Astronomers detect the biggest explosion since Big Bang
Scientists have detected the biggest explosion since the Big Bang from a supermassive black hole 400 million light years away from Earth. A researcher, who authored the paper that reported the finding, told BBC that the amount of energy generated would have been equal to “20 billion billion megaton TNT explosions every thousandth of a second for 240 million years”. It left a gap in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster that is 1.5 million light years across. Read more on BBC.
Complete protein discovered in a meteorite
Scientists analysing samples from a meteorite called Acfer 086 found a complete protein molecule in them. More interestingly, the molecule does not come from the Earth. Proteins are made up of amino acids and are a basic ingredient of life. We’ve found amino acids in space before, but never in the form of a complete protein. However, the paper has not yet been peer-reviewed and the authors released their study after they submitted it for review. Read more about this on Futurism.
Mysterious Betelgeuse star has started brightening again after four months of dimming
After four months of dimming, the Orion constellation star Betelgeuse has started brightening again. The star has been in the news recently for its sudden dip in brightness, which most often indicates that the star is going to explode in a supernova. The star is expected to explode sometime in the next 100,000 years, and when it does, it will be brighter than the moon and visible during the day. However, there are other explanations for the dimming as well, none of them satisfactory. More about it on Scientific American.
Move over snake eyes, dog noses can detect heat signatures too
It turns out that not only are dog noses 100 million times more sensitive than human noses, they can also pick up thermal radiation. They are also able to pick up weak thermal radiations, such as the body heat of a mammal. This is probably how even blind or deaf dogs are able to hunt well. In experiments and brain scans, regions of the brain that are activated when processing infrared radiation were activated when an object that was slightly warmer than normal was introduced to dogs. More on Science Mag.