Lifeboat Foundation

Last April, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) sparked international excitement when it unveiled the first image of a black hole. Today, a team of researchers have published new calculations that predict a striking and intricate substructure within black hole images from extreme gravitational light bending.

“The image of a black hole actually contains a nested series of rings,” explains Michael Johnson of the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian (CfA). “Each successive ring has about the same diameter but becomes increasingly sharper because its light orbited the black hole more times before reaching the observer. With the current EHT image, we’ve caught just a glimpse of the full complexity that should emerge in the image of any black hole.”

Because black holes trap any photons that cross their event horizon, they cast a shadow on their bright surrounding emission from hot infalling gas. A “photon ring” encircles this shadow, produced from light that is concentrated by the strong gravity near the black hole. This photon ring carries the fingerprint of the black hole—its size and shape encode the mass and rotation or “spin” of the black hole. With the EHT images, black hole researchers have a new tool to study these extraordinary objects.

All hail our swirly solar system buddy.

The oldest fossil of a modern bird yet found, dating from the age of dinosaurs, has been identified by an international team of palaeontologists.

The spectacular fossil, affectionately nicknamed the ‘Wonderchicken’, includes a nearly complete skull, hidden inside nondescript pieces of rock, and dates from less than one million years before the asteroid impact which eliminated all large dinosaurs.

Writing in the journal Nature, the team, led by the University of Cambridge, believe the new fossil helps clarify why birds survived the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period, while the giant dinosaurs did not.

“Automation is going to cause unemployment, and we need to prepare for it.”–Mark cuban.

Researchers have developed “prime editing,” a true search-and-replace function for DNA.

This man lived inside a self-sustaining glass biosphere for 2 whole years to test drive what life would be like for humans on Mars via NowThis.

A drug developed to combat Alzheimer’s Disease can trigger regeneration of tooth dentin.

DARPA-funded research into pandemic response may lead to a COVID-19 treatment.

Exploiting the pandemic for geopolitical gain.

A few good things will come out of the pandemic. A Democrat may well be the next US president and end the trade war with China, which will be in a better position to bargain, having had a lead in tackling the virus and a head start in economic recovery.