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A research team has recently developed a novel algorithm in quantum physics known as 'entanglement microscopy' that enables visualization and mapping of this extraordinary phenomenon at a microscopic scale. By zooming in on the intricate interactions of entangled particles, one can uncover the hidden structures of quantum matter, revealing insights that could transform technology and deepen the understanding of the universe.

Researchers have shown for the first time that heat transfer in the form of infrared radiation can influence chemical reactions more strongly than traditional convection and conduction methods.

A short time ago, astronomers observed a distant supermassive black hole (SMBH) located in a galaxy 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. For years, this galaxy (1ES 1927+654) has been the focus of attention because of the Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) at its core. It all began in 2018 when the SMBH’s X-ray corona mysteriously disappeared, followed by a major outburst in the optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray wavelengths. Astronomers began watching it closely, but what they saw next was completely unexpected!

As we covered in a previous article, much of the excitement was generated by the SMBH’s behavior, which suggested it was consuming a stellar remnant (a white dwarf). In addition, astronomers noted a huge increase in radio emissions and the formation of plasma jets extending from the black hole, which all happened over the course of a year. In a new paper, a team led by the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) describes how they watched a plasma jet forming in real time, something astronomers have never done before.

The team’s paper, which recently appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, was led by UMBC associate professor Eileen Meyer. She was joined by multiple colleagues from UMBC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, the Joint Space-Science Institute (JSI), and the Center for Space Science and Technology (CSST). Other members included researchers from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Active galaxy 1ES 1927+654 (circled in green) harbors a central black hole weighing about 1.4 million solar masses and is located 270 million light-years away. (NASA/GSFC)

Astronomers have observed jets emanating from the poles of several SMBHs in the Universe. Some of these have been shown to accelerate gas and dust particles to close to the speed of light, leading to the term “relativistic jets.” In some cases, astronomers have observed jets extending for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of light-years from their host galaxy. These jets blast material across these distances, and some even trigger the formation of new stars along their paths.

In this case, the jet appeared after a period of variable activity in 1ES 1927+654, where the AGN began consuming more material and becoming 100 times brighter over the course of a few months – a change that normally TAKES thousands or millions of years. After nearly a year of extremely high X-ray emissions, the black hole quieted down again in 2020, only to increase its output again in 2023. At the same time, it began emitting radio waves at 60 times the previous intensity over just a few months, something that has never before been monitored in real time for an SMBH.

Based on radio observations using the Very Large Array (VLA) and Very Large Baseline Array (VLBA), the team obtained high-resolution radio imaging of the SMBH at the center of 1ES 1927+654. These observations clearly showed a pair of plasma jets forming around both poles of the black hole and expanding outward between 2023 and 2024. In recent years, scientists have identified “changing-look AGNs,” supermassive black holes that become far more active at radio frequencies from when they were first observed.

In those instances, astronomers naturally assumed that something must have happened in between since their observations were years or decades apart. This is the first instance where astronomers saw this change happening in real time, thereby offering clues as to how these changes happen. As Meyer said:

“We have very detailed observations of a radio jet ‘turning on’ in real-time, and even more exciting are the VLBI observations, which clearly show these plasma blobs moving out from the black hole. That shows us that this really is an outflow jet of plasma that’s causing the radio flare. It’s not some other process causing increased radio emission. This is a jet moving at likely 20 to 30 percent of the speed of light originating very near a black hole. That’s the exciting thing.”

Radio images of 1ES 1927+654 reveal emerging structures that appear to be jets of plasma erupting from both sides of the galaxy’s central black hole following a strong radio flare. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/Meyer at al. 2025

While these newly-forming jets are relatively small compared to the massive jets observed from some of the most powerful AGNs in the galaxy, they are likely to be more common across the Universe. While the largest jets extend far beyond their host galaxies and last for millions of years, scientists have become aware of smaller, shorter-lived jets – what they call “compact symmetric objects” (CSOs). In this sense, the jets observed in 1ES 1927+654 could represent a unique opportunity to learn more about how these structures form and grow with time.

