Month: February 2017

Enlarge / This artist's illustration depicts what astronomers call a "tidal disruption event," when an object such as a star wanders too close to a black hole and is destroyed by the black hole's intense gravitational field. (credit: Chandra X-ray Observatory)

Sometimes, you get lucky. There's a galaxy cluster that's been a frequent target of X-ray observatories due to the galaxies' interactions with the relatively dense gas in the vicinity. So, when a bright source of X-rays suddenly appeared behind this cluster, that brightness was imaged relatively quickly, and follow-up images have been captured regularly since then. Now, researchers are reporting that, a decade after the source of the X-rays first appeared, it's still around. That leaves just one likely explanation: the source is a supermassive black hole that's been devouring a star for all this time.

The source, 3XMM J150052.0+015452 (we'll stick with "the source" or "the object"), wasn't present when the region was first imaged in 2005. But it appeared in data obtained only four months later and has shown up in at least eight further observations since. Even at its first appearance, it was emitting energy the equivalent of over 10¹⁹ megatons every second, and it actually intensified considerably after that. Obviously, that implies something big.

Looking at visual images, the X-ray source appears to be centered on a small galaxy, roughly the size of the Large Magellanic Cloud that orbits the Milky Way. The researchers analyzing the data focus on the supermassive black hole at the center of this galaxy. Based on the galaxy's size, it would be a relatively "small" one, at about a million solar masses.

Enlarge / A soccer ball flown on Challenger in 1986 has finally made it into space. (credit: Shane Kimbrough/NASA)

When Ellison Onizuka made his second flight as a mission specialist aboard space shuttle Challenger in 1986, one of the personal effects he carried with him was a soccer ball signed by members of the Clear Lake High School girls and boys soccer team, where his daughter attended school. The shuttle, of course, broke apart 73 seconds into flight after the failure of an O-ring in one of its solid rocket boosters.

Eventually, about 120 tons of Challenger's wreckage were recovered from the Atlantic Ocean, including three quarters of the crew cabin. In addition to the soccer ball signed by the Falcon soccer players, according to CollectSpace, among Onizuka's personal items recovered from the shuttle were a football and an American flag.

Now that soccer ball has gone back into space. After it was recovered, the signed ball was eventually returned to Clear Lake High School. Astronaut Shane Kimbrough's son attends the school, and as part of his current mission to the International Space Station, Kimbrough brought the ball to the station. He tweeted a photo late last week, saying, "This ball was on Challenger that fateful day. Flown by Ellison Onizuka for his daughter, a soccer player."

(credit: Google Brain)

Google Brain has devised some new software that can create detailed images from tiny, pixelated source images. Google's software, in short, basically means the "zoom in... now enhance!" TV trope is actually possible.

First, take a look at the image on the right. The left column contains the pixelated 8×8 source images, and the centre column shows the images that Google Brain's software was able to create from those source images. For comparison, the real images are shown in the right column. As you can see, the software seemingly extracts an amazing amount of detail from just 64 source pixels.

Of course, as we all know, it's impossible to create more detail than there is in the source image—so how does Google Brain do it? With a clever combination of two neural networks.

Enlarge / Kangaroo care, mimicking the animal's early childhood care by acting as a human incubator for new babies, has picked up steam in terms of both science and scope of implementation. (credit: ©Juliana Gomez)

A shortage of incubators and a hunch about marsupials inspired a Colombian doctor to try something radical to save premature babies’ lives. For Mosaic, Lena Corner reports that now some believe constant skin-to-skin contact with parents is not only cheaper than hi-tech neonatal care—it may be better, too. The story is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Carmela Torres was 18 when she became pregnant for the first time. It was 1987, and she and her now-husband, Pablo Hernandez, were two idealistic young Colombians born in the coastal region of Montería who moved to the capital, Bogotá, in search of freedom and a better life. When Torres told her father she was expecting, he was so angered by the thought of his daughter having a child out of wedlock that they didn’t speak to each other for years.

Torres remained undaunted. Her pregnancy was trouble-free and she had a new life in Bogotá to get on with. But one December afternoon, suddenly, out of nowhere, her body began to convulse with sharp contractions. It was more than two months before her due date. She called Hernandez and together they rushed to the Instituto Materno Infantil (Mother and Child Hospital) in eastern Bogotá. Not long after arriving, she gave birth naturally to a baby boy weighing just 1,650 grams (3lb 10oz).