This Galaxy Cluster May Have Just Dealt a Major Blow to String Theory

Chandra image of the Perseus cluster.

In the heart of a galaxy cluster 200 million light-years away, astronomers have failed to detect hypothetical particles called axions.

This places new constraints on how we believe these particles work - but it also has pretty major implications for string theory, and the development of a Theory of Everything that describes how the physical Universe works.

"Until recently I had no idea just how much X-ray astronomers bring to the table when it comes to string theory, but we could play a major role," said astrophysicist Christopher Reynolds of the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Christopher Reynolds

"If these particles are eventually detected it would change physics forever."

When it comes to understanding how the Universe works, we've developed some pretty good frameworks. One is general relativity, describing how physics works on a macro level. Another is quantum mechanics, which describes how things behave on the atomic and subatomic level.

The big problem is that the two frameworks famously don't get along. General relativity cannot be scaled down to the quantum level, and quantum mechanics cannot be scaled up. There have been many attempts to get them to play nice, developing what is called a Theory of Everything.

One of the most promising candidates for resolving the differences between general relativity and quantum mechanics is something called string theory, which involves replacing the point-like particles in particle physics with tiny, vibrating one-dimensional strings.

Furthermore, many models of string theory predict the existence of axions - the ultra-low-mass particles first hypothesised in the 1970s to resolve a question of why strong atomic forces follow something called charge-parity symmetry, when most models say they don't need to. As it turned out, string theory also predicts large numbers of particles that behave like axions, called axion-like particles.

One of the properties of axion-like particles is that they can convert into a photon when they pass through a magnetic field; and, conversely, photons can convert into axion-like particles when they pass through a magnetic field. The probability of this depends on a range of factors, including the strength of the magnetic field, the distance travelled, and the mass of the particle.

This is where Reynolds and his team come in. They had been using the Chandra X-ray Observatory to study the active nucleus of a galaxy called NGC 1275 that sits around 237 million light-years away, at the heart of a cluster of galaxies called the Perseus cluster.

Their eight days' worth of observations ended up telling them almost nothing about the black hole. But then they realised the data could be used to look for axion-like particles.

Galaxy NGC1275

"The X-ray light from NGC1275 needs to pass through the hot gas of the Perseus cluster, and this gas is magnetised," Reynolds explained.

"The magnetic field is relatively weak (more than 10,000 times weaker than the magnetic field at Earth's surface), but the X-ray photons need to travel an enormous distance through this magnetic field. This means there is ample opportunity for the conversion of these photons into axion-like particles (provided that the axion-like particles are sufficiently low mass)."

Because the probability of conversion depends on the wavelength of the X-ray photons, the observations should reveal a distortion as some wavelengths are being converted more effectively than others. It took the team about a year of painstaking work, but in the end, no such distortion was found.

This means the team could rule out the existence of axions in the mass range their observations were sensitive to - down to about a millionth of a billionth of the mass of an electron.

"Our research doesn't rule out the existence of these particles, but it definitely doesn't help their case," said astronomer Helen Russell of the University of Nottingham in the UK.

"These constraints dig into the range of properties suggested by string theory, and may help string theorists weed their theories."

Jack the Ripper's identity is finally 'exposed' from the killer's own diary

Jack the Ripper killed at least five women and is believed to have murdered as many as 11

Jack the Ripper's crimes are as terrifying today as they were more than 130 years ago when his gruesome murders terrorised the East End of London.

The notorious serial killer is believed to have been responsible for the brutal deaths of 11 prostitutes during the 1880s.

Even in the violent times that gripped the poverty-stricken East End, these murders shocked and kept the capital in fear and the rest of the country fascinated.

At least three of Jack the Ripper's victims had their internal organs removed.

This led to speculation that the killer was a doctor or surgeon.

At the height of his killing spree, several newspapers and the police received letters from a man claiming to be the killer.

