Can humanity last another 400,000 years? We might have to if we want to talk to another technological civilization.
If there are so many galaxies, stars, and planets, where are all the aliens, and why haven’t we heard from them? Those are the simple questions at the heart of the Fermi Paradox. In a new paper, a pair of researchers ask the next obvious question: how long will we have to survive to hear from another alien civilization?
Their answer? 400,000 years.
Here’s how over 300 astronomers captured the dazzling first image of Sagittarius A*, and why it matters.
Our team was part of the global Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, which has used observations from a worldwide network of eight radio telescopes on our planet — collectively forming a single, Earth-sized virtual telescope — to take the stunning image. The breakthrough follows the collaboration’s 2019 release of the first-ever image of a black hole, called M87*, at the center of the more distant Messier 87 galaxy.
Black holes: Looking into darkness
The team observed Sagittarius A* on multiple nights, collecting data for many hours in a row, similar to using a long exposure time on a camera. Although we cannot see the black hole itself, because it is completely dark, glowing gas around it reveals a tell-tale signature: a dark central region (called a “shadow”) surrounded by a bright ring-like structure. The new view captures light bent by the powerful gravity of the black hole, which is four million times more massive than our Sun. The discovery also yields valuable clues about the workings of black holes, which are thought to reside at the center of most galaxies.
A “forever battery” is much smaller and more energy-dense than lithium-ion. They’ll change the world and unlock a trillion-dollar revolution.
In this week’s episode, Aaron and I discuss what could be the “holy grail” of energy: the solid-state — or forever battery. Obviously, lithium-ion cells are the status quo of today. And they power pretty much everything, like your smartphone, laptop and electric vehicle.
However, since they comprise liquids and can only be compressed so much, they aren’t the most energy-dense. And we see this limitation all around us. It’s why that EV in your parking space can’t drive long ranges or recharge very fast. And it’s why that smartphone in your pocket will run out of juice by the end of the day.
Summary: Supplementing a diet with Ascidiacea, or sea squirts, reversed some of the main signs of aging in mouse models.
Source: Xi’an jiaotong-Liverpool University.
If you have ever looked in the mirror and seen graying hair and wrinkles or forgotten the name of a close friend, you’d be forgiven for wishing for a pill that could slow or even reverse the effects of aging.
With Earth’s natural resources running out, people are looking to mineral-rich asteroids to meet demand.
When stars like our Sun run out of fuel, they contract to form white dwarfs. Such dead stars can sometimes flare back to life in a super-hot explosion and produce a fireball of X-ray radiation. A research team from several German institutes including Tübingen University and led by Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has now observed such an explosion of X-ray light for the very first time.
“It was to some extent a fortunate coincidence, really,” explains Ole König from the Astronomical Institute at FAU in the Dr. Karl Remeis observatory in Bamberg, who has published an article about this observation in the reputable journal Nature, together with Prof. Dr. Jörn Wilms and a research team from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, the University of Tübingen, the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, and the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam. “These X-ray flashes last only a few hours and are almost impossible to predict, but the observational instrument must be pointed directly at the explosion at exactly the right time,” explains the astrophysicist.
“These so-called novae do happen all the time but detecting them during the very first moments when most of the X-ray emission is produced is really hard.” —
Gene editing reverses brain genetic reprogramming caused by adolescent binge drinking.
Gene editing may be a potential treatment for anxiety and alcohol use disorder in adults who were exposed to binge drinking in their adolescence, according to the findings of an animal study published on May 4, 2022, in the journal Science Advances.
The study was issued by researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) who have been studying the effects of early-life binge drinking on health later in life.
Scientists have proposed a solar energy-driven photocatalytic method to split water. This method uses iridium as a metal catalyst and is believed to be capable of producing green and clean hydrogen fuel on a large scale.
For those of us worried the world somehow got trapped in the wrong timeline, relax — scientists are now saying there might actually be two realities.
Two researchers from the University of Maryland released their findings in a study earlier this month in the journal Physical Review Research. According to a university press release, though, a second reality isn’t exactly what they set out to find. While studying layers of graphene, made with hexagons of carbon, the found repeating patterns that changed the way electricity moves.
Based on their research, the pair think they accidentally found a clue that could explain some of our current reality’s mysteries. According to the university’s media arm, they realized that experiments on the electrical properties of stacked sheets of graphene produced results that looked like little universes and that the underlying causes could apply to other areas of physics. In stacks of graphene, electricity changes behavior when two sheets interact, so the two hypothesize that unique physics could similarly emerge from interacting layers elsewhere—perhaps across the entire universe.
