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South African telescope detects record‑breaking signal from the early universe

Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have discovered the most distant hydroxyl megamaser ever detected, opening a new radio astronomy frontier. A hydroxyl megamaser is a natural space laser, and this one is located in a violently merging galaxy more than 8 billion light-years away.

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David Kipping has new take on the existence of advanced life in the universe and the numbers are not encouraging

Between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, two physicists, Michael Hart and Frank Tipler, published a controversial series of papers arguing that extraterrestrial intelligence didn’t exist. As they argued, the likelihood that extraterrestrial civilizations (ETCs) would have had enough time to develop advanced computing, spaceflight and self-replicating machines (Von Neumann probes) means they would have colonized the galaxy, and come to Earth, long ago. Since there was no evidence of this, they reasoned that ETCs must not exist and humanity was alone in the universe.

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TRACERS spacecraft maps solar energy’s route into Earth using cusp electrons

Physicists led by the University of Iowa have documented in the finest detail to date how energy from the sun interacts with Earth’s magnetic field, which could yield greater insight into solar effects on Earth that drive space weather.

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Q&A: Tracing the origins of supermassive black holes

Sarah Pappert is a Ph.D. candidate in astrophysics at the TUM School of Natural Sciences and conducts research at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. She is supervised by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Genzel and Prof. Dr. Frank Eisenhauer, who holds a TUM Distinguished Affiliated Professorship at the TUM School of Natural Sciences. Her research focuses on supermassive black holes and the development of astronomical instruments for the Extremely Large Telescope in Chile. In addition to her research, she is actively involved in science communication and is committed to encouraging girls and young women to pursue studies and careers in STEM.

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When motion prevents order in active matter systems

Pack enough string-like objects together, and they will begin to align with one another. But replace the strings with worms or bacteria living in your gut, and this self-organization becomes much more difficult. A team of University of Amsterdam (UvA) researchers has demonstrated that activity can fundamentally alter one of the most important phase transitions in soft matter physics.

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Congressman Eric Burlison Demanded MITRE’s UFO Records. They Go Back to 1930.

Rep. Eric Burlison sent MITRE a 10-page demand for every UAP record it holds going back to 1930. The contractor says it is now searching its archives, and subpoenas are on the table.

The post Congressman Eric Burlison Demanded MITRE’s UFO Records. They Go Back to 1930. appeared first on Infinity Explorers.

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Fusion reactors could be monitored for covert plutonium production

In the next few decades, many physicists are hopeful that nuclear fusion could become a realistic source of practically limitless energy. But before this can happen, it will be critical to ensure that reactors cannot be covertly misused to produce materials for nuclear weapons.

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Supercomputer illuminates subatomic particle that helps hold matter together

A team of researchers has leveraged a supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory to reveal the internal structure of a pion in unprecedented detail. The findings are published in the Journal of High Energy Physics.

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Chandra resolves NGC 6540’s mysterious X-ray flare into three separate sources

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray spacecraft, astronomers have performed deep X-ray observations of a galactic globular cluster known as NGC 6540. The new observational campaign, described June 1 on the preprint server arXiv, focused on disentangling the nature of a peculiar X-ray flare emitted by the cluster about two decades ago.

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Bidirectional manipulation of gate-free quantum electronic states via semiconductor interface engineering

A recent study published in Nature Communications demonstrates precise control over electron spatial arrangement in two directions simultaneously—without any applied voltage—through interface engineering between semimetal bismuth (Bi) thin films and two-dimensional semiconductor MoS₂.

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Man who got drunk at birthday party, shot at Calif. sheriff’s office helicopter sentenced to 9 years in prison

The man ultimately finished off a handle of Jack Daniels containing 1.75 liters of hard liquor before firing shots intermittently for at least 20 minutes

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Children of first responders would be eligible for free community college under N.C. bill

The Family Support for Those Who Serve Act would apply to children of certain public safety officers between the ages of 17 and 24 who meet admissions standards

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SpaceX: Five key moments, from first launch to Starship megarocket

More than 20 years after its founding, SpaceX made history Friday with its record-high stock market debut, crowning a unique journey marked by dazzling successes but also catastrophic failures and unfulfilled promises.

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Meet REMORA: The autonomous space fleet built to tag and track asteroids

To truly understand what an asteroid is made of, we need to send a probe to it. Remote sensing from ground-based telescopes, or even orbiting observatories, can only do so much. A new white paper submitted to the U.K. Space Agency’s 2035 Space Frontiers program (available on the arXiv preprint server) pitches just such a mission architecture. Called the REndezvous Mission for Orbital Reconstruction of Asteroids (REMORA), the plan calls for a swarm of autonomous CubeSats to tag, track and characterize multiple near-Earth asteroids.

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Scientist creates ‘mini‑universe’ to measure time without a clock

A University of Birmingham scientist has built a “mini-universe” that takes a step toward answering one of science’s biggest questions: “What is time?” Publishing his findings in Physical Review Research, Professor Giovanni Barontini shows how it is possible to measure the flow of time without using a clock at all. The new findings provide a scientific model in which a version of time emerges from the experiment itself.

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