Experts now believe the killer could have been wealthy cotton salesman James Maybrick

In one of these letters, which many believe were nothing more than an elaborate hoax, the killer described himself as Jack the Ripper and the name stuck.

The most famous correspondence, now known as the From Hell letter, included part of a preserved human kidney and was sent to George Lusk from the Whitchapel Vigilance Committee.

While the murders were never solved, or even comprehensively linked, they have lived on in folklore for more than 130 years.

Five women, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, were all killed between August 31 and November 9.

They became known as the "canonical five" and of all the killings, these are the murders which are most likely linked.

At the time of the murders, there were more than 1,000 prostitutes working in Whitechapel, East London.

Our culture is fascinated by true crime. Many serial killers have become household names for the notoriety surrounding their cases, like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Others remain nameless, known only by their crimes and victims. Here are the most notorious cases that remain unsolved to this day.

Violence against sex workers was common in the late 19th century and even though there are rumours Jack the Ripper killed 11 women, five were deemed definitely the work of one man.

Each of the canonical five had their throats slit before they were stabbed dozens of times in their stomach and genitals.

Several of their internal organs were then removed before their faces were mutilated beyond recognition.

Each of the five women died gruesome, terrible deaths - and then suddenly the Ripper stopped.

Mary Kelly is believed to have been his last victim

Her horribly mutilated body was found on the bed of the single room she rented in Spitalfields in the East End.

A knife allegedly used by Jack the Ripper during his East End London murders

She had been disembowelled and her face had been "hacked beyond all recognition".

Mary's throat had been slit so violently it was severed down to her spine and almost all her organs had been removed from her abdomen.

Her uterus, kidneys and one breast were carefully placed beneath her head, with other organs left on her bedside table.

Chillingly, Mary's heart had been removed from the crime scene.

For 130 years Jack the Ripper's identity has remained a mystery.

There were rumours he was a gentleman, a surgeon, even a member of the royal family.

Did Liverpool cotton salesman James Maybrick confess to being Jack the Ripper in his diary

But could the killer have given himself away with his own diary.

When the diary of James Maybrick, a cotton salesman from Liverpool, was discovered in contained vital clues.

The 9,000 word record of his life included harrowing details of six twisted murders that Maybrick claimed to have carried out at the end of the 19th century.

He admitted to killing a woman in Manchester but crucially also to butchering five women in London's East End.

Maybrick signed the diary "I give my name that all know of me, so history do tell, what love can do to a gentleman born. Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper."

Following its discovery 25 years ago many have doubted its authenticity and argued it had been written in the years after the murder took place.

But director Bruce Robinson, who also wrote Withnail and I, believes he can prove the diary is genuine.

Maybrick signed his own diary Jack the Ripper

Maybrick was a wealthy man and lived in a mansion called Battlecrease House.

His diary was found under the floorboards of the house in 1992 by an electrician.

He passed it to a scrap metal dealer, who kept it secret for many years.

Robinson and his team of researchers traced to book back to the home and discovered that Maybrick died in 1889 - the year after Jack the Ripper's final murder took place.

Could it be that after avoiding detection for more than 130 years, Jack the Ripper's identity had finally been revealed by the killer himself?

How does the coronavirus compare to the Spanish flu?

The coronavirus crisis inevitably prompts comparisons with the last epidemic that shook the world: the Spanish flu. Although the Great War overshadowed it in the public consciousness, this outbreak killed at least 30 million people worldwide – with some estimates even putting the figure at 100 million from 1918 to 1919. But are the two epidemics really comparable?

As the coronavirus outbreak accelerated after first emerging in the Chinese city Wuhan at the end of 2019, there have been more comparisons with the Spanish flu a century ago.

“People are talking about the Spanish flu right now because at the time, it was shocking; the biggest health crisis the world had ever known in terms of how it affected the demographic balance,” noted Anne Rasmussen, a historian at the EHESS university in Paris. “Of course, there was the Black Death [which caused between 25 and 34 million deaths in Europe from 1347 to 1353], but the Spanish flu was on a much more global scale.”

