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There are supermassive black holes. There are ultramassive black holes. How large can these strange objects grow? Well, there could be something even bigger than ultramassive: stupendously large black holes, according to the latest research. Such hypothetical black holes - larger than 100 billion times the mass of the Sun - have been explored in a new paper which names them SLABs, an acronym that stands for "Stupendously LArge Black holeS". "We already know that black holes exist over a vast range of masses, with a supermassive black hole of 4 million solar masses residing at the centre of our...

OMG! Have you ever seen something like this? Have you ever seen a bright-blue lightning bolt shooting upward from thunderclouds? Such Blue jets are difficult to spot from the ground, since the electrical discharges erupt from the tops of thunderclouds. But what about from space? In a new scientific release, scientists discuss such a transient luminous event that occurred on February 26, 2019 near Nauru, a small island in the central Pacific Ocean. And the images are bombastic: The above artist impression features a lightning in clouds seen from space followed by a blue flash that lasts 10 micro seconds,...

The evidence for this mystery space rock comes from a diamond-studded meteor that exploded over Sudan in 2008. NASA had spotted the 9-ton (8,200 kilograms), 13-foot (4 meters) meteor heading toward the planet well before impact, and researchers showed up in the Sudanese desert to collect an unusually rich haul of remains. Now, a new study of one of those meteorites suggests that the meteor may have broken off of a giant asteroid — one more or less the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. The meteorite harbored an unusual suite of minerals...

About 87 million miles (140 million kilometers) above the Grand Canyon, an even larger, grander abyss cuts through the gut of the Red Planet. Known as Valles Marineris, this system of deep, vast canyons runs more than 2,500 miles (4,000 km) along the Martian equator, spanning nearly a quarter of the planet's circumference. This gash in the bedrock of Mars is nearly 10 times as long as Earth's Grand Canyon and three times deeper, making it the single largest canyon in the solar system — and, according to ongoing research from the University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson, one of...

As the solar system was developing, the giant planets (Jupiter and Saturn) formed very early, and as they grew, they migrated both closer to and further away from the sun to stay in gravitationally stable orbits. The gravitational effect of these massive objects caused immense reshuffling of other planetary bodies that were forming at the time, meaning that the current locations of many planetary bodies in our solar system are not where they originally formed. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists set out to reconstruct these original formation locations by studying the isotopic compositions of different groups of meteorites that...

We have one of our first feuds of 2021. And once again, it features a conservative lawmaker versus a Hollywood celebrity. It all started when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) shared his statement in opposition to one of President Biden's executive actions on Day One of his presidency – his decision to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. In his message, Sen. Cruz explains that bringing the U.S. back into the climate agreement will destroy thousands of jobs. Heritage Foundation studies have shown that re-entering the accord would cost us at least 400,000 American manufacturing jobs. In a sense, Cruz argues that...

A group of galaxies nicknamed the Copeland Septet, in the constellation of Leo. Astronomers using images from Kitt Peak National Observatory and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory have created the largest ever map of the sky, comprising over a billion galaxies. The final data release from the ambitious DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys sets the stage for a ground-breaking 5-year survey with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which aims to provide new insights into the nature of dark energy. Credit: KPNO/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Legacy Imaging Survey ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Giant Map of the Sky Sets Stage for Ambitious DESI Survey Astronomers using images from Kitt Peak...

January 20- Inauguration and 4 Crises January 21- COVID January 22- Economic Relief January 23-24- Weekend January 25- Buy America January 26- Equity January 27- Climate January 28- Health Care January 29- Immigration January 30-31- Weekend February - Restoring America’s Place in the World

Explanation: Why does a cloudy moon sometimes appear colorful? The effect, called a lunar corona, is created by the quantum mechanical diffraction of light around individual, similarly-sized water droplets in an intervening but mostly-transparent cloud. Since light of different colors has different wavelengths, each color diffracts differently. Lunar Coronae are one of the few quantum mechanical color effects that can be easily seen with the unaided eye. Solar coronae are also sometimes evident. The featured composite image was captured a few days before the close Great Conjunction between Saturn and Jupiter last month. In the foreground, the Italian village of...

“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” — former President Barack Obama. “…I think [Joe Biden’s] been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” — former Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Keep those two quotes in mind. Joe Biden assumes the presidency promising to base his decisions on science. He has even elevated a science adviser position to the cabinet, a first in American history. As someone who spent several years working at NASA, I strongly support science being considered in major presidential decisions. Science ought not be political. If...