Similarly, astronomers will keep an eye on this galaxy and its SMBH because of the tidal disruptions that could indicate the presence of a white dwarf that is slowly being consumed. Meyer and his team have also suggested that the appearance of these jets may be associated with “a single ingestion of a star or a gas cloud” and that a single tidal disruption event may be what powers short-term CSOs (for maybe 1,000 years, they venture). Said Meyer:

“We still don’t really understand after all these decades of studying these sources why only a fraction of accreting black holes produce jets and then exactly how they launch them. Until recently we could not literally look into that innermost region to see what’s happening—how the accretion disk surrounding the black hole is interacting with and producing the jet. And so there are still a lot of open questions there.”

While many unanswered questions still exist, several promising models exist for how jets might form. These observations could lead to collaborative efforts with theorists on how to interpret the data so these models can be refined. “There’s a lot of theoretical work to be done to understand what we’ve seen, but the good thing is that we have a massive amount of data,” Meyer says. “We’re going to keep following this source, and it’s going to continue to be exciting.” 

Further Reading: UMBC, The Astrophysical Journal Letters

The post Black Hole Jets Seen Forming in Real-Time appeared first on Universe Today.

Orion the Hunter, resplendent in the northern hemisphere’s night sky in winter, is more than an easily identified constellation. It’s home to the Orion Nebula, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. It’s a mere 1,500 light-years away and can be seen with the naked eye below the three stars that form Orion’s belt.

New Hubble images show how young, newly-formed stars in the Orion Nebula are altering their environments.

The Orion Nebula is one of the most heavily studied features in the sky. By observing Orion, astronomers have made great strides in understanding how stars and planets form. It’s home to hundreds of young protostars, two of which are featured in the Hubble image: HOPS 150 and HOPS 153, though HOPS 150 is actually a binary star. They get their names from the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey, which is a sample of more than 400 young stellar objects (YSOs) in Orion’s molecular clouds.

HOPS 150 is in the image’s upper-right corner. Two young protesters orbit each other, each surrounded by its own disk. These very young stars are still growing by accreting material from these disks. The dark vertical line cutting through them is dust that’s being drawn into the pair of stars. The dust line is enormous, more than 2,000 AU across. Astronomers think that the binary protostar is about halfway to becoming a mature star.

HOPS 153 is actually out of this image’s frame, but its jet is clearly visible. Astronomers think that the YSO is much younger than HOPS 150. It radiates more infrared radiation, indicating that it’s surrounded by more dust than HOPS 150. It’s still firmly ensconced in its dusty birth nebula, and dust absorbs light from the star and re-emits it in the infrared.

Not all of the material that falls into a young protostar will become part of the star. YSOs often emit powerful jets of material from their poles. Research shows that these jets can extract up to 30% of a young star’s accretion power. The jets are visible where they crash into the interstellar medium, lighting it up and creating bow shocks and other features.

Artist’s conception of a star being born within a protective shroud of gas and dust. YSOs rotate rapidly, creating powerful magnetic fields. These fields can drive jets of material from the YSO’s poles, shaping their environment and how other stars form. Image Credit: NASA

YSOs like HOPS 153 spin more rapidly than mature stars and have more powerful magnetic fields as a result. This affects how the material is accreted onto the star and also drives the jets by collimating infalling material. The jets of material interact with the surrounding gas, heating it and causing bubbles to form. That affects how other stars can form from the gas and how planets form around the star. This is how YSOs can shape their environments.

Young stars are complex objects and can be difficult to observe. They’re often obscured by dust, and, like HOPS 153, their jets can be their most visible manifestation. These jets can extend for several light-years into space.

Stars seldom form in isolation, and as YSOs accrete material, they shape their surroundings and the stars that follow them. How exactly this all plays out is an area of intense study for astronomers and astrophysicists. Images like this from the Hubble are an important part of the effort.

The post Hubble Shows Young Stars Shaping Their Surroundings in the Orion Nebula appeared first on Universe Today.

Researchers have identified a new class of quantum states in a custom-engineered graphene structure. The study reports the discovery of topological electronic crystals in twisted bilayer -- trilayer graphene, a system created by introducing a precise rotational twist between stacked two-dimensional materials.

Researchers have developed a breakthrough method to detect inflammation in the body using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. This innovative probe targets CD45, a marker abundantly expressed on all immune cells but absent from other cell types.