“But at the same time, the Spanish flu and the coronavirus are not really comparable,” Rasmussen continued. “Things are completely different today. One has to be very careful to avoid using comparisons that create more fear than illumination.”

Two very different diseases

Although the two diseases are both respiratory infections with common symptoms such as a runny nose and fever, they belong to different families of viruses. “Pneumonia and pleurisy caused a lot of death in 1918; people were suffocated – they felt like they were drowning,” said Rasmussen. “With regard to the coronavirus, France’s director general for health Jérôme Salomon emphasised how different it is from the influeneza virus; the clinical profile, the severity, the biological signs are all different.”

The coronavirus is also more threatening to very different age groups from those who were hit hardest by the Spanish flu. The former affects the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions most severely. By contrast, the latter was most deadly for young adults – a rare phenomenon that continues to intrigue epidemologists.

“We’re still trying to explain it, especially seeing as we now have the decoded DNA of the 1918 virus,” Rasmussen said. “One factor that may help explain it is that the flu had already circulated over previous decades, particularly during the 1889 epidemic. People who were alive at that point could have found themselves to be partially immunised when the Spanish flu broke out three decades later.”

Another fundamental difference lies in the level of knowledge about the two diseases, Rasmussen said: “At the time of the Spanish flu, people didn’t know the influnenza pathogen, and without this knowledge, it wasn’t possible for them to create a vaccine. They knew they were dealing with a flu and that it was contagious, but they weren’t able to see the viruses because they were too small. That subsequently became possible with the electron microscope.”

Scientists did not isolate the particular virus strain that causes influenza in humans until 1933. Of course, scientific knowledge is much more advanced today. “We decrypted the RNA of the coronavirus within a few days, whereas for HIV/AIDS it took a few years,” Rasmussen said.

‘Let’s not create more fear’

The Spanish flu killed more people in 24 weeks than HIV/AIDS killed in 24 years, hitting countries ravaged by the Great War as it accelerated to become an epidemic. It acquired its name not because it originated in Spain – there is not enough epistemological data to definitively pinpoint its place of origin – but because the Spanish media were relatively free to report it in a neutral country, unencumbered by the censorship present in combatant nations.

The disease spread like wildfire in overcrowded army camps and hospitals, then spread to the rest of the world after raging through Europe. Patients did not benefit from modern resuscitation techniques or the antibiotics necessary to treat the complications the disease caused.

There was a divergent range of responses to the epidemic. In France, where the Spanish flu killed 240,000 people, there were bans on some gatherings and some public places were closed – but nothing like the current coronavirus lockdown. The focus was on the war effort.

“They were going through the final stages of the war, with decisive moments in a series of offensives and counter-offensives,” Rasmussen said. “You couldn’t stop people moving around because that would have hindered military operations.”

Despite the terrifying scale of the Spanish flu, it was not until 1948 that the World Health Organization was founded to co-ordinate the prevention and detection of disease outbreaks on a global scale. There were several outbreaks in the ensuing decades: the 1957 Singapore flu, the Hong Kong flu in 1968 and H1N1 in 2009.

“We learned a lot of lessons from each of these epidemics, with a much more efficient monitoring system – and we’re even better prepared today,” Rasmussen said. “Let’s not create more fear; the current state of affairs already provokes enough anxiety. It’s a different world now from the one that saw the Spanish flu. Things are done on a different scale now, with much more research and a much more efficient approach to dealing with diseases. There are great reasons for hope.”

Rare Roman coin minted thousands of years ago among new treasures declared

A rare Roman coin minted in London thousands of years ago is among record amounts of treasure declared today (Tuesday).

The bronze coin is thought to be one of the last made during the reign of the British rebel emperor Carausius.

It has been donated to the British Museum, which today revealed the number of treasure discoveries — which covers gold and silver more than 300 years old and other ancient objects — has hit a record level again.