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and other lockdown critics have been accused for months of ignoring the science on the novel coronavirus, but a recently released study by Stanford University researchers is providing an empirical boost to those who want to shut down the shutdowns. A peer-reviewed article in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation found “no clear significant beneficial effect” from stay-at-home orders and business closures in eight nations, including the United States, versus voluntary measures adopted by South Korea and Sweden. Published Jan. 5, the article offers what may be the strongest scientific challenge yet to more restrictive...

Explanation: What powers this unusual nebula? CTB-1 is the expanding gas shell that was left when a massive star toward the constellation of Cassiopeia exploded about 10,000 years ago. The star likely detonated when it ran out of elements, near its core, that could create stabilizing pressure with nuclear fusion. The resulting supernova remnant, nicknamed the Medulla Nebula for its brain-like shape, still glows in visible light by the heat generated by its collision with confining interstellar gas. Why the nebula also glows in X-ray light, though, remains a mystery. One hypothesis holds that an energetic pulsar was co-created that...

Artistic rendition of the exoplanet WASP-107b and its star, WASP-107. Some of the star's light streams through the exoplanet's extended gas layer. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, M. Kornmesser. ======================================================== The core mass of the giant exoplanet WASP-107b is much lower than what was thought necessary to build up the immense gas envelope surrounding giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers at Université de Montréal have found. This intriguing discovery by Ph.D. student Caroline Piaulet of UdeM's Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) suggests that gas-giant planets form a lot more easily than previously believed. Piaulet is part of the groundbreaking research...

Researchers used the ALMA telescope array in Chile to discover the quasar A quasar is a type of supermassive black hole that is releasing a lot of energy This object was discovered when the universe was just 670 million years old The discovery can help researchers better understand how these objects form Its age and size brings into doubt theories they were formed from collapsed star clusters, with researchers suggesting they instead feast on cold hydrogen gas =========================================================== The most distant supermassive black hole known to science has been detected by astronomers - and it is more than 13 billion...

Seeing our world through the eyes of a migratory bird would be a rather spooky experience. Something about their visual system allows them to 'see' our planet's magnetic field, a clever trick of quantum physics, and biochemistry that helps them navigate vast distances. Now, for the first time ever, scientists from the University of Tokyo have directly observed a key reaction hypothesised to be behind birds', and many other creatures', talents for sensing the direction of the planet's poles. Importantly, this is evidence of quantum physics directly affecting a biochemical reaction in a cell – something we've long hypothesised but...

Explanation: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax Cluster of galaxies. This impressively sharp color image shows the intense, reddish star forming regions near the ends of central bar and along the spiral arms, with details of the obscuring dust lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing...

Researchers have found a way to protect highly fragile quantum systems from noise, which could aid in the design and development of new quantum devices, such as ultra-powerful quantum computers. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, have shown that microscopic particles can remain intrinsically linked, or entangled, over long distances even if there are random disruptions between them. Using the mathematics of quantum theory, they discovered a simple setup where entangled particles can be prepared and stabilized even in the presence of noise by taking advantage of a previously unknown symmetry in quantum systems. Their results, reported in the...

From Jan. 9-12, Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn will be visible in the southwestern sky. The celestial event is known as a “triple conjunction,” which means two planets and a third planet meet each other in the sky for a short period of time. Shortly after sunset on Jan. 9, look above the west-southwestern horizon and you will see Mercury to the left of Saturn and Jupiter positioned just above Saturn. “From Friday evening to Monday evening, the planet Mercury will appear to pass first by Saturn and then by Jupiter as it shifts away from the horizon, visible each evening...

The largest black holes in the universe... sit at the centers of almost every galaxy in the cosmos. Even the Milky Way has one, a monster at 4 million solar masses, designated as Sagittarius A*. ...[A]s far as we know, the only way to form black holes is through the deaths of massive stars. When they die, they leave behind a black hole a few times more massive than the sun. To get to supergiant status, they have to merge with other black holes and/or consume as much gas as possible, bulking up all those millions of solar masses... Either...

Explanation: Why are these sand dunes on Mars striped? No one is sure. The featured image shows striped dunes in Kunowsky Crater on Mars, photographed recently with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE Camera. Many Martian dunes are known to be covered unevenly with carbon dioxide (dry ice) frost, creating patterns of light and dark areas. Carbon dioxide doesn’t melt, but sublimates, turning directly into a gas. Carbon dioxide is also a greenhouse material even as a solid, so it can trap heat under the ice and sublimate from the bottom up, causing geyser-like eruptions. During Martian spring, these eruptions can...