Month: June 2023

Enlarge / Gravitational lensing has revealed a previously unknown supernova explosion more than 4 billion light-years away. (credit: Joel Johansson, Stockholm University)

Astronomers have detected a previously unknown supernova explosion more than 4 billion light-years away using a rare phenomenon called "gravitational lensing," which serves as a kind of cosmic magnifying glass. They described their discovery and its potential implications in a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy. Co-author Ariel Goobar, director of the Oskar Klein Center at Stockholm University, described the find as "a significant step forward in our quest to understand the fundamental forces shaping our universe."

Gravitational lensing is a direct consequence of the general theory of relativity: mass bends and warps spacetime, and light must follow that curvature. The phenomenon can form rare effects like an "Einstein ring" or an "Einstein cross." Essentially, the distortion in space-time caused by a massive object (like a galaxy) acts as a lens to magnify an object in the background. Since these aren't perfect optical-quality lenses, there are often some distortions and unevenness. This causes the light from the background object to take different paths to Earth, and thus a single object can appear in several different locations distributed around the lens. At cosmological scales, those paths can also require light to travel very different distances to get to Earth.

Gravitational lensing helps astronomers spot celestial objects that might otherwise be too faint or far away to see, like a distant supernova, which can lead to other interesting questions. For example, last year, astronomers analyzed a Hubble image from 2010, where the image happened to also capture a supernova. Because of gravitational lensing, the single event showed up at three different locations within Hubble's field of view. Thanks to the quirks of how this lensing works, and because light travels at a finite speed, all three of the locations captured different times after the star's explosion, allowing researchers to piece together the time course following the supernova, even though it had been observed over a decade earlier.

Enlarge / Race winners, the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 499P of James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi, and Antonio Giovinazzi arrive down the pit lane toward parc ferme at the end of the 100th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the Circuit de la Sarthe on June 11, 2023, in Le Mans, France. (credit: James Moy Photography/Getty Images)

One hundred is something of an arbitrary number, an accident of how many fingers we happen to have. But in years, it represents a long time to keep doing something again and again: like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, an annual race around an 8-mile circuit in France that exists not just as a way to entertain but also to improve the cars we drive on the road. Windshield wipers, disc brakes, fuel injection, and laserbeam headlights are just a few examples that were proved in the cauldron of the 24 Hours before appearing on cars like the one you might drive.

This weekend saw the centenary edition of the race take place. Anticipation had been building for months thanks to a new ruleset that has revitalized the top class of prototypes, now called Hypercars. After several years of Toyota facing little competition by meagerly funded privateer teams, 2023's entry list also included cars from other major manufacturers—Cadillac, Ferrari, Peugeot, and Porsche.

Legends return

Each has raced at Le Mans before, the European makes with quite some success. Across 91 actual races—world wars prevented running some years—Porsche's entries notched 19 wins, more than anyone else. Audi has the next-best record, but it has opted to spend its racing budget on Formula 1 for the foreseeable future.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | UCG)

A Florida man nearly lost his leg from a rare flesh-eating bacterial infection that developed after he was bitten by a human while breaking up a family brawl, according to a report by NBC News.

The man, Donnie Adams, a 53-year-old funeral assistant from the Tampa suburb of Riverview, sought care in mid-February for a painful swelling on this bitten thigh. He told doctors he had gotten the bite while trying to break up a physical fight between two family members. He was bitten in the process of pulling the pair away from each other.

He reportedly declined to say what sparked the brawl or which family member actually bit him. But doctors believed his story after seeing the wound.

Enlarge / A South Korean flag, left, and Samsung Electronics Co. flag fly outside the company's headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, on Friday, July 5, 2019. (credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A former executive at Samsung Electronics has been arrested and indicted in South Korea for allegedly stealing the leading chipmaker’s technology in order to build a copycat plant in China.

The indictment of the 65-year-old Korean national, who had also served as a vice president at rival Korean chipmaker SK Hynix, comes as South Korea attempts to beef up its defenses against a concerted campaign by Chinese companies to acquire cutting-edge Korean technologies.

According to a statement released by Korean prosecutors on Monday, the former Samsung vice president, who has not been named, illegally acquired information needed to build advanced chipmaking facilities.

Enlarge / Apple's 15-inch M2 MacBook Air. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

It's a credit to Apple's chips that when I'm using my 13-inch MacBook Air, I feel much more constrained by the screen size than I do by the performance.

That wasn't always the case. The Intel MacBook Airs of years past were perfectly fine for basic computing, but you could feel the difference between an Air and an iMac or MacBook Pro as soon as you tried to edit something in Photoshop or Lightroom or export something with iMovie. The M1 and M2 Macs also feel slower than their Pro, Max, and Ultra counterparts, but for the kinds of light-to-medium-duty work that I spend most of my time doing, I rarely find myself waiting around for things to happen.

That's why I've been looking forward to the 15-inch MacBook Air, which has been rumored for at least a year and is being released to the public this week. Before now, getting a larger Mac laptop meant paying at least $2,000 for the privilege—$2,500 for the 16-inch MacBook Pro—because getting that bigger screen also came with extra ports, more powerful chips, and fancier screen technology.