A vessel from the Iron Age

According to its annual report there were 1,311 finds across England, Wales and Northern Ireland last year.

Among the major discoveries is a 1,100-year-old medieval brooch found in Norfolk and a solid gold Bronze Age arm ring which is so rare experts cannot work out where it came from.

Caroline Dinenage, minister of state for digital and culture, said: “I am very pleased that a record number of treasure finds have been unearthed and it is brilliant that they will now go on display in local museums across the country.

“Each one of these valuable discoveries tells us more about the way our ancestors lived.” Data published by the museum also reveals more about smaller finds dating back to 2017, including gold jewellery and buttons found by Thames mudlarks and copper coins found during the upgrade of Bank station.

The 23 coins have gone to the collection of the Museum of London, while the future of other finds is still to be decided.

Hartwig Fischer, director of the British Museum, said: “It is encouraging that so many finds have been voluntarily recorded through the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS).

“PAS and Treasure are truly national partnerships with museums, experts, finds liaison officers and the public collaborating to aid our understanding of the past.”

Remembering 'Kearsley's darkest day'

An artist's impression of bodies being identified at the Unicorn Inn pub, after the Unity Brook Colliery Mining Disaster

The morning of March 12 1878 must have seemed like any other Tuesday for the workers at Unity Brook Colliery in Kearsley .

But it ended in tragedy - an explosion causing 43 deaths.

Each year, people in Kearsley gather faithfully to make sure it's not forgotten.

Just this week, Stephen Tonge, a local who worked in the mining industry for 25 years, invited youngsters from local primary schools to read the names of those who died.

Here, MyBolton and the Manchester Evening News look back on Kearsley's darkest day.

Unity Brook was a relatively new colliery, having only been worked in for between nine and ten years, and it covered two coal seams; the Trencherbone mine and the Cannel mine.

Just nine days before the explosion, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Mines for the area, Joseph Dickenson, visited the pit and found its to be in a completely satisfactory condition.

In the 1800s, hundreds of miners died in explosions, roof falls, floods and haulage accidents and the Lancashire Coalfield, on which Unity Brook stood, gained particular notoriety in the 1870s.

It often found itself top of the list when it came to accident figures - despite only being the seventh largest producer of coal in the UK.

In Bolton , the issue came to a particularly devastating head during a 15-month period between January 1877 and March 1878 - when three mining disasters happened within four miles of each other.

Disasters at Stonehill Colliery, Farnworth and Fogg's Pit, Darcy Lever in January and February 1877 led to 28 deaths between them. This number was dwarfed a year later when an explosion at Unity Brook killed 43 people.

Coal mines were notorious for having highly flammable methane gas present, better known as fire damp, and naked flames in the presence of fire damp could lead to explosions.

On March 12 1878, the colliery was checked twice by underlooker James Holt; first thing in the morning and at noon. On these checks it became apparent that a small part of the roof was starting to fall.

At Unity Brook, naked flames were used to work both the mines and a fallen roof would exacerbate the risk of explosion caused by fire damp. Not considering it to be anything particularly untoward though, Mr Holt propped the fallen roof up and signed the colliery off as being safe.

Just after 1pm, when the men had returned from their lunch, one of the ropes which held the mining cages snapped and the cage fell down the shaft into the lower Cannel mine.

The memorial to the Unity Brook Colliery Disaster at Manchester Road, Kearsley

When the cage reached the pit bank, a huge explosion was triggered, which was heard up to a quarter of a mile away. The iron plates which covered the pit bank were blown up and fragments were hurled in various directions.

All 42 people working in the Cannel mine at the time died, along with the onsetter working at the mouthing of the Trencherbone mine. It took around five and a half hours to recover the first body - that of 19-year-old Thomas Hilton.

It was not for another 48 hours, at 1pm on Thursday, that all 43 bodies were recovered from the colliery and identified. The youngest were brothers Jonathan and David Enion, aged 12 and 13. Their father Robert Enion, 39, was also killed in the blast.

