Seven cool science stories we almost missed this month
It’s a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories each month. In the past, we’ve featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we missed. This year, we’re experimenting with a monthly collection. January’s list includes papers on using lasers to reveal Peruvian mummy tattoos; the physics of wobbly spears and darts; how a black hole changes over time; and quantum “cat states” for error correction in quantum computers, among other fascinating research.
Tracking changes in a black hole over time
Left: EHT images of M87* from the 2018 and 2017 observation campaigns. Middle: Example images from a general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulation at two different times. Right: Same simulation snapshots, blurred to match the EHT’s observational resolution.
Credit:
EHT collaboration
In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope announced the first direct image ever taken of a black hole at the center of an elliptical galaxy, Messier 87 (M87), located in the constellation of Virgo some 55 million light-years away. Astronomers have now combined earlier observational data to learn more about the turbulent dynamics of plasma near M87*’s event horizon over time, according to a paper published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Co-author Luciano Rezzolla of Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany likened the new analysis to comparing two photographs of Mount Everest, one year apart. While the mountain’s basic structure is unlikely to change much in that time, one could observe changes in clouds near the peak and deduce from that properties like wind direction. For instance, in the case of M87*, the new analysis confirmed the presence of a luminous ring that is brightest at the bottom, which in turn confirmed that the rotational axis points away from Earth. “More of these observations will be made in the coming years and with increasing precision, with the ultimate goal of producing a movie of what happens near M87*,” said Rezolla.
