This Perfectly Spherical Supernova Is Weirding Us Out
The universe is a chaotic place filled with exploding stars, material falling into black holes, and rogue planets wandering off on their own. All that chaos makes astronomers suspicious when they glimpse a hint of perfection in the cosmos, like a bubble of material left over from the death of a star that appears to be in perfectly symmetrical shape.
Astronomers recently discovered the remnant of a galactic supernova with a remarkable circular symmetry, making it stand out as one of the most perfectly spherical objects detected in the universe. Perfection is not always a bad problem to have, but it does prompt certain questions regarding how the object came to be this way.
The discovery, submitted to the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia and made available on the preprint website arXiv, was spotted in images collected by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder. The researchers behind the paper identified the object as a galactic supernova remnant—an expanding cloud of debris that forms in the aftermath of the exploding death of a star.
The object, located in the Milky Way galaxy, has been dubbed Teleios, the Greek word for perfect. Although it is almost perfectly symmetrical, Teleios is not very bright. It has one of the lowest recorded surface brightness levels among known supernova remnants. Astronomers observing Teleios are also uncertain about its distance to Earth, estimating that it could either be around 7,175 or 25,114 light-years away. That's a huge difference in distance, and the uncertainty is affecting our understanding of how long the object has been there.
The two different distances imply different sizes for Teleios, since objects appear smaller the farther away they are. At its closer distance to Earth, the supernova remnant would be about 46 light-years wide. If it were much farther away, it would be a much larger cloud—around 157 light-years across. Based on its size variation, the scientists suggest that this particular cloud of expanding material has either been around for less than 1,000 years at its smaller size, or a much older supernova remnant that formed more than 10,000 years ago and grew to its larger size.
Another odd thing about Teleios is that it only appears in radio wavelengths, even though modeling of the object suggests it should have X-ray emissions. The scientists behind the study try to explain the lack of X-ray emissions by suggesting Teleios is a Type Ia supernova, which takes place in a binary star system in which one of the stars is a white dwarf. In that case, a zombie star is often left behind along with the supernova remnant. There is a nearby star that fits the profile, but it would mean that Teleios is much smaller, spanning across a mere 11 light-years in the Milky Way. However, none of the measurements of Teleios' distance correspond to this small size.
'We consider several different scenarios to explain Teleios's unusual properties, all of which have their challenges,' the researchers wrote in the paper. 'While we deem the Type Ia scenario the most likely, we note that no direct evidence is available to definitively confirm any scenario.'
The researchers suggest that sensitive and high-resolution observations of this object are needed in order to uncover its mysteriously perfect shape and unusual qualities.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
3 days ago
- Fox News
Researchers discover 2,500-year-old honey residue in ancient bronze jars
Researchers recently made a sticky discovery. They found 2,500-year-old honey, sealed in a vessel and buried underground for nearly three millennia. The residue was found in bronze jars at an underground shrine in Paestum, an ancient Greek settlement in modern-day Campania, Italy. The artifacts date back to the 6th century B.C. The jars were first found by archaeologists in 1954, but the residue in them has eluded experts – until now. In a study published by the American Chemical Society on July 30, experts concluded that the waxy residue was once honey. Luciana Carvalho, a research associate at the University of Oxford, told Fox News Digital the substance bears little resemblance to the golden honey in most modern-day cupboards. "Ancient honey was quite different from the clear, smooth honey we buy today," she noted. "There was no ultra‑filtration, no pasteurization and no synthetic pesticides in the landscape." The chemical results "strongly" suggested that the jars held raw honeycomb, rather than a blended product like most modern honey. "If honey had been mixed with milk, for example, we would expect to see extra fatty acids in the residue – and we don't," she said. But the raw honeycomb has dramatically changed over the millennia. Along with fellow researchers Elisabete Pires and James McCullagh, Carvalho found that the sugar gradually became dark and acidic. "After 2,500 years, almost all the original sugars have broken down [and been] eaten by microbes, so the residue isn't sweet anymore." "[The] sugars slowly reacted with proteins in a kind of slow-motion browning process, similar to what happens when bread bakes, turning it darker and more acidic," she said. Because of that, the remaining residue isn't exactly pleasant to eat, according to the expert. "What survives now is a waxy residue with a slight tang and virtually no sweetness," Carvalho noted. "After 2,500 