Explosion the Size of Our Solar System Baffles Astronomers to Saturn's Rings Disintegrating

Weekend Edition

Weird Explosion the Size of Our Solar System Baffles Astronomers, reports SciTechDaily. "The explosion observed was an extremely rare Fast Blue Optical Transient (FBOT) — known colloquially amongst astronomers as “the cow” —  only four others have ever been seen, and scientists don’t know how they occur, but this discovery has helped solve part of the puzzle."

Black Hole over 30 billion times the mass of our Sun. Led by Durham University, UK, astronomers using gravitational lensing and supercomputer simulations on the DiRAC HPC facility, found an ultramassive black hole, an object over 30 billion times the mass of our Sun, in the foreground galaxy – a scale rarely seen by astronomers. This is the first black hole found using the technique.

Exploring Our Chemical Origins And Habitability, reports Astrobioloy. "How did life begin? Is it common or rare across the Universe ? Can life on Earth survive elsewhere in the Solar system? These questions are amongst the most challenging in modern Science and all require an understanding of the physical and chemical processes that are necessary for the synthesis and survival of those molecules necessary for life in what appears to be an inhospitable environment (high levels of radiation, low temperature and high vacuum).

BBC: Europe risks being 'a spectator in next space race'. "Its report, commissioned by the European Space Agency, says the space economy is at a similar inflection point to the internet 20 years ago. Failure to respond will see Europe miss out on the next wave of Googles and Amazons, the group argues."

We may finally know how Hawking's black hole paradox could be solved--Under the laws of quantum mechanics, information about what has fallen into a black hole cannot be destroyed, and now researchers claim they have figured out how it is preserved, reports Leah Crane for New Scientist.

'Hot spot' orbiting Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of our galaxy. The ALMA Observatory finding helps us better understand our supermassive black hole's enigmatic and dynamic environment.

Exomoons orbiting rogue planets in deep space may harbor alien life--A new analysis reveals distant exomoons are a surprising candidate in the search for extraterrestrial life, reports Chris Young for Interesting Engineering. "A team led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) believes moons orbiting rogue planets – planets that have broken free of their host star and are roaming deep space – could be a surprisingly interesting candidate in the search for alien life."

Bits of Saturn’s rings are falling onto the planet and heating it up--Observations from five spacecraft over 40 years have shown that as Saturn’s rings slowly disintegrate, the particles fall into the planet’s atmosphere and heat it, reports Leah Crane for New Scientist.

Alien Fossils Could Be Hidden Across Earth And We Must Find Them, Scientist Says--According to a new study in the International Journal of Astrobiology, alien fossils in space dust could be hidden deep in the ocean or under ice, reports Motherboard/Vice Science. "The paper’s author and University of Tokyo professor of astronomy, Tomonori Totani, told Motherboard that devising ways to find these particles on Earth could help identify alien biosignatures."

The most powerful space explosion ever seen keeps baffling astronomers--A gamma ray burst observed in 2022 was brighter than any explosion ever spotted before, and follow-up observations are threatening to break our understanding of how these blasts work, reports New Scientist.

Gigantic galaxy clusters can finally be 'weighed', thanks to new AI tool--The AI tool was also able to identify 'additional variables' that could potentially improve the accuracy of the mass measurement, reports Interesting Engineering.

Dinosaurs' Air Sacs Evolved Many Times and Let Them Take Over the World--An extensive system of air sacs, evolved over and over, let dinosaurs grow larger without sacrificing strength, reports Scientific American.

How an ancient polymath first calculated Earth’s size, as told by Carl Sagan--In this clip from the celebrated science education series Cosmos (1980), the astronomer Carl Sagan explores the life and legacy of the ancient Greek polymath Eratosthenes, who, in the 3rd century BCE, not only understood Earth to be spherical, but was able to calculate its circumference with remarkable accuracy, reports Aeon.

NASA’s DAGGER could give advance warning of the next big solar storm, reports TechCrunch.