The Zen of Technology & Scientific Discovery! (& Robots)

[Jundo]

Soon, we'll have salads on the moon!

Plants have been grown in lunar soil for the 1st time ever

In a landmark first, scientists have grown plants in lunar soil using samples collected during the Apollo missions to the moon. This is the first time plants have been sprouted and grown on Earth in soil from another celestial body. ... But the experiments also reveal just how stressful it is for plants to grow in lunar regolith, or soil, which is wildly different from natural habitats on Earth.

... “For future, longer space missions, we may use the Moon as a hub or launching pad,” Ferl said in a statement. “So, what happens when you grow plants in lunar soil, something that is totally outside of a plant’s evolutionary experience? What would plants do in a lunar greenhouse? Could we have lunar farmers?” ...

... The scientists filled each well with a gram of lunar soil, added nutrients and water, and poked in a few seeds of Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress, a small flowering plant native to Eurasia and Africa. Thale cress is an attractive plant specimen to researchers because it is well studied and its genetic code has been mapped – which allowed the researchers to study how the alien soil affected the plant’s gene expression. ...

The Arabidopsis sprouts, however, showed signs of struggle as they adjusted to the lunar soil.

The seedlings were smaller, grew slower and varied in size compared with plants grown in Earth soils. The roots were stunted. And the plants took longer to grow expanded leaves than the Arabidopsis plants grown in volcanic ash. Some of the lunar soil plants showed reddish black pigments in their leaves, an outward sign of stress.

On a genetic level, three of the smaller, darker plants expressed more than 1,000 genes that were largely related to stress.

“At the genetic level, the plants were pulling out the tools typically used to cope with stressors, such as salt and metals or oxidative stress, so we can infer that the plants perceive the lunar soil environment as stressful,” Paul said.

“Ultimately, we would like to use the gene expression data to help address how we can ameliorate the stress responses to the level where plants – particularly crops – are able to grow in lunar soil with very little impact to their health.” ...

https://us.cnn.com/2022/05/12/world/...scn/index.html

By day 16, there were clear physical differences between plants grown in the volcanic ash (left) compared with those grown in the lunar soil (right).

(And even cress get stress! Maybe the Zucchini should try Zazen?

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

I'm no astronomer, but maybe it's like the drain in the galactic bathtub?

In any case, the galaxy would not be here without it, so we would not be here without it. If we are made of stardust, perhaps the black hole is where our own atoms will someday return ...

1st image of supermassive black hole at the center of [our] Milky Way galaxy revealed

For the first time, astronomers have captured an image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

It’s the first direct observation confirming the presence of the black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, as the beating heart of the Milky Way.

Black holes don’t emit light, but the image shows the shadow of the black hole surrounded by a bright ring, which is light bent by the gravity of the black hole. Astronomers said the black hole is 4 million times more massive than our sun.

“For decades, astronomers have wondered what lies at the heart of our galaxy, pulling stars into tight orbits through its immense gravity,” Michael Johnson, astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, said in a statement.

“With the (Event Horizon Telescope or EHT) image, we have zoomed in a thousand times closer than these orbits, where the gravity grows a million times stronger. At this close range, the black hole accelerates matter to close to the speed of light and bends the paths of photons in the warped (space-time).”

The black hole is about 27,000 light-years away from Earth. Our solar system is located in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy, which is why we’re so distant from the galactic center. ... “We were stunned by how well the size of the ring agreed with predictions from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity,” said EHT project scientist Geoffrey Bower from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, in a statement.

... The discovery was made possible by more than 300 researchers from 80 institutions working with a network of eight different radio telescopes around the globe that make up the Event Horizon Telescope.

... It’s the second image ever captured of a black hole, with the first being the EHT’s achievement of imaging M87* at the heart of the distant Messier 87 galaxy, located 55 million light-years away, in 2019.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/05/12/world/...scn/index.html

These panels show the first two black hole images. On the left is M87*, and the right is Sagittarius A*.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Just cool!

Listen to eerie sounds from echoing black holes

Millions of elusive black holes hide in plain sight across the Milky Way galaxy, only giving away their presence occasionally through bursts of X-ray light when they feed on stars.

Astronomers have been able to pin down the locations of eight rare pairings of black holes and the stars orbiting them, thanks to the X-ray echoes they release. Previously, there were only two known pairs emitting X-ray echoes in our galaxy.

