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A trail of starlight thought to possibly indicate a runaway supermassive black hole may be something much more mundane: a spiral galaxy seen edge on, a new study finds. In February, astronomer Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University and colleagues reported spotting a line of stars near a compact galaxy in Hubble Space Telescope images. The researchers’ analysis suggested that three galaxies had interacted and merged, kicking a supermassive black hole out of its host galaxy (SN: 3/10/23). The black hole then traveled through a nearby gas cloud, the scenario goes, triggering the formation of stars in a line that...

Chemical Elements in a Distant Gas Cloud This artist’s impression shows a distant gas cloud that contains different chemical elements, illustrated here with schematic representations of various atoms. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have detected three distant gas clouds whose chemical composition matches what we expect from the explosions of the first stars that appeared in the Universe. These early stars can be studied indirectly by analyzing the chemical elements they dispersed into the surrounding environment after they died in supernova explosions. The three distant gas clouds detected in this study are rich in carbon, oxygen, and magnesium, but...

Flashing fast radio bursts...Animation of the randomness of fast radio bursts. (NRAO Outreach/Vimeo) Like gravitational waves (GWs) and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the most powerful and mysterious astronomical phenomena today. These transient events consist of bursts that put out more energy in a millisecond than the Sun does in three days. While most bursts last mere milliseconds, there have been rare cases where FRBs were found repeating. While astronomers are still unsure what causes them and opinions vary, dedicated observatories and international collaborations have dramatically increased the number of events available for study. A...

The beam of light coming from the telescope is then shown in deep blue entering the instrument through the pick-off mirror located at the top of the instrument and acting like a periscope. Then, a series of mirrors redirect the light toward the bottom of the instruments where a set of 4 spectroscopic modules are located. Once there, the beam of light is divided by optical elements called dichroics in 4 beams corresponding to different parts of the mid-infrared region. Each beam enters its own integral field unit; these components split and reformat the light from the whole field of...

Scientists at ETH Zurich have made progress in creating heavier Schrödinger cats, which can be alive (top) and dead (bottom) at the same time. Credit: Yiwen Chu / ETH Zurich Researchers at ETH Zurich have created the heaviest Schrödinger cat to date by putting a crystal in a superposition of two oscillation states. Their results could lead to more robust quantum bits and help to explain why quantum superpositions are not observed in everyday life. Researchers at ETH Zurich have created the heaviest Schrödinger cat to date. For this, they combined an oscillating crystal with a superconducting circuit. They hope...

A nearly 60-year-old mathematical problem has finally been solved. The story began last fall when David Smith, a retired print technician from Yorkshire, England, came upon a shape with a tantalizing property. The life-long tiling enthusiast discovered a 13-sided shape — dubbed the hat — that is able to fill the infinite plane without overlaps or gaps in a pattern that not only never repeats but also never can be made to repeat. This elusive shape is known to mathematicians as an aperiodic monotile or an einstein, a clever pun that takes its name from the German words ein and...

Researchers at NOIRLab have released a version of the first image ever captured of a black hole that has been sharpened by using artificial intelligence. Photo courtesy of NOIRLab/Press Release April 13 (UPI) -- Researchers at the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab have applied AI technology to the first image ever captured of a black hole to present a clearer image of how gas spirals into supermassive black holes. When gas approaches a black hole, it swirls quickly and superheats because of friction, which in turn releases radiation that can be detected by radio telescopes. The team published a paper in...

An amateur mathematician in the United Kingdom may have solved a 60-year-old problem in geometry, garnering the attention of researchers. CNN reported David Smith, a retired printing technician, has discovered a shape known as an “einstein,” which can be tiled over a surface without the pattern repeating. The outlet noted mathematicians first began working on this problem in the 1960s. Smith and three coauthors, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss, published a paper explaining Smith’s finding. Smith, who says he is “always looking for an interesting shape,” wrote a blog post to serve as a “scrapbook” of...

Gaia Black Holes The location of the first two black holes discovered by ESA’s Gaia mission in the Milky Way. This map of our galaxy was also made by the Gaia mission. Gaia Black Hole 1 is located just 1560 light-years away from us in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus and Gaia Black Hole 2 is 3800 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus. In galactic terms, these black holes reside in our cosmic backyard. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO ESA’s Gaia mission has helped discover a new kind of black hole. The new family already has two members,...

