Milky Way

• In the typical model, dark matter accounts for most of the gravitational attraction in the universe, providing the glue that allows structures like galaxies, including our own Milky Way, to form.
• As the solar system orbits around the center of the Milky Way, Earth moves through a dark matter halo, which makes up most of the matter in our galaxy.
• One popular guess is that dark matter is a new type of particle, the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle, or WIMP.

Searching for WIMPs

• Over the past 30 years, scientists have developed an experimental program to try to detect the rare interactions between WIMPs and regular atoms.
• When particles pass through the detector, they may collide with xenon atoms, leading to a flash of light and the release of electrons.
• In LZ, two massive electrical grids apply an electric field across the volume of liquid, which pushes these released electrons to the liquid’s surface.

Reducing radioactivity

• Using this special titanium reduces the radioactivity in LZ, creating a clear space to see any dark matter interactions.
• In LZ, the central xenon detector lives inside two other detectors, called the xenon skin and the outer detector.
• These supporting layers catch radioactivity on the way in or out of the central xenon chamber.

The hunt continues

• In the result just published, using 60 days of data, LZ recorded about five events per day in the detector.
• That’s about a trillion fewer events than a typical particle detector on the surface would record in a day.
• By looking at the characteristics of these events, researchers can safely say that no interaction so far has been caused by dark matter.

• For years, small groups of astronomy enthusiasts have traveled the globe chasing the rare solar eclipse.
• They have embarked on cruises to the middle of the ocean, taken flights into the eclipse’s path and even traveled to Antarctica.
• But astro-tourism – traveling to national parks, observatories or other natural, dark-sky locations to view astronomical events – isn’t limited just to chasing eclipses.
• As a consequence, most people have to travel to witness meteor showers and other common astronomical events.

Can’t miss astronomical events

• During totality, those in the path of the eclipse will see the Sun’s corona, or its outer atmosphere, behind the Moon’s silhouette.
• Finally, a partial eclipse occurs when the Moon blocks only a part of the Sun’s disk, as the name implies.
• Meteor showers are a far more common astronomical event than eclipses, and they are visible from any dark-sky location on Earth.
• Meteor showers occur when Earth’s orbit around the Sun takes it through the dust left behind by a comet.

Tips for aspiring astro-tourists

• The full moon rises at about 6 p.m. and sets at 6 a.m., making stargazing all but impossible because of its brightness.
• For ideal stargazing conditions, the Moon should be below the horizon, and the best viewing conditions are during new moon.
• You can use a moonrise/moonset calculator to determine the phase of the Moon and its rise and set times for any location on Earth.
• Amateur astronomers always joke that the sky is cloudy during the most interesting astronomical events.
• Though you may still see the brightest meteors from city suburbs, the darker your sky, the more meteors you’ll see.

• Avolta today announced the completion of two dairy manure to renewable natural gas (RNG) projects at the Butterfield and Milky Way dairies.
• CHARLESTON, W. Va., BUCKEYE, Ariz. and MARICOPA, Ariz., March 30, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Avolta today announced the completion of two dairy manure to renewable natural gas (RNG) projects at the Butterfield and Milky Way dairies.
• The Butterfield and Milky Way projects are among the first RNG facilities to qualify for Investment Tax Credits (ITC) under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
• With these RNG projects operational, the dairy farms can achieve measurable results, including:
  "We're committed to helping Butterfield and Milky Way achieve the lowest carbon footprint possible," says Avolta co-founder Patrick Graney.

• Typically, galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, and astronomers can observe them as the surrounding gas and dust fall into them.
• The authors showed the black hole to be enshrouded by a thick column of dust, similar to what we typically see in many actively accreting supermassive black holes.
• It was unclear whether the smaller black holes in dwarf galaxies would behave similarly to the supermassive black holes in typical galaxies.
• Finding J144013+024744's monster black hole to be actually buried behind a screen of dust is quite exciting, since the census of the prevalence of the monster black hole in dwarf galaxies is one of the few actually measurable constrains of how all these supermassive black holes were seeded in the very early Universe.