Black hole binaries occur when these celestial phenomena are orbited by a star, which they sometimes use to siphon gas and dust as a snack.

The echoes have been converted into sound waves that just may keep you awake at night.

... The echoes of these X-ray emissions can help astronomers map where black holes are located. It’s not unlike echolocation used by bats for navigation. Bats release calls that bounce off obstacles and return as an echo, and the length of the echo’s return helps bats determine the distance of objects. ...

The black hole echoes aren’t actual sounds we can hear without some help, so Kara collaborated with Kyle Keane, lecturer in MIT’s department of materials science and engineering, and Ian Condry, professor in MIT’s department of anthropology, to turn them into sound waves.

The team tracked changes in the X-ray echoes, determined time lags during transition stages and traced commonalities in the evolution of each black hole outburst.

The result sounds like something from a 1950s sci-fi film.

“We’re at the beginnings of being able to use these light echoes to reconstruct the environments closest to the black hole,” Kara said. “Now we’ve shown these echoes are commonly observed, and we’re able to probe connections between a black hole’s disk, jet, and corona in a new way.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIeIag2Ji8k

Gas Giant Gassho, J

STlah

[Jundo]

Earth is being ATTACKED by massive meteor storms and solar blobs!

How to watch the Eta Aquarids meteor shower this weekend

One of spring's busiest meteor showers, called the Eta Aquarids, is peaking this weekend. To catch the "shooting stars," just step outside and look to the southern night sky.

The Eta Aquarids reached their approximate peak Friday morning (May 6), and they will continue to put on a strong showing in the coming days, reaching as many as 30 meteors an hour. And these meteors are known for their speed, reaching some 148,000 mph (just over 238,000 km/h) as they hit our atmosphere, NASA said.

The shooting stars originate from Halley's Comet (1P/Halley), a short-period comet that swings through the inner solar system every 75 to 76 years and will next come by in about 2061. During these visits, the comet leaves behind its own calling card — a debris trail of dust grains that Earth plows through every May. The bits of debris that hit our atmosphere will burn up harmlessly before reaching the ground.

This meteor shower is best visible from the Southern Hemisphere or close to the equator, but you can still catch a glimpse of the meteors in the Northern Hemisphere, said Bill Cooke, who leads NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

... For the best meteor viewing, go outside around 3 a.m. local time after the moon has set. While the meteors originate in the constellation Aquarius near the celestial equator, it's better to look at the sky's zenith (straight up) so that you can see as many meteors as possible.

Pick a safe location and bring a lawn chair to reduce neck strain. Move away from as many lights as possible and try to get outside at least 20 minutes before you want to go meteor-hunting, to let your eyes adjust to the dark

https://www.livescience.com/how-to-w...s-this-weekend

Visible from Australia to (I believe) Canada and much of Europe, you can calculate where and when in your location with this:

https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/meteor-shower/eta-aquarids.html

Giant blob of solar plasma could 'graze' Earth this weekend, NOAA says

If the solar storm hits Earth, it could drive the aurora much further south than usual. ...

A weak solar storm could brush past Earth on Saturday (May 7), potentially leading to minor radio blackouts, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported in a new space weather forecast.

Continuing a months-long spate of heightened activity, the sun is currently crackling with powerful solar flares, which are often accompanied by giant explosions of plasma known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). When CMEs pass over Earth, they can temporarily compress our planet's magnetic shield, resulting in geomagnetic storms that can knock out power grids, muddle radio waves and damage satellites in their path.

The vast majority of geomagnetic storms are mild, according to NOAA. But the largest CMEs can trigger much more devastating storms — such as the infamous 1859 Carrington Event, which induced such strong electrical currents that telegraph equipment burst into flame, according to NASA. Some scientists have warned that another solar storm of that magnitude could plunge Earth into an "internet apocalypse," knocking nations offline for weeks or months, Live Science previously reported.

There is a small chance that a small CME could "graze Earth's magnetosphere" on Saturday, NOAA said in their latest report, resulting in a G1-class geomagnetic storm — the weakest class of storm on NOAA's five-level scale. When a G1 storm hits, weak power grid fluctuations can occur, and the aurora — a phenomenon caused by charged particles in solar wind colliding with molecules in Earth's atmosphere — can be seen at lower latitudes than usual. CMEs typically take 15 to 18 hours to reach Earth after they leave the sun.

https://www.livescience.com/minor-solar-storm

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

Fascinating update on what may have killed the world's first pig heart human recipient. Let us dedicated our practice to this pioneer, his doctors and, of course, the pigs ...

