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In the May 11 & 25 SN: High-tech cricket farming, AI learns from Minecraft, looking for lithium, a new hominid species is named, signs of life in dead pig brains, Cherokee cave texts decoded, water molecules on the moon and more.
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Context
Black hole image validates imagining the unimaginable
04/12/2019 - 06:00 History of Science, AstronomyBlack holes capture everything they encounter. From subatomic particles to stars, solids, gases, liquids and even light, everything falls irretrievably in. And even more assuredly, black holes capture the popular imagination.Thinking about space, as humans have since they first gazed at the points of light decorating the nighttime sky, triggers the mind to imagine things that cannot be...
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The Science Life
Meet one of the first scientists to see the historic black hole image
04/11/2019 - 16:02 Astronomy, PhysicsIt’s hard to say which scientist was the first to set eyes on the glowing ring that makes up the world’s first image of a black hole. But astrophysicist Kazunori Akiyama was certainly one of the earliest.
The image, released to the public on April 10, revealed the dark shadow of the supermassive black hole encircled by swirling gas at the center of the galaxy M87 (SN Online: 4/10/19)....
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News
How scientists took the first picture of a black hole
04/10/2019 - 09:57 Astronomy, Physics, TechnologyBlack holes are extremely camera shy. Supermassive black holes, ensconced in the centers of galaxies, make themselves visible by spewing bright jets of charged particles or by flinging away or ripping up nearby stars. Up close, these behemoths are surrounded by glowing accretion disks of infalling material. But because a black hole’s extreme gravity prevents light from escaping, the dark...
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News
All you need to know about the history of black holes
04/10/2019 - 09:14 Astronomy, PhysicsBlack holes have been beguiling from the very beginning.
Hinted at as early as the 1780s and predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, they didn’t get the name we know today until the 1960s. Bizarre beasts that squash gobs of matter into infinitely dense abysses, black holes were once thought to be merely a mathematical curiosity.
But astronomers tallied up evidence for...
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News
The first picture of a black hole opens a new era of astrophysics
04/10/2019 - 09:10 Astronomy, PhysicsEditor's note: This story will be updated throughout the day as more information becomes available.
This is what a black hole looks like.
A world-spanning network of telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope zoomed in on the supermassive monster in the galaxy M87 to create this first-ever picture of a black hole.
“We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have seen...
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Editor's Note
The delight of discovering an asteroid that spits
These are wondrous times for space exploration. Just when you think exploring the cosmos couldn’t possibly get more fun, another discovery delivers a new “oh wow” moment.04/07/2019 - 07:15 Science & Society, Astronomy, Planetary ScienceConsider the asteroid Bennu. It’s an unprepossessing space rock that drew scientists’ curiosity because it is among the most pristine objects in our solar system, and it might provide clues to the origins of life....
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News
This planetary remnant somehow survived the death of its sun
04/04/2019 - 14:00 Exoplanets, Planetary Science, AstronomyAgainst all odds, a small planetary body called a planetesimal has survived the infernal death of its sunlike star and now orbits the white dwarf that remains.
When most planet-hosting stars run out of hydrogen fuel, they blow out their outer shells of gas, obliterating anything within their inner solar systems and leaving behind a dead star called a white dwarf. Planets orbiting farther...
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News in Brief
The LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors are back on
04/01/2019 - 11:22 Physics, AstronomyIt’s open season in scientists’ hunt for gravitational waves.
A trio of detectors are back on the lookout for the ripples in spacetime. And the newly souped-up machines could make this the most productive search yet.
The two detectors of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, LIGO, located in Hanford, Wash., and Livingston, La., and the Virgo detector,...
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News
4 things we’ll learn from the first closeup image of a black hole
03/29/2019 - 09:58 Astronomy, PhysicsEditor's note: On April 10, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration released a picture of the supermassive black hole at the center of galaxy M87. Read the full story here.
We’re about to see the first close-up of a black hole.
The Event Horizon Telescope, a network of eight radio observatories spanning the globe, has set its sights on a pair of behemoths: Sagittarius A*, the...
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News
X-ray ‘chimneys’ connect the Milky Way to mysterious gamma-ray bubbles
03/20/2019 - 14:00 AstronomyTwo towering “chimneys” glowing with X-rays extend from the center of the Milky Way. The newly discovered structures could help explain the source of two even larger features: giant bubbles that emit gamma rays, or high-energy light, found above and below the plane of the galaxy.
Stretching hundreds of light-years, the X-ray chimneys seem to connect the gamma-ray bubbles to the center of...