Skip to main content

Posts

Black Hole Eats One Star, the Remains Pummel a Second One

     From- Sky &Telescope    By - Monica Young    Edited by - Amal Udawatta This artist’s illustration shows a disk of material (red, orange, and yellow) created after a supermassive black hole (depicted on the right) destroyed a star through intense tidal forces. After a few years, this disk expanded outward until it began intersecting another orbiting object — either a star or a small black hole — around the giant black hole. NASA / CXC / SAO and Soheb Mandhai / The Astro Phoenix In 2019 a supermassive black hole ate a star. It’s incredible that such an incredible event is now commonplace — not in individual galaxies, where such stellar meals happen only every 10,000 to 100,000 years, but in our telescopes, through which astronomers can monitor millions of galaxies to observe their feeding habits.      The crumbs of a supermassive black hole’s stellar meal has revealed the presence of a second star in a close orbit. But in the course of studying this particular stellar feast, Mat
Recent posts

Rubber and tree sap: How ancient Maya cities have withstood the ravages of time

      From - BBC World News      By-  Jasmin Fox-Skelly     Edited by - Amal Udawatta Getty Images Constructed over 1,200 years ago, the imposing 65m-tall (213ft) Temple IV at Tikal, in modern Guatemala, is a testament to ancient Maya masonry (Credit: Getty Images) Ruins of ancient cities keep turning up in the forests of central America. How have these structures remained standing for millennia despite tropical rains, hurricanes and the return of the jungle? Anyone driving down the rough asphalt of highway 269 that bisects the Yucatán peninsula in southeast Mexico would never have known it was there. Thick jungle lines both sides of the road for much of its length, with the occasional patch cleared for livestock. Yet, after an innocuous bend in the road, close to the tiny settlement of Dos Lagunas, an entire city has been hiding. Concealed beneath a tangle of trees, vines and other vegetation,  scientists have discovered a sprawling collection of houses , plazas, temple pyramids and e

World way off target in tackling climate change - UN

  From-BBC World  News By - Matt McGrath Environment correspondent Edited by Amal Udawatta Getty Images Little progress has been made in limiting emissions of greenhouse gases that are driving up temperatures Global efforts to tackle climate change are wildly off track, says the UN, as new data shows that warming gases are accumulating faster than at any time in human existence. Current national plans to limit carbon emissions would barely cut pollution by 2030, the UN analysis shows, leaving efforts to keep warming under 1.5C this century in tatters. The update comes as a separate report shows that greenhouse gases have risen by over 11% in the last two decades, with atmospheric concentrations surging in 2023. Researchers are also worried that forests are losing their ability to soak up carbon, which could be contributing to record levels of warming gas in the atmosphere. Getty Images A woman collapses with heat exhaustion near Lisbon in high temperatures UN Climate Change , the UN ag