A pig virus may have contributed to the death of a man who received a groundbreaking transplant using a pig heart, according to news reports.

The man, 57-year-old David Bennett Sr., died on March 8, two months after his pig-heart transplant surgery. The heart used in the transplant was from a pig that had been genetically modified to make its heart more acceptable to a human immune system.

Now, Dr. Bartley Griffith, director of the Cardiac Transplant Program at University of Maryland Medical Center who performed the transplant, has revealed that DNA from porcine cytomegalovirus, a virus that infects pigs, was detected in the patient prior to his death, according to MIT Technology Review.

"We are beginning to learn why he passed on," Griffith said in a webinar on April 20 discussing the transplant, MIT Technology Review reported. The virus "maybe was the actor, or could be the actor, that set this whole thing off."

Doctors screened the pig's heart for this virus several times. But such tests only pick up active infections, not latent infections in which the virus "hides" in the body without actively replicating, according to The New York Times.

But 20 days after the transplant, blood tests picked up low levels of porcine cytomegalovirus DNA in Bennett's body, the Times reported. At first, doctors thought this could be a lab error. By 40 days after the transplant, however, Bennett became very sick and tests showed a sharp rise in the viral DNA levels in his blood, the Times reported.

Porcine cytomegalovirus is specific to pigs and is not believed to be able to infect human cells. However, the virus might have suddenly replicated out of control in the pig's heart, without the animals' immune system to suppress the virus. This may have set off an inflammatory response in the patient, MIT Technology Review reported.

"Did this contribute to the patient's demise? The answer is obviously, we don't know, but it might have contributed to his overall not doing well," Dr. Jay Fishman, associate director of the transplantation center at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved with Bennett's transplant, told the Times.

More sensitive screening tests of animals will be needed to prevent the transfer of such viruses in future animal-to-human transplantations, the Times reported.

https://www.livescience.com/pig-viru...ansplant-death

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

“More of the ingredients for life have been found in meteorites.

Space rocks that fell to Earth within the last century contain the five bases that store information in DNA and RNA, scientists report April 26 in Nature Communications.

These “nucleobases” — adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil — combine with sugars and phosphates to make up the genetic code of all life on Earth. Whether these basic ingredients for life first came from space or instead formed in a warm soup of earthly chemistry is still not known (SN: 9/24/20). But the discovery adds to evidence that suggests life’s precursors originally came from space, the researchers say.“

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/all-of-the-bases-in-dna-and-rna-have-now-been-found-in-meteorites?fbclid=IwAR16zXM6iMNpITlN_PHJ5HDp9dIPjQgSbWxRTqdaqmPHajc3s9Yf7TdQPmc

As a Buddhist, I can simultaneously believe that life was born in outer space ...

... and not believe in "birth."

Gassho, J

STLah

[Kokuu]

Space rocks that fell to Earth within the last century contain the five bases that store information in DNA and RNA, scientists report April 26 in Nature Communications.

These “nucleobases” — adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil — combine with sugars and phosphates to make up the genetic code of all life on Earth. Whether these basic ingredients for life first came from space or instead formed in a warm soup of earthly chemistry is still not known (SN: 9/24/20). But the discovery adds to evidence that suggests life’s precursors originally came from space, the researchers say.“

Oh, that is really interesting! Thanks, Naiko!

As the great prophet Joni sang: "We are stardust, we are golden."

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

[Jundo]

So, the universe might suddenly get thrown into reverse gear?

The universe could stop expanding 'remarkably soon', study suggests

In just 100 million years, the universe could start to shrink, new research suggests

After nearly 13.8 billion years of nonstop expansion, the universe could soon grind to a standstill, then slowly start to contract, new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests.

In the new paper, three scientists attempt to model the nature of dark energy — a mysterious force that seems to be causing the universe to expand ever faster — based on past observations of cosmic expansion. In the team's model, dark energy is not a constant force of nature, but an entity called quintessence, which can decay over time.

The researchers found that, even though the expansion of the universe has been accelerating for billions of years, the repellent force of dark energy may be weakening. According to their model, the acceleration of the universe could rapidly end within the next 65 million years — then, within 100 million years, the universe could stop expanding altogether, and instead it could enter an era of slow contraction that ends billions of years from now with the death — or perhaps the rebirth — of time and space.