years, almost all the original sugars have broken down [and been] eaten by microbes, so the residue isn't sweet anymore." As for the vessels, Carvalho said the bronze jars have cork discs that seal their necks, which points to "careful storage of something valuable." The copper-alloy jugs were found in a sealed, underground shrine, suggesting that they were left there as part of a ritual. "Inside, the residue clung to the bottoms and sides, exactly what you'd expect if raw honeycomb had been placed inside and slowly dried out over centuries," she said. "We hope our approach will be used to identify honey residues in other museum collections so we can learn more about ancient beekeeping and the role of honey in diet, medicine and ritual life." Researchers in the 1980s previously believed that the honey was a mixture of wax, fat and resin, with Carvalho noting that past research was limited by less precise tools. "Those methods were great for detecting fats and waxes but couldn't easily pick up sugars or proteins without extra chemical steps," she said. "In our study we used multiple modern techniques designed to detect different types of molecules, including sugars and proteins, even if these are present at trace levels, with instruments far more sensitive than anything available in the 1980s." She also noted that the discovery had strong collaboration from multiple groups, including museum curators, conservators and specialized scientists. "We hope our approach will now be used to identify honey residues in other museum collections so we can learn more about ancient beekeeping and the role of honey in diet, medicine and ritual life," Carvalho said. The latest research adds to a number of ancient food-related discoveries this year, which are extremely rare occurrences. In Guam, 3,500-year-old rice was recently found, making it the earliest known evidence of rice in Remote Oceania. Earlier in 2025, archaeologists uncovered a well-preserved loaf of ancient bread in Turkey, dating back to the Bronze Age.
National Geographic
08-08-2025
- National Geographic
These tarantulas may have evolved huge genitalia to fend off bloodthirsty females
Researchers have uncovered a new tarantula genus called Satyrex where males may have evolved longer sex organs to avoid getting eaten by fierce females. A female from the species Satyrex ferox is pictured above. Photograph By Premysl Fabianek When scientists discover a new species, they usually name it after the creature's most notable characteristic. So why did a group of scientists recently name a newly discovered genus of tarantulas after satyrs, the famously well-endowed half-goat men from Greek mythology? Like a satyr, the new species have massive members that dwarf those of all other tarantulas, scientists explain in a study published last month in the journal ZooKeys. Females in this genus are extremely aggressive, so scientists speculate that their males evolved ginormous genitals to keep a safer distance during mating. 'New species are found quite regularly, but finding large-sized spiders with such bold behavior and such unique features, that doesn't happen every day,' says Alireza Zamani, an arachnologist at the University of Turku in Finland and co-author of the new find. 'There's a lot that we don't know about our planet.' Female tarantulas (Satyrex somalicus pictured) are known to eat males after sex. Photograph By Premysl Fabianek Chowing down on their mates may give females (Satyrex arabicus pictured) an energy boost to raise a clutch of eggs. Photograph By Mohssin Fageeh Last year, Zamani was poring over old records of tarantula sightings when he noticed something strange. The scientific record, the citizen science platform iNaturalist, and even social media sites were all teeming with reports of tarantulas with massive sex organs in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. Tarantulas, like all spiders, don't have penises; they have palps. Located near the spider's mouth, palps are leg-like appendages that are used for everything from mating to feeding. Males have structures on their palps known as palpal bulbs. The bulbs look like boxing gloves and function like syringes. When it's time to mate, males deposit sperm onto one of their webs and then transfer it to their papal bulbs. Once they have a female in their grasp, they will insert one of their palps into the female's genital opening and deposit their sperm. While palp size varies species to species, the palps that Zamani was seeing were unlike any he had seen before. He contacted researchers in Africa and the Middle East, and eventually got his hands on eight preserved specimens, their impressive palps intact, as well as photos and videos of them in the wild. By studying their structure and DNA, Zamani and his colleagues were able to determine that these tarantulas not only belonged to four new species but also comprised an entirely new genus. They dubbed this new genus Satyrex, which is a combination of Satyr and the Latin word rēx, meaning the spiders in this genus live underground and are 'highly defensive and highly aggressive,' Zamani says. The most aggressive of the bunch is Satyrex ferox. This spider, which is the largest in the genus, has palps that can reach a whopping five centimeters (nearly two inches), making them nearly as long as its longest legs. Their name comes from the Latin word for "fierce." According to Zamani, this spider will assume a defensive posture at the slightest disturbance, raising its front legs and rubbing them together to make a hissing sound. The tarantula tango The researchers speculate that male members of Satyrex may have evolved their huge palps to avoid getting attacked and eaten by females during sex. For many tarantulas, mating is a deadly duel. During such bouts, males strive to inseminate and escape, while females fight to make a meal of their would-be suitors. (See a rare video of tarantula mating.) In nearly all tarantulas, including the new Satyrex species, males have evolved hooks on their front legs that they use to lock the female's fangs in place during mating to stop her from biting them. While these little hooks work for most tarantulas, Zamani suspects they alone are unlikely to protect members of Satyrex from their feisty females. Having huge palps may help male Satyrex spiders maintain a safe(ish) distance from females during mating, he says. 'I think it's a fascinating hypothesis that is very testable,' says Chrissie Painting, a behavioral ecologist who studies mating systems at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Painting, who was not involved with the study, says these spiders may be in the midst of an evolutionary arms race, with females evolving to become more aggressive in order to snag a snack that can sustain them in motherhood and males evolving better means of mating with them without getting eaten. While more research is needed to confirm this, Painting says, sexual cannibalism is a strong driver of evolution. In other spider species with sexual cannibalism, Painting points out, males have evolved the ability to transfer sperm extremely quickly to reduce their chances of getting eaten while getting it on. (Meet the tarantula named after Johnny Cash.) Having longer leg-like genitals may help male Satyrex tarantulas (Satyrex arabicus shown) keep a safe distance from feisty females during sex. Photograph By Mohssin Fageeh A broader web of spider diversity Zamani and his colleagues were surprised that the spiders they described in this study had gone undiscovered for so long. But our planet is home to over 1,000 species of tarantulas, and many have yet to be found. 'The reality is that the vast majority of Earth's biodiversity remains undocumented,' he says. When it comes to the range of weird spiders yet to be discovered, these tarantulas may just be the tip.
Gizmodo
07-08-2025
- Gizmodo
Very Important Study Calculates Your Chance of Being Killed by an Asteroid vs Several Other Scary Things
In what first appears like a rather morbid game of 'which would you rather?', researchers have released a new study that games out how likely the average person is to die should one of various mishaps like car crashes, carbon monoxide poisoning, and lightning strikes, occur—or because a giant asteroid destroys the Earth. The probability of a planet-annihilating asteroid crashing into Earth is low, but it's not zero. In fact, Earth had a recent close call when a newly discovered asteroid was calculated to have a 1-in-63 chance of impacting our planet in 2032. Thankfully, scientists later revised the chances of that happening to nearly zero, but nonetheless, asteroid 2024 YR4 reminded us how vulnerable we really are. In the new study, researchers set out to calculate just how likely it is that an asteroid could hit Earth during the average human lifetime, and the chances that the impact would kill us, and then compared that to the odds of other potentially fatal things happening to people during their lifetime, and how likely they are to meet their end. In a surprising finding, the researchers found that if an asteroid impact occurs, it is more likely to kill you than if you contracted rabies, according to the study, which was published on the preprint website arXiv. They also found that the chance of an asteroid hitting the Earth is more likely than the chance of a person being struck by lightning, but if you are struck by lightning, it is far more likely to be fatal. Calculating the odds of an asteroid impact is tricky. In order to come up with an estimate, the researchers analyzed data on the population of Near-Earth objects, as well as previous risk assessments of potentially hazardous asteroids and other space rocks that are more than 460 feet (140 meters) wide. They then calculated the frequency of impacts by these objects, and compared that to data about other grisly ways to die and the chances of these happening to an average human during their lifetime. Of course, no human has ever died from an asteroid impact hitting Earth, whereas 13 people died from lightning in 2024 in the U.S. alone. But still, the study 'places an event that would affect the planet (NEO impact) in context with potentially deadly events that can befall individuals,' the researchers wrote. 'This serves the purpose of allowing experts and non-experts to place the probability of an NEO impact within a mental framework of events they may have some familiarity with, such as car crashes and animal attack.' NASA is already planning for such an apocalyptic eventually: In 2022, the agency smacked a spacecraft into an asteroid in a test designed to see if we could deflect any hazardous space rocks heading our way. Known as the DART mission, it was a success, and a follow-up satellite is currently on its way to rendezvous with the same asteroid in order to study the impact up-close.
