After you left last night, I tried to look for some books for your topic,” She said. She was trying to help me? Levi thought to himself.

She curled her finger in a “follow me” gesture and he did. She brought him to another aisle or two over from where they were. “These are the 600’s, where you’ll most likely find what you’re looking for. I found a book or two about Addison’s disease, but it’s more of a memoir. You can look around though if you’d like. Anything in the 610’s should be right up your alley.” She explained as if she was going to leave, but she didn’t. Hange looked for books with him. 

After a moment, she made a noise. “Look at this!” She exclaimed. She reached next to him to reach for a book. She was on her toes again. “Mmmm,” She moaned as she tried to reach. “Actually, I’m gonna get the step stool. I don’t think I can reach it.” Quickly, she left and came back with the stool. It looked unreliable, but Levi was sure he’d be able to prevent any accident from occurring. Hange placed it on the ground and stepped up on it, grabbing the book with ease. She stepped down with the book in her hand. This book had a white cover with a blue label and was titled “Coping with Prednisone”. Levi was surprised she even knew what prednisone was. 

“Here!” She reached it out for him to grab. He took it and looked at her face. She had that same look in her eyes. “Did you want to use the computer?” He nodded and she led him towards the front of the library. The library was small from the outside, but very deep inside. It reminded him of a forest. 

“I got your name, don’t worry,” She said, clicking her pen and writing his name down on the sheet. 

“Oops!” Hange made a quick grimace. “I added an ‘e’ at the end. I’ll just cross it out.” The statement sounded like it was addressed to herself rather than to anyone else. She crossed out the extra letter.

“Ackermane”. Levi was gonna attempt to make her laugh.

“If you thought I looked like a horse you could’ve just said so.” 

Mane, horse mane. Get it?

It felt like forever before Hange responded. She looked up at him, starting to laugh. It was a short but audible laugh. Her head nodded back and she smiled. Her cheeks turned pink and her eyes lit up for a moment. It made his heart skip a beat. It was a bad joke yet she still laughed. She chuckled. Giggled? No. Laughed lightly. Chortled? Maybe that’s the right word. Whatever it was, he wanted to do it more, maybe even more than that.

He followed her to the computers. The blonde guy she was helping earlier was on one computer. She led him to the two computers across from the other ones and sat down in the chair next to him.

“What are you doing?” Levi asked, placing the book she found for him on the table.

Her eyebrows raised, and after a moment she reacted. She waved her hands in front of her.

“I’m sorry! I thought you may have needed help. I should get back to work anyway. I gotta go through a new box of books that just came in.”

Levi looked up at her. Is she blushing? he asked himself.

“I’ll let you know if I need help.” Levi responded. She smiled at him before quickly walking away.

-

He started to find some evidence-based practice articles about how steroids can cause long-term side effects, especially if stopped abruptly. He made sure to keep the tabs available. He’d have to cite them later. Levi’s mind was racing with words and sentences and ideas. He had to get them down on paper. He opened Documents on the computer and started typing away.

The clicking of the keyboard soothed him. He was a pretty fast typer, he didn’t make many mistakes either. The library around him began to become quiet as his typing got louder and he got deeper in thought. Before he knew it, his two hours were up. He felt someone approach him from his right.

“Hey,” Hange said, gently tapping the table next to him. “It’s 2pm. I gotta close up.”

Levi snapped out of his focused trance with a quick head shake. “Right. Sorry.” He pulled out a flash drive from his backpack and plugged it into the computer. He transferred his document. “I got the first page done.”

Levi asked himself for a brief moment why he was sharing this information with someone he just met. Maybe since she helped him, he felt she should know.

“That’s great! It seemed like you were really focused,” Hange said, walking away to shut off some lights. Only then did he notice the white noise of the overhead lights quickly dissipate. The room buzzed with silence now. Levi and Hange were alone in the library. Suddenly, Levi felt nervous. He watched Hange walk around the room frantically, making sure to shut off all the lights and computers. She grabbed a bag. The bag was a fabric material with a patchwork design that had a long strap that hung on on her shoulder. Maybe she made it herself. She grabbed her big mess of keys and walked towards him.

“Ready?” She said. He nodded and walked outside, holding the door for her. She thanked him, locking the door behind her. They began to walk down the street slowly. 

“Want to grab lunch?” Hange asked, looking at him. Levi looked back at her. She looked pretty.

“Sure, I can eat.” Hange chuckled at that. He didn’t try, but it made her happy for a brief moment. He seemed nervous but she was too.

They decided to eat at a cute restaurant on campus called “Life in Paradis”. It was a small, dainty place with a green and yellow checkered awning. The building was made of yellow brick, and the door was bright green. There were flower pots outside on the windowsill. Again, this place seemed totally out of place in the modern aesthetic of the university. 

“This place is adorable!” Hange exclaimed. “I love the food here. You’ll love it too. They have all kinds of food here.” Levi felt a smile grow on his face. The way she talked made his heart flutter. She was always so passionate. They entered and got a table for two. This is not a date, Levi kept telling himself. Then why were his cheeks red?