... Nothing about this theory is controversial or implausible, Gary Hinshaw, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia who was not involved in the study, told Live Science. However, because the model hinges on past observations of expansion alone — and because the present nature of dark energy in the universe is such a mystery — the predictions in this paper are currently impossible to test. For now, they can only remain theories.

... From there, one of two things could happen, Steinhardt said. Either the universe contracts until it collapses in on itself in a big "crunch," ending space-time as we know it — or, the universe contracts just enough to return to a state similar to its original conditions, and another Big Bang — or a big "bounce" — occurs, creating a new universe from the ashes of the old one.

https://www.livescience.com/end-cosmic-expansion

Well, we Buddhists often speak of cyclical universes, so no problem.

And which ever way the universe flows, we just flow with it.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Naiko]

“More of the ingredients for life have been found in meteorites.

Space rocks that fell to Earth within the last century contain the five bases that store information in DNA and RNA, scientists report April 26 in Nature Communications.

These “nucleobases” — adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine and uracil — combine with sugars and phosphates to make up the genetic code of all life on Earth. Whether these basic ingredients for life first came from space or instead formed in a warm soup of earthly chemistry is still not known (SN: 9/24/20). But the discovery adds to evidence that suggests life’s precursors originally came from space, the researchers say.“

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/all-of-the-bases-in-dna-and-rna-have-now-been-found-in-meteorites?fbclid=IwAR16zXM6iMNpITlN_PHJ5HDp9dIPjQgSbWxRTqdaqmPHajc3s9Yf7TdQPmc

Cool!

st

[Jundo]

All systems go for Webb!

The James Webb Space Telescope is fully aligned and ready to observe the universe

The space observatory’s massive mirror, capable of peering into the most distant reaches of space, is now completely aligned, according to the NASA’s Webb team.

Hailed as the world’s premier space observatory, Webb has successfully completed a number of steps within the past few months that were crucial for aligning its 18 gold mirror segments.

The mirror is so large that it had to be folded to fit inside the rocket for its December 25 launch. After reaching an orbit a million miles from Earth in January, Webb began the careful process of unfolding and aligning its mirror.

Webb will be able to peer inside the atmospheres of exoplanets and observe some of the first galaxies created after the universe began by observing them through infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.

The first high-resolution images Webb collects of the cosmos aren’t expected until the end of June since the observatory’s instruments still need to be calibrated. But test results released by NASA on Thursday show the clear, well-focused images that the observatory’s four instruments are capable of capturing. ...

https://us.cnn.com/2022/04/28/world/...scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

So, we go to Mars and, first thing we do, we trash up the place ...

Hopefully, this will help us someday go there and clean up after ourselves ...

Ingenuity helicopter takes photos of debris field on Mars

The Ingenuity helicopter has captured a unique bird’s-eye perspective of the gear that helped land the Perseverance rover on Mars.

... Studying the components that allowed for a safe landing can help them prepare for future missions to the red planet that will require landing and even launching from the Martian surface for the first time. ... The backshell can be seen among a debris field it created after hitting the Martian surface while moving at about 78 miles per hour (126 kilometers per hour). But the backshell’s protective coating appears to be intact, as are the 80 suspension lines connecting it to the parachute. The orange and white parachute can be seen [above photo, top left], covered in dust, but the canopy doesn’t show any damage ...
https://us.cnn.com/2022/04/28/world/...scn/index.html

[Jundo]

No, we have not gone in for astrology (don't believe in that).

This is just neat and pretty astronomy, and reminds us that all is moving ...

Watch the Venus-Jupiter conjunction at the end of April

Venus and Jupiter will appear to touch each other in the sky at the end of the month, despite actually being millions of miles apart.

The two planets will appear closest together around 3 p.m. ET on April 30, with Venus 0.2 degrees south of Jupiter, according to EarthSky. The distance is less than the diameter of the moon, the space site added.

By May 1, the planets will have continued on their paths and look as if they are spreading farther apart from Earth’s vantage point.

4 planets line up like ducks in a row in gorgeous night-sky image

The moon is leading a parade of planets across the predawn sky this week. And Italian astrophysicist Gianluca Masi captured the celestial show in a gorgeous image shot from his balcony in Rome.

In advance of an unusual alignment of the five visible planets in the solar system, four planets are lining up behind the moon like ducks in a row. Since April 23, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Jupiter have all been visible above the horizon in the early morning hours in the Northern Hemisphere.