Natasha Hausdorff, barrister and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel, discussed the prospects for peace between Israel and Palestine—I don’t say Hamas, because I don’t think either Natasha or I think there will ever be peace between Israel and Hamas—with Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk TV yesterday.  In this seven-minute conversation, Hausdorff believes that the chances for peace, while not solid, have been increased with the new administration.  Trump may do (and is doing) a passel of crazy things, but most friends of Israel think he offers a more salubrious future for the Jewish state than did the Biden administration.  The Forward agrees, though it notes that Rubio’s support for Israel has by no means been sycophantic or 100%.  But it’s surely better than Anthony “There’s a Red Line Around Rafah” Blinken. 

The space debris problem won’t solve itself. We’ve been kicking the can down the road for years as we continue launching more rockets and payloads into space. In the last couple of years, organizations—especially the European Space Association—have begun to address the problem more seriously.

Now they’re asking this question: What will it take to reach zero space debris?

At first glance, it may seem unreal, maybe naive. There are billions of pieces of space junk orbiting Earth, and more than 25,000 of those pieces are larger than 10 cm. Though small, these pieces are travelling fast and can cause significant damage when impacting satellites or space stations. What will it take to get rid of all this debris?

The ESA has released the Zero Debris Technical Booklet to elucidate the challenges to a zero-debris future and propose solutions to get there. The Booklet’s development follows the signing of the Zero Debris Charter by members of the Zero-Debris community.

“Despite several initiatives for space debris mitigation in recent years and modest improvements in public awareness, there is a general consensus that more ambitious actions are urgently needed from all space stakeholders to prevent, mitigate, and remediate debris,” the report states. The report points out that the Guidelines for the Long-term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space outlines how access to space is hindered by debris.

The booklet defines zero debris targets and presents “technical needs, solutions and key enablers” that can help organizations achieve them.

The obvious first step is to cease creating more debris.

It begins with avoiding the unintentional release of debris. Exposure to the space environment can degrade materials during missions and beyond their end date, and unintentional impacts can also release debris. The Booklet promotes the “Development of multi-layer insulation and coating technologies preventing long-term degradation of materials” and similar developments for materials that can resist impacts. Improved monitoring, simulations, and testing can help us get there.

The Booklet also points out the need for different propulsion technologies. Some propulsion technologies release enormous quantities of small particles. The Booklet promotes the development of alternate propulsion systems based on things like electromagnetic tethers, momentum-transfer tethers, and drag or solar radiation pressure augmentation devices.

This image shows the Tethered Satellite System (TSS). The tether generated electricity as it moved through Earth’s magnetic field and the electricity could be used to adjust the satellite’s orbit without the need for other propulsion. Image Credit: By NASA Johnson Space Center (NASA-JSC), Public Domain

The Booklet also points out how improved Space Traffic surveillance and Coordination (STC) can help solve the problem. “Improved STC will help prevent collisions and reduce the occurrence of unnecessary collision avoidance manoeuvres,” the Booklet states.

That will require a technological solution, but different space agencies will also have to share information, which some will be more reluctant to do than others. The Technical Booklet explains that standardized guidelines will need to be developed and adopted for this to happen.

For existing debris, removal is the only solution. “For space objects which fail to de-orbit themselves for whatever reason, external means can be used to remove these objects from orbit,” the Booklet states.

That begins with assessing defunct satellites to determine the best way to de-orbit them. Are they at risk of breaking up due to de-orbiting methods? Once assessed, we need to develop reliable and configurable methods to remove them. That means a technological approach will be needed, as will communication between different space-faring nations.

The Booklet states that this will require the “Development of interoperable interfaces and requirements that facilitate removal for different types and sizes of objects (e.g. large/Small Spacecraft, launcher stages and elements, constellation spacecraft), adapted for different orbital regions (e.g. LEO, MEO, GEO), for different Disposal strategies (e.g. controlled, uncontrolled re-entry, orbital transfer to graveyard orbit), and with easy adoption in mind,” the Booklet explains.

De-orbiting systems could be as simple as deployable solar sails like the experimental Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment-7 (CanX-7.) It was launched in 2016 and achieved a decay rate of 20/km per year.

The CanX-7 with its sails deployed in a clean room. Image Credit: Space Flight Laboratory

While the CanX-7 and other similar systems are passive, there are also designs for Active Debris Removal (ADR).

One ADR system is Clearspace-1. It will demonstrate technologies for rendezvousing, capturing, and de-orbiting an end-of-life satellite called PROBA-1. After capture, both Clearspace-1 and PROBA-1 will plummet into Earth’s atmosphere and be destroyed.

