All posts tagged: hole

Astronomers Were Watching a Black Hole When It Suddenly Exploded With Gamma Rays

Astronomers Were Watching a Black Hole When It Suddenly Exploded With Gamma Rays

Woah. Blast Radius In 2018, astronomers took the first-ever picture of a black hole, a fascinating and unprecedented glimpse of an event horizon. And as it turns out, the black hole — dubbed M87* and located some 55 million light-years away — also let out a massive belch of gamma rays while scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope team, an international collaboration combining data from sensors around the globe, were getting a closer look. The campaign gathered data from 25 terrestrial and orbital telescopes in April 2018, and scientists are still poring over the results. “We were lucky to detect a gamma-ray flare from M87 during this Event Horizon Telescope’s multi-wavelength campaign,” said University of Trieste Giacomo Principe, coauthor of a new paper accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, in a statement. “This marks the first gamma-ray flaring event observed in this source in over a decade, allowing us to precisely constrain the size of the region responsible for the observed gamma-ray emission.” Violent Delights The team is hoping the gamma ray outburst data …

Enormous black hole napping after eating a ton of gas

Enormous black hole napping after eating a ton of gas

You’ve likely been there–snoozing on the couch after a large or decadent meal. A similar phenomenon is being observed with a black hole detected in the early universe. Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) a team of scientists detected a black hole that is laying dormant after consuming too much matter. The sleepy black hole is described in a study published December 18 in the journal Nature.  Eat, sleep, repeat The black hole is located in the early universe, existing just 800 million years after the big bang. It is also massive. At 400 million times the mass of our sun, it is one of the largest black holes that JWST has observed at this point in the universe’s development. It is so large that it makes up about 40 percent of the total mass of its host galaxy. By comparison, most black holes in the local galaxy are only about 0.1 percent of their host galaxy mass. Get the Popular Science newsletter Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Despite this …

Netflix’s Meet Me Next Christmas has glaring plot hole

Netflix’s Meet Me Next Christmas has glaring plot hole

Netflix is slaying with its constant flow of Christmas content. From the deliciously ‘unhinged’ Hot Frosty, which tells the tale of a woman who falls in love with a snowman (yes, you read that right and it’s phenomenal), to The Merry Gentlemen, starring Chad Michael Murray as a handyman-turned-dancer, ’tis the season for deliciously cheesy rom-coms.  Bringing the holiday spirit, Netflix has also seen success with Meet Me Next Christmas, starring Christina Milian and Devale Ellis. But, in a hilarious twist, fans have noticed a glaring plothole in the festive flick.  WATCH: Meet Me Next Christmas – trailer For those in need of a reminder, the film follows Layla, a woman who races across New York City with help from concierge Teddy, to secure a ticket for the sold-out Pentatonix concert. A year prior, Layla had crossed paths with a handsome stranger named James, who had asked her to meet him there if they ever found themselves single, and after breaking up with her cheating ex, Layla decides she has nothing to lose.  © NetflixMeet Me …

An object struck a satellite in Earth’s orbit, leaving a hole

An object struck a satellite in Earth’s orbit, leaving a hole

An unknown small object, traveling thousands of miles per hour, punctured a satellite in Earth’s orbit. The satellite company NanoAvionics released images online showing the damage to its MP42 satellite, launched in 2022 and designed to host several instruments for different customers. The source of the hole from a chickpea-sized object is uncertain, but the event underscores the growing risk to spacecraft in orbit around our planet. “Whether this impact was from a micrometeoroid or a piece of space debris, the collision highlights the need for responsible space operations in orbit and makes us reflect on satellite resilience against these types of events,” the company posted online. SEE ALSO: NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills. Though natural impacts from small meteoroids — which are fragments of an asteroid — are inevitable in our solar system (a place teeming with asteroids), both space agencies and companies alike don’t want human-created space debris to increase. That would, of course, endanger everyone’s interests, and may eventually spawn a domino effect of continually …

Fitness apps can reveal your location – updated laws would help plug this hole in our personal security

Fitness apps can reveal your location – updated laws would help plug this hole in our personal security