"This morning I could enjoy the planetary parade involving Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Saturn, plus the moon. It was an amazing sight, all the four planets were very easy to see," Masi told Live Science in an email.

Planetary alignments occur when the planets' orbits bring them to the same region of the sky, when viewed from Earth. These planetary alignments are not rare, but they're not regularly occurring, either: The last time five planets aligned in the night sky was in 2020, preceded by alignments in 2016 and 2005.
https://www.livescience.com/four-planet-moon-alignment

[Jundo]

When I first read this, I thought it meant alien ray guns ...

Powerful space laser detected by South African telescope

Astronomers have detected a powerful radiowave laser, known as a megamaser, in space.

This record-breaking megamaser is the most distant one ever observed at 5 billion light-years away from Earth.

The light from this space laser traveled a whopping 36 thousand billion billion miles (58 thousand billion billion kilometers) to reach our planet. ...

... “When galaxies collide, the gas they contain becomes extremely dense and can trigger concentrated beams of light to shoot out,” Glowacki said in a statement. ...

... The MeerKAT telescope, located in the Karoo region of South Africa, includes an array of 64 radio dishes and has been operational since July 2018. The powerful telescope is sensitive to faint radio light.

MeerKAT is a precursor to the transcontinental Square Kilometre Array, or SKA, a telescope under construction in both South Africa and Australia.

The array will include thousands of dishes and up to 1 million low-frequency antennas in an effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope.

Despite the fact that these dishes and antennas will be in different parts of the world, together they will create one telescope that has over 1 square kilometer (0.39 square miles) of collecting area. As a result, astronomers can survey the entire sky much more quickly than with other telescopes.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/04/15/world/space-laser-megamaser-scn/index.html

AND

Where might life be hiding out? It is as resilient as that Equadorian flower, after all ...

Jupiter’s moon Europa may have a habitable ice shell


On Jupiter’s moon Europa, a saltwater ocean exists deep beneath a thick ice shell. Now, a surprising connection between the ice shell and the Greenland ice sheet on Earth has provided new insight: Europa’s ocean may be habitable, according to a new study. ...

... “In Greenland, this double ridge formed in a place where water from surface lakes and streams frequently drains into the near-surface and refreezes,” said lead study author Riley Culberg, a doctoral student in electrical engineering at Stanford, in a statement.

“One way that similar shallow water pockets could form on Europa might be through water from the subsurface ocean being forced up into the ice shell through fractures – and that would suggest there could be a reasonable amount of exchange happening inside of the ice shell.”

... And this ice shell could be a place where the subsurface ocean and nutrients mix together. “Because it’s closer to the surface, where you get interesting chemicals from space, other moons and the volcanoes of Io (another moon that orbits Jupiter), there’s a possibility that life has a shot if there are pockets of water in the shell,” Schroeder said. “If the mechanism we see in Greenland is how these things happen on Europa, it suggests there’s water everywhere.” ...

... “The mechanism we put forward in this paper would have been almost too audacious and complicated to propose without seeing it happen in Greenland,” Schroeder said. ... The temperature, chemistry and pressure are different on Europa when compared to Greenland, so the team want to investigate how these water pockets work on Europa.

Europa is a target of two upcoming missions, the European Space Agency’s JUICE (short for the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) and NASA’s Europa Clipper. Clipper will carry ice-penetrating radar, similar to how the researchers studied Greenland, to collect subsurface imaging of Europa’s ice shell.

Europa stands out as one of the best candidates for hosting extraterrestrial life in our solar system due to the liquid water in the subsurface ocean and what scientists understand about its chemistry, Culberg said.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/04/19/world/europa-ridges-greenland-study-scn/index.html

This artist's illustration shows how double ridges on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa may form over shallow, refreezing water pockets within the ice shell.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

May they somehow keep surviving ...

A blazing orange wildflower thought to be extinct for 36 years was rediscovered


A rare blazing orange wildflower that was thought to be extinct for 36 years was rediscovered in South America.

The wildflower Gasteranthus extinctus has only been spotted in Ecuador’s cloud forest and was last documented in 1985, according to a new study in the journal PhytoKeys. The researchers saw a dim future for the flower, so they named it “extinctus” because they believed it would soon die out, said coauthor Dawson White, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Field Museum in Chicago. Most of the cloud forest suffered deforestation in the years that followed. The habitat loss was thought to have killed off dozens of species, White said.