They sat down and looked through a menu. Levi wasn’t extremely hungry even though he hadn’t had anything but tea this morning. He peered over his menu to look at the girl. Her hair was different today, he determined. Today all her hair was in a ponytail, and it was higher on her head. She wore a light yellow button-down with a long, light blue cardigan. Hange caught him staring at her and blushed.

“What would you two like to order?” The waitress asked him first.

“I’m gonna get a sandwich, I think,” He said, crossing his arms across his chest. “Turkey sub.” “I think I’m gonna get a chicken caesar salad,” Hange said. He nodded, grabbed the menus, and walked away.

Hange began to talk about how beautiful the flowers outside the restaurant were. They were all variants of pink, purple, yellow, and red. She described the petals and the leaves, the flowers’ origins, and all the meanings of the flowers. Levi wasn’t annoyed by her tangent this time. He actively listened to this girl talk about what fascinated her so much. He found it soothing. It made him wonder how her brain can contain all the information she was spewing at him. He enjoyed watching the way her eyes lit up when she talked. The beautiful green that blossomed at the bottom of her irises when the light hit her eyes at the right angle. The way her lips curled into a big smile when she talked to him. Her cheeks flush to a light pink when she describes the petals of the flowers or how flowers were used to express feelings when words cannot. It made his heart race. 

“Levi,” Hange said. Her affect was the opposite of earlier when she was rambling. She wore a frown on her face, feeling guilty.“I’ve been rambling… sorry. It’s such a bad habit of mine. I can talk for hours and hours.”

“Don’t apologize, four-eyes,” Levi replied, leaning his elbows and forearms on the table in a crossed position. Hange smiled at him. Levi meant it. She shouldn’t apologize for talking, especially if it’s about something she loves. The food had arrived at the table. They ate. Levi felt the need to open up to her about something. He already learned so much about her, and her presence made him feel like he can open up. 

“I like to run,” Levi said abruptly. Hange looked at him intently, chewing on a forkful of salad. “I don’t do it competitively or anything, but I enjoy running. I try to run once or twice a day.” Hange’s eyebrows raised and she nodded in agreement.

“That’s awesome!” She smiled again at him. “I like to run too. I’m really slow and get tired easily, but I enjoy feeling the wind in my hair and feeling my heart pound.” She took a bite of her meal again. Levi nodded and began to eat too. This sandwich was really good.

-

After talking some more about hobbies and school, they both finished their meal. The waiter brought over the check. Hange reached into her pocket for her wallet.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Levi asked. Hange furrowed her brows.

“I invited you out to lunch. I will pay,” Hange determined, her wallet now in her hands.

“No,” Levi said too quickly. “I will pay. It’s the least I can do. You helped me with my paper after all.”

The bickering lasted a very long minute. Before she got to think of the idea, Levi grabbed the checkbook and shoved his card inside before handing it to the waiter. Hange looked surprised. She sighed, putting her wallet away.

“Thank you, Levi. But you really didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to.”

In all honesty, Hange didn’t have much money. She worked at that library four times a week, but the money she made went towards paying off her tuition. She really wanted to treat this man, her new friend. She wasn’t sure if he thought the same way about her. Did he consider her his friend? She felt slightly embarrassed. She did most of the talking and felt like she was annoying him. Maybe he just wanted to pay so she would lay off. 

But the truth is, Levi felt the opposite way of how she was thinking. He was interested to hear more from her. He was addicted to the way his heart raced when he saw her. 

-

Over the next couple of days, Levi would go to that library whenever he was available. He knew it was closed on Sunday, so he went Monday and Tuesday to the library. Fortunately, he got his first batch of money from the brats that fried his computer. He received $100. Of course it was not enough, but it was a start. Wednesday the 17th came around. This specific day was a wild card. The weather was unpredictable. Levi entered the library just in time; it had started to downpour. The little bell rang as he entered the library. To his surprise, Hange was not working that day. There was a boy behind the counter who was tall and had a brown bowl cut hairstyle.  He almost thought about turning around and leaving when he realized she wasn’t there. The rain charged towards the earth viciously, so he decided to seek shelter in the small library. It almost looked like a hurricane. He felt his mood change into a bad one. He didn’t remember to ask how often she worked. 

“Hi there!” The man said. His name tag read “Moblit”. That’s a dumb name.

“I wanna use a computer,” Levi muttered, walking up to the main desk.

“Okay. Name?” Moblit grabbed the clipboard and a pen.

“Levi Ackerman.”

“Oh, I see you’ve been here before. A lot, actually.” Levi scoffed and rolled his eyes at his comment. He turned around, picked a computer, and sat down. He felt really stupid to not ask her about her schedule.

The two hours he spent working on his paper was incredibly slow. He didn’t get much done that day. He had writer’s block. He was almost done, so he didn’t worry about it too much. He didn’t know Hange’s schedule. He knew she worked Friday, the day they met; Saturday; Monday, and Tuesday. Maybe she only worked four times a week? Before he knew it, he asked Moblit aloud. It was almost an accident.