Predicting and avoiding the risk of collisions between satellites and other objects in space is also part of the Booklet. “The increasing number of debris and the risk associated with collisions in orbit lead to an
ever-increasing need for operators to carry out collision avoidance manoeuvres,” the Booklet states. This can be partially addressed during the design phase but inevitably requires coordination.

Again, the Booklet calls for more cooperation between agencies. The effort needs a standardized set of guidelines for collision assessments and “methods to integrate collision risk assessments from multiple providers.”

When it comes to technology, collision avoidance and prediction will also benefit from the development of machine-learning algorithms, the development and uptake of optical and radio tracking aids, and a longer list of additional developments.

The Technical Booklet summarizes our problem: Space Debris requires standardized methods to assess hazards, avoid hazards, and remove hazards. While the technology needed to address the space debris problem hasn’t been thoroughly developed yet, there’s little doubt that it will be. However, the needed technologies may not be the biggest obstacle to solving the space debris problem. The critical part is cooperation.

Without cooperation, the problem will never be fully solved. However, cooperation can be in short supply. Our species is at least partly defined by our internecine squabbling and the tragedy of the commons. Different nations have different ideologies, politics, and leadership. Can we imagine Russia under Putin taking part in a cooperative effort to reduce space debris? How about China? North Korea? Iran?

What’s worse, some nations are actively creating more debris. In 2007, China conducted an anti-satellite missile test that destroyed a defunct satellite and created a massive amount of debris. In 2017, Russia did the same. India conducted a similar test in 2019, though they claim that it was at such a low altitude that the debris would quickly burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. However, the US Strategic Command said the debris remained in space longer than India claimed.

It doesn’t seem likely that the planet’s nations and space agencies will be cooperating any time soon, and even the once-reliable United States may eschew increased cooperation under its new leadership. Who knows?

But just as with climate change and a host of other problems, we can only solve the space debris problem through cooperation.

The ESA deserves credit for outlining the technical challenges and solutions to the problem. Though daunting, that may turn out to be the easy part.

It’s our politics that hamper the effort.

The post What Will It Take To Reach Zero Space Debris? appeared first on Universe Today.

Scientists have developed an artificial photosynthesis technology that produces precursors of biodegradable nylon from biomass-derived compounds and ammonia.

Unraveling the chemical processes in soot particle filters reveals new ways to produce synthetic fuels.

Despite significant therapeutic advances, breast cancer remains a leading cause of cancer-related death in women. Treatment typically involves surgery and follow-up hormone therapy, but late effects of these treatments include osteoporosis, sexual dysfunction and blood clots. Now, researchers have created a novel treatment that eliminated small breast tumors and significantly shrank large tumors in mice in a single dose, without problematic side effects.

Porous land such as foliage significantly lowers noise made by drones and air taxis which could reduce disturbances for urban communities as Urban Air Mobility (UAM) grows.

A group of researchers have analyzed thousands of reports from the past decade, identifying a tin-based catalyst that aids the production of formic acid, an indispensable chemical in various industries, and makes the process greener.

Successful uptake of new technology is a matter of emotions -- and with 4 in 5 companies saying they're failing to capitalize on its potential, managers need to know how to deal with them, say researchers.

Scientists can now identify the most harmful pollutants present in UK waters that are having the biggest impact on biodiversity thanks to pioneering AI technology.

Researchers have developed a way of bioprinting tissues that change shape as a result of cell-generated forces, in the same way that it happens in biological tissues during organ development. The breakthrough science focused on replicating heart tissues, bringing research closer to generating functional, bioprinted organs, which would have broad applications in disease modelling, drug screening and regenerative medicine.

After three long years of hoping, it seemed impossible that the second season of Severance could live up to the scope and ambition of the first. But, mercifully, it has, says Bethan Ackerley

Photographer Luisa Maria Stagno is on a mission to document the most unusual pigeons out there, from a Danish Suabian to a Gimpel

Robert Zemeckis's would-be epic film Here relies on real-time de-ageing technology. But do its ambitions conceal a more mundane project?

Feedback is delighted by a YouTuber's sterling efforts to make Michael Crichton's velociraptors more accurate – but points out that they're still far too big