Researchers decided to take another look in western Ecuador in 2021 to see if there were any patches of forest left and to search for the species that had lived there. Within days, the flower was found, White said.

“It was total elation because Gasteranthus extinctus is a symbol of these unique forests,” White said ...

[BUT] While no longer considered extinct, the wildflower is still endangered, White said. Despite the devastation the cloud forest is suffering, the Ecuadorian government continues to destroy the forest for their own gain, which wreaked havoc in that part of the country, he explained.

The originally Ecuadorian government redistributed the land to the working class in the 1950s and 1960s, White said.

People cut down trees to make way for growing crops like cacao beans and bananas, most of which end up in the United States, he added. ... Ulloa Ulloa grew up in Ecuador and saw firsthand the deforestation, but as she became an adult, she understood the delicate balance of needing to protect the environment while finding ways to make money.

“You need to protect the forest, but then you also need to feed the population of the country,” Ulloa Ulloa said.

One solution is to invest in ecotourism, which invites tourists to enjoy the natural land, she said. It’s a way to protect the forest while boosting Ecuador’s economy, Ulloa Ulloa explained.

https://us.cnn.com/2022/04/15/world/extinct-flower-ecuador-scn/index.html

Gassho, J

STLah

[Jundo]

More time travel back to the early universe ...

Ultra-rare black hole ancestor detected at the dawn of the universe

Astronomers have discovered a dusty, red object 13 billion light-years from Earth that may be the earliest known ancestor of a supermassive black hole.

The ancient object shows characteristics that fall between dusty, star-forming galaxies and brightly glowing black holes known as quasars, according to the authors of a new study, published April 13 in the journal Nature. Born just 750 million years after the Big Bang, during an epoch called the "cosmic dawn," the object appears to be the first direct evidence of an early galaxy weaving stardust into the foundations of a supermassive black hole.

Objects like these, known as transitioning red quasars, have been theorized to exist in the early universe, but they have never been observed — until now.

"The discovered object connects two rare populations of celestial objects, namely dusty starbursts and luminous quasars," lead study author Seiji Fujimoto, a postdoctoral fellow at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement. "[It] thereby provides a new avenue toward understanding the rapid growth of supermassive black holes in the early universe."

Quasars (short for "quasi-stellar objects") are extremely bright objects powered by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. With masses millions to tens of billions of times greater than that of Earth's sun, these monster black holes suck in everything around them at blinding speed. Gas spiraling into these black holes heats up due to friction, creating a bright glow that's comparable to starlight.

Prior research has shown that quasars existed within the first 700 million years of the universe, the study authors wrote; however, it's unclear exactly how these supermassive objects formed so quickly after the Big Bang. Simulations suggest that some sort of fast-growing transition phase occurs in dusty, star-dense galaxies.

"Theorists have predicted that these black holes undergo an early phase of rapid growth: a dust-reddened compact object emerges from a heavily dust-obscured starburst galaxy," study co-author Gabriel Brammer, an associate professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, said in the statement.

In their new paper, the researchers claim to have detected one of these rare transitional objects — officially named GNz7q — while studying an ancient, star-forming galaxy with the Hubble Space Telescope.

The team caught the early galaxy in the midst of a stellar baby boom, with the galaxy seemingly churning out new stars 1,600 times faster than the Milky Way does today. All those newborn stars produced an immense amount of heat, which warmed the galaxy's ambient gas and caused it to glow brightly in infrared wavelengths. The galaxy became so hot, in fact, that its dust shines brighter than any other known object from the cosmic dawn period, the researchers said.

Amid that brightly glowing dust, the researchers detected a single red point of light — a large, compact object tinged by the enormous fog of dust around it. According to the researchers, this red dot's luminosity and color perfectly match the predicted characteristics of a transitioning red quasar.

"The observed properties are in excellent agreement with the theoretical simulations and suggest that GNz7q is the first example of the transitioning, rapid growth phase of black holes at the dusty star core, an ancestor of the later supermassive black hole," Brammer said.

... NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which launched on Dec. 25, 2021, will be able to hunt for these elusive objects with much greater clarity than Hubble, the researchers wrote, hopefully shedding a bit more light onto the dusty cosmic dawn.
https://www.livescience.com/transitioning-red-quasar

Gassho, j

STLah