The Unicorn Inn, where bodies were identified after the Unity Brook Colliery Mining Disaster

The Unicorn Inn Public House was used to hold the first inquest into the disaster, and the stables of the pub also acted as a mortuary. At inquest, the deaths were recorded as purely accidental and it was concluded that all possible precautions had been used in the working of the mine. James Holt was exonerated from any blame as his decision not to withdraw the men from the mine after noticing the fallen roof was regarded as a simple error of judgement.

Around a year after the disaster, Unity Brook Colliery closed for good and today, a memorial stands at site of where the Unicorn Inn once stood, in Manchester Road.

The memorial is a coal tub bearing the name of the Unity Brook Colliery and displaying the number 43. It was unveiled in 2018 by Bolton historian Simon Colley, who researched the disaster extensively for his book 'Kearsley: An illustrated History'.

He said: "Tuesday 12th March 1878 became Kearsley’s darkest day. The single worst disaster our town has ever known struck in an instant, and took the lives of 43 men and boys at the Unity Brook Colliery.

The memorial to the Unity Brook Colliery Disaster at Manchester Road, Kearsley

"I hope when we see the memorial it reminds us of the men and boys who never returned from work that day, and of the lives of all the Kearsley miners who lived without the luxuries we take for granted.

"And, just to make enough money to survive and keep food on the table, they had to go down dangerous deep dark holes in the ground, and that we might be just a little bit thankful that we, well, we don’t have to."

A yearly service is also held at the spot by Kearsley resident Stephen Tonge. Mr Tonge, who worked in the mining industry for 25 years, added: "Working class people were considered expendable in those days and they were under huge pressure to produce coal.

"The official report recorded it as an accident but I imagine today it would probably go down as neglect, albeit through a need to keep production moving."

The 43 people who died in the Unity Brook Colliery disaster are:

William Barnes, 38, of Stoneclough

Absolom Barnes, 14

James Beattie, 19 of Manor H’ss

George Booth, 21, of Denton

James Byron, 32, of Slater-field, Bolton

Thomas Byron, 28, of Kearsley

James Chadwick, 38, of Kearsley

Robert Clarke, 18, of Kearsley

Robert Enion, 39, of Kearsley Moor

Jonathan Enion, 12, of Kearsley Moor

David Enion 13, of Kearsley Moor

Richard Featherstone, 18, of Kearsley

Peter Fogg, 26, of Clifton

John Greenhalgh, 34, of Swinton

John Hamblet, 31, of Kearsley

John Harrison, 40, of Kearsley

John Haynes, 21, of Kearsley

Thomas Hilton, 20, of Kearsley

James Hobson, 30, of Kearsley

Joseph Hobson, 26, of Kearsley Moor

Alfred Isherwood, 31, of Lower Kearsley

George Jackson, 28, of Kearsley

William Leach, 24, of Lower Kearsley

Thomas Lever, 18, of Kearsley

George Lindley, 47, of Kearsley Moor

Ellis Lord (or Lindley), 14 , of Kearsley Moor

Amos Lomax, 17, of Kearsley

John Tickle Lomax, 31, of Eckersley Buildings

Thomas Lomax, 28, of Kearsley

Wright Lomax, 26, of Kearsley

Thomas Edward Mace, 19, of Kearsley

William Mayoh, 38, of Kearsley

Christopher Moore, 26, of Lindley’s Houses

William Morris, 15, of Taskers lane

James Partington, 44, of Kearsley Moor

Thomas Peak, 17, of Kearsley

Charles Tonge, 16, of Taskers Lane

Andrew Walker, 23, of Stoneclough

Richard Wallwork, 25, of Swinton

Joseph Welsby, 18, of Kearsley Moor

Samuel Wolstenholme, 47, of Lindley’s Houses

Thomas Wolstenholme, 41, of Kearsley

William Wolstenholme, 21, of Kearsley Moor

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