In a distant galaxy, a supermassive black hole spewing radiation at near light speed has shifted its angle by a whopping 90 degrees to point directly toward Earth — a sharp turn that's puzzling physicists. Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the hungry black holes at the cores of many other galaxies, and they accrete matter and spew powerful jets of high-energy particles known as relativistic jets. AGN are classified according to what part of the AGN is pointed toward Earth. The researchers also observed two lobes — areas where an AGN's jets interact with surrounding gas — where some jets...

The hot Big Bang is often touted as the beginning of the Universe. But there's one piece of evidence we can't ignore that shows otherwise. The notion of the Big Bang goes back nearly 100 years, when the first evidence for the expanding Universe appeared. If the Universe is expanding and cooling today, that implies a past that was smaller, denser, and hotter. In our imaginations, we can extrapolate back to arbitrarily small sizes, high densities, and hot temperatures: all the way to a singularity, where all of the Universe’s matter and energy was condensed in a single point. For...

[*All currently known Piezoelectric materials are solids. When the solid is compressed or twisted, it releases an electric charge. If the solid is zapped with electricity, the solid changes shape*] - When the liquids were put in a cylinder and compressed with a piston, both generated electricity proportional to the force applied. Blanchard and Hossain placed their liquids in a lens-shaped container. By zapping it with electricity, Blanchard said they were able to change the focal length of the lens.

The new breakthrough has now achieved stimulated emission [laser] and detection for single photons, as well as small groups of photons from a single atom, leading to them becoming strongly correlated – in other words, "quantum light." And that's a huge step forward..."By demonstrating that we can identify and manipulate photon-bound states, we have taken a vital first step towards harnessing quantum light for practical use..."

VLT reveals alignments between supermassive black hole axes and large-scale structure New observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile have revealed alignments over the largest structures ever discovered in the Universe. A European research team has found that the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other over distances of billions of light-years. The team has also found that the rotation axes of these quasars tend to be aligned with the vast structures in the cosmic web in which they reside.See Full Size Photo Quasars are galaxies with...

Graphene Sheet Scientists have found that nanoripples in graphene make it a strong catalyst, even though it was expected to be chemically inert. Their research, published in PNAS, demonstrated that nanoscale corrugations on graphene’s surface accelerate hydrogen splitting as well as the best metallic-based catalysts, and this effect may be present in all 2D materials. *********************************************************************** A team of researchers led by Prof. Andre Geim from the National Graphene Institute (NGI) have discovered that nanoripples in graphene can make it a strong catalyst, contrary to general expectations that the carbon sheet is as chemically inert as the bulk graphite from...

JWST's new image of WR 124 and its nebula. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team) There's scintillating beauty to be found in cosmic death. In a new image from the JWST, the spectacular final throes of a star nearing the end of its life are revealed in all their intricate detail. Located in the constellation Sagittarius, the star WR 124 is what's known as a Wolf-Rayet, which are rarely seen in the Milky Way. That's because only certain stars turn into Wolf-Rayets, and even then their time in that phase is so short; in just a few hundred...

Time Reflections Visualization Illustration of the experimental platform used to realize time reflections. (Andrea Alu) Walk through a maze of mirrors, you'll soon come face to face with yourself. Your nose meets your nose, your fingertips touch at their phantom twins, stopped abruptly by a boundary of glass. Most of the time, a reflection needs no explanation. The collision of light with the mirror's surface is almost intuitive, its rays set on a new path through space with the same ease as a ball bouncing off a wall. For over sixty years, however, physicists have considered a subtly different kind...

Successful completion of high school calculus has long been an unofficial must-have for those seeking admission to the nation’s top colleges: The course has, for decades, served as a signal to admissions officers that a student’s coursework has been robust. But some in education say it’s time to reconsider this de facto requirement: Many schools — particularly those serving large numbers of Black, Hispanic or low-income students — don’t offer the course. And even when they do, it’s of dubious value, they say. “High school calculus is a complete waste of time and a form of torture,” said Alan Garfinkel,...

Scientists at the University of Rochester reported this week that they have taken a big leap toward creating a commercially viable superconductor that operates at room temperature and a low enough level of high pressure to be used in almost any technology that uses electric energy.

Thanks to Red Badger. Graphene is a strange material. Understanding its properties is both a fundamental question of science and a promising avenue for new technologies. A team of researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and the Weizmann Institute of Science has studied what happens when they layer four sheets of it on top of each other and how this can lead to new forms of exotic superconductivity. “Multilayered graphene has many promising qualities, ranging from widely tunable band structure and special optical properties to new forms of superconductivity—meaning being able to conduct electrical current without...