“Uh, she’ll be in on Friday,” Moblit replied. He probably couldn’t give out that information to some creep who began visiting daily with an attitude. He muttered a “thanks” before finishing up and heading out. The weather was holding up for now, so he decided to make a run for it. He didn’t say goodbye to Moblit.

He didn’t have an umbrella. The sun was trying to shine through the dark, eerie clouds. It wasn’t trying hard enough. He heard thunder rumbling in the distance.

Levi realized that this girl was all he thought about the past few days. Something about her enticed him. Something about her eyes and her presence drew him towards her. His heart skipped a beat whenever she’d graze his hand on accident, or even when she just talked to him. She made him happy. He hadn’t had too many friends in college. Although they just met last week, he felt a deep connection with her. 

Suddenly, the sun poked through the clouds for a brief moment. The world lit up. It was at that moment he recognized a familiar face. Hange. She was walking towards him. She grinned when she saw him. She wore a fitted black t-shirt and baggy, light blue jeans. 

“Levi!” She exclaimed. “I forgot my jacket in the library, so I came down to get it.” 

“You didn’t tell me you weren’t working today.” Is all Levi said. Once he said it, he realized how creepy it must’ve sounded. A man she just met happens to go to this library to work on his project every day, who happens to come up with multiple reasons to interact with her. Maybe she thought he was a perv.

“Ehh!” She sighed. “I’m sorry! I thought I told you I was off today.” Levi shook his head. The comment itself may have sounded rude, but it wasn’t. She genuinely felt bad. “Walk with me.” Levi followed. Guess not.

“I don’t work Wednesday’s and Thursday’s. Well I’m not supposed to be,” Hange explained. “Mobilt, one of my co-workers, is always calling out sick. So I basically run the place.” They walked towards the library again and entered. 

“Hey, Moblit. How’s it going?” Hange said in a normal tone, heading towards the back of the library. Moblit responded briefly, following Hange. Levi decided to hang back, he figured it was a secure area. He looked around awkwardly.

“Hange, you didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend,” Moblit said, following her towards the back. 

Hange chuckled nervously. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said bluntly. “He’s just a friend.” Moblit scoffed, rolling his eyes. “If he’s not your boyfriend, how come his mood entirely changed once he saw you?”

Hange found her jacket, folding it over her forearm. “Huh?”

“He was, like, in a bad mood when he came in. He used the computer but he seemed to be pissed or something. Now that he’s with you, he seems… tolerable.”

Hange laughed, feeling her cheeks blush. “It’s nothing like that. People have bad days, you know.”

Hange rolled her eyes and smirked, then headed towards the front of the library. “Ready?” Levi nodded and turned around.

“See you Friday,” Moblit called out. “See ya.” Hange replied.

The two started walking down the street. The air smelt of rain, and the ground was wet from the rain earlier. “Which building is your dorm in?” Hange asked. He was a bit surprised she asked him that, and she was so direct about it.

“Saint Maria,” He replied. She smiled. “Me too! I can’t believe I haven’t seen you around!” The wind picked up and the sky turned darker than before. They both looked up. “If you can’t make it to the library, you can use my desktop in my dorm room,” Hange offered. Levi’s cheeks turned bright red. 

“Thanks, maybe tomorrow I can stop by,” Levi said. It was more of him thinking aloud than a statement. It was too late though, Hange already heard him. He could’ve sworn he didn’t say it aloud.

“That’s fine! I only have a class early tomorrow morning. Come by around 11, okay? My room number is 506.” Levi nodded. Thunder rolled and sounded closer now. They were almost at the dormitory building when it started to downpour. The rain was forcefully coming down on the two. Levi groaned in annoyance. He hated being in the rain. He hated being wet; he hated the wet socks and how gross he felt when it rained. He would’ve started to run to the building to seek cover, but he was taken aback by his new friend.

She was soaked and embracing it. She lifted her head up to face the sky and she laughed. It was loud, happy, genuine, and it took Levi’s breath away. Hange reached her hands out wide and spun around. He saw a strike of lightning light up the sky. He stared at her in awe. His heart swelled. Levi smiled big. After laughing, Hange looked at Levi and shared the look that he wore just a few moments ago. She loved his smile. She wished to make him smile more. She was also determined to make him laugh, too.

She grabbed his hand. “Let’s take cover!” And she pulled him into the dormitory hall. Saint Maria’s hall was beautiful. It had ceiling-to-floor glass pane windows that were always crystal clear. There was a big black modern chandelier that hung from the ceiling. It contained visible light bulbs. Hange secretly loved it. There were the same big, yellow, leather couches in the living room as there were in the study area on his floor. They both wiped their feet off on the big rug in the entryway. 

“I love the rain,” Hange deduced, turning her head to look at him. As if Levi couldn’t tell. Her hand was still holding his. Levi looked up at her. “I like it, too.”

#levihan #levi x hange #levi x hanji #levihan fic #aot #snk #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #snk fic #aot fic #rivahan