In a significant breakthrough that could accelerate the progress of quantum technologies, researchers from the USC
<span class=””>Founded in 1880, the <em>University of Southern California</em> is one of the world’s leading private research universities. It is located in the heart of Los Angeles.</span>
Astronomers have found compelling evidence for the closest known supermassive black hole outside the Milky Way. This enormous black hole resides in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of our galaxy’s nearest neighbors.
The discovery was made by precisely tracking the motion of 21 stars located on the outskirts of the Milky Way. These stars are moving so rapidly that they will eventually escape the gravitational pull of the Milky Way and any nearby galaxies. Such stars are known as “hypervelocity” stars.
By analyzing their trajectories, much like forensic scientists tracing a bullet’s path, researchers were able to determine their origins. About half of the stars were found to have been ejected by the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The rest, however, appear to have been flung out by a different source: a previously undetected supermassive black hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Some stars in our galaxy pulse like musical instruments, and scientists have found a way to listen in. These rhythmic starquakes, like vibrations in a string or drum, reveal vital clues about a star’s age, composition, and life cycle.
By studying these “melodies” in a star cluster called M67—whose stars are like solar siblings—researchers uncovered a strange pause in stellar evolution called the “plateau.” This discovery helps pinpoint stellar ages with remarkable precision, bringing us closer to understanding how stars, and ultimately our galaxy, have evolved.
Celestial Music: Listening to Starquakes.
Lariocidin was efficient against strains of E. coli, including drug-resistant ones, according to the new study.
Researchers say they have discovered a new class of antibiotics that could treat drug-resistant bacteria, the first to reach the market in nearly three decades.
The new molecule, called lariocidin, works by targeting a part of a bacteria’s cell called the ribosome and can disrupt the cell’s functions.
The world added the smallest amount of new coal capacity in two decades last year, a report said Thursday, but use of the fossil fuel is still surging in China and India.
Coal accounts for just over a third of global electricity production and phasing it out is fundamental to meeting climate change goals.
Just 44 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity was produced globally last year, the lowest figure since 2004, according to the report by a group of energy-and environment-focused research organizations and NGOs.
Heaviside was born in Camden Town, London, at 55 Kings Street [ 3 ] : 13 (now Plender Street), the youngest of three children of Thomas, a draughtsman and wood engraver, and Rachel Elizabeth (née West). He was a short and red-headed child, and suffered from scarlet fever when young, which left him with a hearing impairment. A small legacy enabled the family to move to a better part of Camden when he was thirteen and he was sent to Camden House Grammar School. He was a good student, placing fifth out of five hundred students in 1865, but his parents could not keep him at school after he was 16, so he continued studying for a year by himself and had no further formal education. [ 4 ] : 51
Heaviside’s uncle by marriage was Sir Charles Wheatstone (1802–1875), an internationally celebrated expert in telegraphy and electromagnetism, and the original co-inventor of the first commercially successful telegraph in the mid-1830s. Wheatstone took a strong interest in his nephew’s education [ 5 ] and in 1867 sent him north to work with his older brother Arthur Wheatstone, who was managing one of Charles’ telegraph companies in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. [ 4 ] : 53
Two years later he took a job as a telegraph operator with the Danish Great Northern Telegraph Company laying a cable from Newcastle to Denmark using British contractors. He soon became an electrician. Heaviside continued to study while working, and by the age of 22 he published an article in the prestigious Philosophical Magazine on ‘The Best Arrangement of Wheatstone’s Bridge for measuring a Given Resistance with a Given Galvanometer and Battery’ [ 6 ] which received positive comments from physicists who had unsuccessfully tried to solve this algebraic problem, including Sir William Thomson, to whom he gave a copy of the paper, and James Clerk Maxwell. When he published an article on the duplex method of using a telegraph cable, [ 7 ] he poked fun at R. S. Culley, the engineer in chief of the Post Office telegraph system, who had been dismissing duplex as impractical.
