Lifeboat Foundation

Astronomers have discovered a pair of supermassive black holes that whirl around each other every two years.

A team of astronomers has caught two supermassive black holes in the process of merging. It’s only the second time we’ve observed such a close cosmic tango and this pair are even more tightly entwined than the first duo, offering unique insights into how such mergers unfold.

The black holes in question sit some 9 billion light-years away in the heart of a distant galaxy. As one of them gorges on surrounding material, it creates a radio jet that just so happens to be pointing directly at Earth. Such objects, which we call blazars, are volatile, typically flaring and dimming randomly.

A German feminist art group has revealed a vulva-shaped spaceship design, which it is encouraging the European Space Agency to help realize in order to better represent humanity in space and “restore gender equality to the cosmos.”

The group Wer Braucht Feminismus? (WBF?), which translates to “Who Needs Feminism?”, created its Vulva Spaceship concept to challenge the convention of phallic spacecraft design.

It says sending a yonic craft instead would signal inclusivity and has started a petition on change.org calling on the European Space Agency to consider the project.

“There are a lot of partnerships where you’re carpooling to go to the nightclub, and then there are long-term collaborations,” said Saubestre. “We are fiancés for the time being, but we are trying to make this couple work.”

“There’s a lot that can be optimized, and there’s a lot of potential, and that was the reason to go into this partnership with someone who is as keen as we are to make it happen,” said Saubestre. “We’re hoping to retain this competitive advantage that we’ve had over the years and inventing the future machines to run our simulations.”

Added Saubestre, some vendors with whom TotalEnergies works focus on selling cloud services, but such services aren’t necessarily ideal for the kinds of work the energy giant needs to get done.

For a few tense days this January, a roughly 70-meter asteroid became the riskiest observed in over a decade. Despite the Moon’s attempt to scupper observations, the asteroid is now known to be entirely safe.

Initial observations of an asteroid dubbed ‘2022 AE1’ showed a potential Earth impact on July 4, 2023 – not enough time to attempt deflection and large enough to do real damage to a local area should it strike.

Worryingly, the chance of impact appeared to increase based on the first seven days of observations, followed by a dramatic week ‘in the dark’ as the full Moon outshone the potential impactor, ruling out further observations. As the Moon moved aside, the skies dimmed and ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre (NEOCC) took another look, only to find the chance of impact was dramatically falling.