Fitness apps have revolutionised the way we approach health and exercise. They provide users with the ability to track their workouts, monitor their progress towards fitness goals and share achievements with a like-minded community. However, these benefits come with significant privacy and security risks, particularly regarding the disclosure of users’ locations. Recent articles in the Guardian and French newspaper Le Monde, reported that fitness apps, such as Strava, had revealed the locations of some world leaders, posing a potential security risk. This situation spotlights the gaps in legislative measures that fail to evolve at pace with technological advancements. But it also underscores a critical need for users themselves to adopt a more vigilant approach when engaging with such platforms. While legal frameworks lay the foundation for protecting user privacy, they are not foolproof against breaches. This necessitates a dual responsibility. Both regulatory bodies and users must collaborate to ensure robust data security. Fitness apps often require access to location data to provide accurate tracking of activities like running, cycling and walking. While this functionality is …

Scientists Spot Giant Black Hole Destroying Galaxy

Scientists Spot Giant Black Hole Destroying Galaxy

Starved. Strange Universe Like a parasite sucking the life from its host, an international group of scientists have determined that a supermassive black hole is starving a distant galaxy of essential materials to make new stars. Because it’s not making new stars, the galaxy GS-10578, also known as Pablo’s Galaxy, is basically “dead,” said the scientists, led by Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, in a statement about their research, which was published in the journal Nature Astronomy. From prior observations, the team knew the galaxy was in a “quenched state” — meaning new stars weren’t being born — and yet these observations date back to the early years of the universe, just two billion years after the Big Bang. “In the early universe, most galaxies are forming lots of stars, so it’s interesting to see such a massive dead galaxy at this period in time,” said study coauthor and Cambridge astrophysicist Roberto Maiolino in the statement. The scientists had already suspected that there was a link between the galaxy’s lack of new stars and …

A black hole awakens and why some people avoid Covid: the week in science – podcast | Science

A black hole awakens and why some people avoid Covid: the week in science – podcast | Science

Ian Sample and science correspondent Hannah Devlin discuss some of the science stories that have made headlines this week, from a glimpse of a black hole awakening, to a new blood test that can detect Parkinson’s seven years before symptoms appear, and a study exploring how some people manage to avoid Covid infection How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know Source link

NASA Releases Video of What It’s Like to Fall Into a Black Hole

NASA Releases Video of What It’s Like to Fall Into a Black Hole

Whoa! Turn of Events A new NASA simulation takes you to where no human has ever dared to go: into the overpowering embrace of a black hole. The stunning visualization, available on YouTube in a 360-degree video and as an explainer, shows the reality-warping journey of approaching a supermassive black hole’s event horizon, the boundary past which nothing — not even light — returns. “People often ask about this, and simulating these difficult-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to actual consequences in the real universe,” Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who created the visualizations, said in a NASA release about the video. “So I simulated two different scenarios, one where a camera — a stand-in for a daring astronaut — just misses the event horizon and slingshots back out, and one where it crosses the boundary, sealing its fate.” Strung Out Black holes are the source of many a cosmic mystery. Most enigmatic of all is what’s at their core: a singularity, meaning a one-dimensional point with …

The Traitors star Harry Clark: I was in mental health hole and didn’t know where to turn

The Traitors star Harry Clark: I was in mental health hole and didn’t know where to turn

Sign up to our free Living Well email for advice on living a happier, healthier and longer life Live your life healthier and happier with our free weekly Living Well newsletter Winner of BBC’s The Traitors series two, Harry Clark, has revealed that he struggled with his mental health while he served in the British Army. “I just dug myself into a hole where it felt like I was six foot deep,” says the 23-year-old, who took home the £95,000 prize money after scheming and lying his way through the hit reality show – famously blindsiding best friend on the show, Mollie Pearce, during a shock finale. But as a young lance corporal, while abroad on training deployments and after coming home, Clark says: “I didn’t know where to turn, I didn’t know what to do. And then, you know, you question yourself, is there any point in being here?” However, he says: “I was really lucky that happened to me around the age of 21. It was a blessing in disguise. From that, I …

A mysterious €21 billion hole in France’s coffers

A mysterious €21 billion hole in France’s coffers

Public finance might not be an exact science but neither is it an occult science. Unexplained phenomena are rare in that field. And yet that is just what happened at the end of 2023, when the teams at France’s economy ministry had to reveal the existence of a €21 billion hole in the public coffers: Taxes that had not flowed in as they should have; or, at least, as they were expected to. A €21 billion discrepancy with projections is unheard of outside a period of crisis. It’s almost as much as the amount the government has been forced to save this year. This discrepancy explains the rise of the 2023 public deficit to 5.5% of GDP, compared with the 4.9% that had been forecast; provoking a political storm a few months before the European elections and fueling the dangerous accusation of incompetence. Read more Subscribers only France’s deficit stood at 5.5% of GDP in 2023, well above forecasts France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has promised to investigate, and blamed it on everything from …