Editor's Note: This story has been updated from a previous version.
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy will likely launch on its first commercial flight today. The rocket launch was postponed from early April due to unspecified concerns, and then postponed again just this week due to weather. But Wednesday has a clear forecast with an 80 percent probability of a launch, so odds are good the mission will proceed. The launch window opens at 6:35 p.m. EDT this evening and extends until 8:32 p.m. EDT on T ...read more
At the northern tip of the Philippine island of Luzon lays Callao Cave, an expansive, seven-chamber limestone warren. Researchers report today they have uncovered the bones of a now-extinct, previously unknown human species near the far end of the first chamber. The discovery adds to growing evidence that human evolution and dispersal out of Africa is much more complicated than scientists once thought and and reinforces the importance of Southeast Asia in the history of our species. The rese ...read more
A massive international collaboration of researchers has released the first-ever direct image of the hellish environment surrounding a supermassive black hole. As part of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, the team used a global array of telescopes to probe the fiery disk of material swirling around the gargantuan black hole at the center of the galaxy M87.
The results confirm that the hot gas swirling around a black hole is traveling at nearly the speed of light, creating a chaot ...read more
On Wednesday, astronomers revealed the first image ever taken of a black hole, bringing a dramatic conclusion to a decades-long effort. The iconic image offers humanity its first glimpse at the gas and debris that swirl around its event horizon, the point beyond which material disappears forever. A favorite object of science fiction has finally been made real on screen.
Their target was a nearby galaxy dubbed M87 and its supermassive black hole, which packs the mass of six and half billio ...read more
A black hole isn't an easy thing to photograph. The famously inscrutable objects are so dense that even light can’t escape their vicinity. By definition, they are invisible. So when the Event Horizon Telescope team released the first image of a black hole, but what they really released is an image of the black hole’s event horizon — the minimum distance from the black hole’s center where gravity is still weak enough for light to escape.
And how they imaged the super ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine