3I/Atlas: Mystery interstellar object could be the oldest known comet
He says it could be more than seven billion years old, and it may be the most remarkable interstellar visitor yet.3I/Atlas was first spotted on 1 July 2025 by the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile, when it was about 670 million km from the Sun.Since then astronomers around the world have been racing to identify its path and discover more details about it.Mr Hopkins believes it originated in the Milky Way's 'thick disk'. This is a group of ancient stars that orbit above and below the area where the Sun and most stars are located.
The team believe that because 3I/ATLAS probably formed around an old star, it is made up of a lot of water ice.That means that as it approaches the Sun later this year, the energy from the Sun will heat the object's surface, leading to blazes of vapour and dust.That could create a glowing tail.The researchers made their findings using a model developed by Mr Hopkins."This is an object from a part of the galaxy we've never seen up close before," said Professor Chris Lintott, co-author of the study."We think there's a two-thirds chance this comet is older than the solar system, and that it's been drifting through interstellar space ever since."Later this year, 3I/ATLAS should be visible from Earth using amateur telescopes.Before 3I/Atlas soared into view, just two others had been seen. One was called 1I/'Oumuamua, found in 2017 and another called 2I/Borisov, discovered in 2019.Astronomers globally are currently gearing up to start using a new, very powerful telescope in Chile, called the Vera C Rubin. When it starts fully surveying the southern night sky later this year, scientists expect that it could discover between 5 and 50 new interstellar objects.
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The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
Scientists detect biggest ever merger of two massive black holes
Scientists have detected ripples in space-time from the violent collision of two massive black holes that spiralled into one another far beyond the distant edge of the Milky Way. The black holes, each more than 100 times the mass of the sun, began circling each other long ago and finally slammed together to form an even more massive black hole about 10bn light years from Earth. The event is the most massive black hole merger ever recorded by gravitational wave detectors and has forced physicists to rethink their models of how the enormous objects form. The signal was recorded when it hit detectors on Earth sensitive enough to detect shudders in space-time thousands of times smaller than the width of a proton. 'These are the most violent events we can observe in the universe, but when the signals reach Earth, they are the weakest phenomena we can measure,' said Prof Mark Hannam, the head of the Gravity Exploration Institute at Cardiff University. 'By the time these ripples wash up on Earth they are tiny.' Evidence for the black hole collision arrived just before 2pm UK time on 23 November 2023 when two US-based detectors in Washington and Louisiana, operated by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (Ligo), twitched at the same time. The sudden spasm in space-time caused the detectors to stretch and squeeze for one tenth of a second, a fleeting moment that captured the so-called ringdown phase as the merged black holes formed a new one that 'rang' before settling down. Analysis of the signal revealed that the colliding black holes were 103 and 137 times the mass of the sun and spinning about 400,000 times faster than Earth, close to the theoretical limit for the objects. 'These are the highest masses of black holes we've confidently measured with gravitational waves,' said Hannam, a member of the Ligo scientific collaboration. 'And they're strange, because they are slap bang in the range of masses where, because of all kinds of weird things that happen, we don't expect black holes to form.' Most black holes form when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel and collapse at the end of their life cycle. The incredibly dense objects warp space-time so much that they create an event horizon, a boundary within which even light cannot escape. Physicists at Ligo suspect the black holes that merged were themselves products of earlier mergers. That would explain how they came to be so massive and why they were spinning so fast, as merging black holes tend to impart spin on the object they create. 'We've seen hints of this before, but this is the most extreme example where that's probably what's happening,' Hannam said. Scientists have detected about 300 black hole mergers from the gravitational waves they generate. Until now, the most massive merger known produced a black hole about 140 times the mass of the sun. The latest merger produced a black hole up to 265 times more massive than the sun. Details are to be presented on Monday at the GR-Amaldi meeting in Glasgow. Before the first gravitational wave detectors were built in the 1990s, scientists could observe the universe only through electromagnetic radiation such as visible light, infrared and radio waves. Gravitational wave observatories provide a new view of the cosmos, allowing researchers to see events that were otherwise hidden from them. 'Usually what happens in science is, when you look at the universe in a different way, you discover things you didn't expect and your whole picture is transformed,' said Hannam. 'The detectors we have planned for the next 10 to 15 years will be able to see all the black hole mergers in the universe, and maybe some surprises we didn't expect.'
BBC News
4 hours ago
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Armagh Observatory: 230 years of unbroken weather recordings
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The Independent
5 hours ago
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New at-home heart monitors to slash NHS hospital waiting lists
The NHS has started rolling out a new at-home heart monitor designed to detect heart rhythm problems. Unlike traditional monitors that can require lengthy set-up by a trained physiologist, the innovative kit can be posted to patients for them to attach themselves at home and used to investigate conditions including atrial fibrillation, tachycardia or heart blocks. The device itself is a small patch that adheres to the skin, while traditional devices see patients hooked up to numerous wires and monitors during hospital visits. After the new tool is worn for a few days, patients simply post the monitor back, removing the necessity for appointments to fit and remove the equipment. The collected data is then analysed by an artificial intelligence (AI) tool called Cardiologs, which generates a report for assessment by a physiologist or doctor. Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust is the first hospital in the country to roll out the device, with hopes that the device will soon be used across other NHS trusts. The Trust said it will still use traditional devices, known as Holter monitors, on some patients who are in hospital, but many of those who are outside of hospital will be able to access the new ePatch, which is made by Philips, to use in the comfort of their own homes. It is estimated that the use of the patches will double productivity levels for diagnosing heart rhythm problems. Dr Iain Sim, consultant cardiac electrophysiologist, said the purpose of the device is 'to record the heart rhythm – to collect electrical signals from the heart – and to try to understand a bit about the patient and what they are experiencing and whether that can be explained by their heart rhythm'. 'This smaller device allows us to measure at the moment up to 10 days. 'The benefits of it are that it is smaller and more convenient, rather than having different wires all over the place. 'We are able to put them on faster, and we're able to reduce our turnaround times for reports and to get results back to patients faster.' He said that traditional Holter monitors are attached by trained physiologists, but there is a shortage of these staff members at present. 'Because these are more straightforward, we've got specialist nurses who can be quite easily trained to apply them,' he added. Suzanne Jordan, associate director for medicine at Frimley Health, said the patches can even be sent out to patients for them to attach themselves. The feedback from the monitors is developed into reports for medics ,which are categorised in a traffic light system, she said. 'Green is perfectly fine – within normal limits; amber may need a clinician to review the report; red means potentially significant pauses or arrhythmia that need an urgent review,' she said. 'It's been really positive – staff and patients really like it. We can post the patches to patients – there are explicit instructions there in terms of how to put it on, what to do if there's a problem, and also just to send it back as well. 'Once it comes back, it gets downloaded and the turnaround times are great.' Ms Jordan added: 'If you think of the bigger picture, it means that we're going to be able to manage our patients quickly. 'We've been running clinics by seeing maybe 30 patients in one day, whereas before, we were probably seeing 14 maximum – so we've kind of doubled our productivity.' Asked about the conditions which will be monitored with the devices, Dr Sim added: 'Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a really important and common condition that we pick up with these devices, and we're increasingly looking at whether we can use them to help detect AF that's not symptomatic, and whether people are increased risk of stroke that we don't know about. 'The other conditions would relate to other forms of types of tachycardia, so fast heart rates, or episodes of very slow heart rates, such as heart blocks of different degrees, where patients may have palpitations, or they may have fainting or syncope. 'So it allows us to monitor all of those heart rhythms.' On the use of AI to review the data from the monitors, he added: 'I think it's natural for everyone to be concerned whenever you put the term 'AI' into something, but these are pretty well tested algorithms that still have human oversight.' Mark Leftwich, managing director for Philips UK and Ireland, said studies show Philips ePatch 'can spot up to 2.5 times more clinically relevant heart rhythm issues than the traditional Holter monitors – so not only is it more comfortable to wear, it can actually help catch issues that might have been missed before'.
