Scientists

The burst of energy was likely triggered when an unusually large star wandered too close to the black hole.

Scientists have documented the most energetic flare ever observed emanating from a supermassive black hole, a cataclysmic event that briefly shone with the light of 10 trillion suns.

The new findings were published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Astronomy, with astronomer Matthew Graham of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) leading the study.

The phenomenal burst of energy was likely triggered when an unusually large star wandered too close to the black hole and was violently shredded and swallowed.

“However it happened, the star wandered close enough to the supermassive black hole that it was ‘spaghettified’ – that is, stretched out to become long and thin, due to the gravity of the supermassive black hole strengthening as you get very close to it. That material then spiralled around the supermassive black hole as it fell in,” said astronomer and study co-author KE Saavik Ford.

The supermassive black hole was unleashed by a black hole roughly 300 million times the mass of the sun residing inside a faraway galaxy, about 11 billion light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

The star, estimated to be between 30 and 200 times the mass of the sun, was turned into a stream of gas that heated up and shined intensely as it spiralled into oblivion.

Almost every large galaxy, including our Milky Way, has a supermassive black hole at its centre. But scientists still aren’t sure how they form.

First spotted in 2018 by the Palomar Observatory, operated by the Caltech, the flare took about three months to reach its peak brightness, becoming roughly 30 times more luminous than any previously recorded event of its kind. It is still ongoing, but diminishing in luminosity, with the entire process expected to take about 11 years to complete.

Because of how far away the black hole is located, observing the flash gives scientists a rare glimpse into the universe’s early epoch. Studying these immense, distant black holes helps researchers better understand how they form, how they influence their local stellar neighbourhoods, and the fundamental interactions that shaped the cosmos we know today.

Oct. 7 (UPI) — Three U.S.-based scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics for their work in quantum mechanics on a macroscopic scale, the Nobel Foundation announced Tuesday.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded British-born John Clarke (University of California, Berkeley), French-born Michel H. Devoret (Yale University and UC Santa Barbara) and American John M. Martinis (UC Santa Barbara) the prestigious award. It comes with a $1.17 million prize the three men will split evenly.

The scientists are being recognized for creating an electrical circuit system large enough to be held in the hand that demonstrated both quantum mechanical tunneling and quantized energy levels, or specific, measurable amounts of energy.

Tunneling is the ability for particles to move through a barrier. Once a large number of particles are involved, they’re typically unable to move through this barrier, also called a Josephson junction.

“The laureates’ experiments demonstrated that quantum mechanical properties can be made concrete on a macroscopic scale,” a release from the Nobel Foundation said.

Olle Eriksson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, applauded the work by the three scientists.

“It is wonderful to be able to celebrate the way that century-old quantum mechanics continually offers new surprises,” he said. “It is also enormously useful, as quantum mechanics is the foundation for all digital technology.”

Oct. 5 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1918, Germany’s Hindenburg Line was broken as World War I neared an end.

In 1921, the World Series is broadcast on the radio for the first time.

In 1935, Ethiopia asks the League of Nations to act against Italy to halt Italy’s conquest of the country.

In 1947, President Harry Truman delivers the first televised White House address.

In 1955, the doors to the Disneyland Hotel are thrown open to the public.

In 1970, The Public Broadcasting Service, PBS, is founded.

In 1989, the Dalai Lama, who advocated non-violent struggle against Chinese domination of his homeland, Tibet, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1994, authorities said 53 members of a secretive religious cult called the Order of the Solar Temple were found dead — the victims of murder or suicide — over a two-day period in Switzerland and Canada.

In 2001, Barry Bonds hit his 71st home run, most by a player in one season, breaking Mark McGwire’s 1998 Major League Baseball record. The San Francisco Giants slugger finished the season with 73 homers.

File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI

In 2005, scientists announced that for the first time they were able to genetically sequence the strain of avian flu that was behind the 1918 pandemic that killed up to 50 million people worldwide.

In 2010, Faisal Shahzad, who left an explosives-laden vehicle in New York’s Times Square, planning to detonate it on a busy night, was sentenced to life in prison.

In 2023, a Russian strike on a supermarket in the village of Hroza, in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, killed dozens of people.

PORTLAND, Maine — Australian scientists tested the strength of bite-resistant wetsuits by allowing sharks to chomp the materials at sea and found that the suits can help keep swimmers safe.

Fatal shark bites are vanishingly rare, with less than 50 unprovoked shark bites on humans worldwide in 2024, according to the International Shark Attack File at the Florida Museum of Natural History. But increased sightings of large sharks in some parts of the world have swimmers, surfers and divers looking for new ways to stay safe.

Scientists with Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia, tested four bite-resistant materials and found they all reduced the amount of damage from shark bites. They performed the work by dragging samples of the materials behind boats and allowing white and tiger sharks to bite the samples.

The bites from such large sharks can still cause internal and crushing injuries, but the materials showed effectiveness beyond a standard neoprene wetsuit, the scientists said. The research found that the bite-resistant materials “can reduce injuries sustained from shark encounters,” said Flinders professor Charlie Huveneers, a member of the Southern Shark Ecology Group at Flinders and a study co-author.

“Bite-resistant material do not prevent shark bites, but can reduce injuries from shark bites and can be worn by surfers and divers,” Huveneers said.

There were small differences between the four tested materials, but they all “reduced the amount of substantial and critical damage, which would typically be associated with severe hemorrhaging and tissue or limb loss,” said Tom Clarke, a researcher with the science and engineering college at Flinders and a study co-author.

Chainmail suits to resist shark bites have existed for decades, but lack in flexibility for aquatic activities like surfing and diving, the scientists said in research published in the journal Wildlife Research on Thursday. Newer wetsuits can be designed to provide flexibility as well as protection.

The scientists tested the efficacy of wetsuit materials Aqua Armour, Shark Stop, ActionTX-S and Brewster. The scientists said in their paper that they found that all of the materials “offer an improved level of protection that can reduce severe wounds and blood loss, and should be considered as part of the toolbox and measures available to reduce shark-bite risk and resulting injuries.”

The promise of effective shark resistant wetsuits is encouraging for people who spend a lot of time in areas where there are large sharks, said Nick Whitney, a senior scientist and chair of the Fisheries Science and Emerging Technologies Program at the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life in Boston. That includes surfers and spearfishers, he said.

Whitney, who was not involved in the study, said it’s also encouraging that the materials are unlikely to make a person “feel invincible” and engage in risky behaviors around sharks.

“I also like it because it’s not relying on any impact on the shark’s behavior,” Whitney said. “It’s basically very, very simple. In the extremely rare event that you get bitten by a shark, this material will hopefully make you bleed less than you would if you were not wearing this.”

The researchers said the suits do not eliminate all risks from sharks, and precautions still need to be taken around the animals.

They are hopeful their research will help the public “make appropriate decisions about the suitability of using these products,” Huveneers said.

Whittle writes for the Associated Press.