February 27, 2021
Astronomers found a high energy neutrino – a cosmic ray – that apparently originated during a “tidal disruption event,” that is, when a supermassive black hole shredded a distant star.
Artist’s concept of a tidal disruption event, when a star comes too close to a supermassive black hole and gets shredded. A situation like this may light up the host galaxy many times greater than its normal brightness. Image via DESY/ Science Communication Lab.
Cosmic rays are high-energy particles that travel through space at close to the speed of light. Many origins of cosmic rays have been suggested, and some confirmed; for example, supernova explosions generate them. But supernovae can’t explain the quantity of cosmic rays bombarding Earth at all times, and so cosmic ray origins are still largely mysterious. In particular, high-energy neutrinos are largely unexplained (although some come from blazars). Now, astronomers have pinpointed the origin of a high-energy ne
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IMAGE: Smoking gun: After the supermassive black hole tore the star apart, roughly half of the star debris was flung back out into space, while the remainder formed a glowing accretion. view more
Credit: Credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab
Tracing back a ghostly particle to a shredded star, scientists have uncovered a gigantic cosmic particle accelerator. The subatomic particle, called a neutrino, was hurled towards Earth after the doomed star came too close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of its home galaxy and was ripped apart by the black hole s colossal gravity. It is the first particle that can be traced back to such a tidal disruption event (TDE) and provides evidence that these little understood cosmic catastrophes can be powerful natural particle accelerators, as the team led by DESY scientist Robert Stein reports in the journal
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IMAGE: The Zwicky Transient Facility captured this snapshot of tidal disruption event AT2019dsg, circled, on Oct. 19, 2019. view more
Credit: ZTF/Caltech Optical Observatories
For only the second time, astronomers have linked an elusive particle called a high-energy neutrino to an object outside our galaxy. Using ground- and space-based facilities, including NASA s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, they traced the neutrino to a black hole tearing apart a star, a rare cataclysmic occurrence called a tidal disruption event. Astrophysicists have long theorized that tidal disruptions could produce high-energy neutrinos, but this is the first time we ve actually been able to connect them with observational evidence, said Robert Stein, a doctoral student at the German Electron-Synchrotron (DESY) research center in Zeuthen, Germany, and Humboldt University in Berlin. But it seems like this particular event, called AT2019dsg, didn t generate the neutrino when or how
Time really has no meaning on the North or South poles. But why? DigiPub/Getty Images
Time zones are headache fuel. Rapidly moving between them is a good way to screw up your sleep schedule; ask anyone who s traveled overseas on business.
They ve also got political quirks here and there. The continental United States is split into four recognized time zones. Yet China which is around the same size has just one. Still, that s not to say the layout of Earth s time zones is totally random.
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By international custom, our planet is divided into a series of longitudinal lines that run from the North Pole (
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This year proved, once again, that discoveries in science, history, and virtually every other sphere simply never stop not even during a pandemic.
On the latest episode of The List Show, Mental Floss editor-in-chief Erin McCarthy counts down (or up, rather) an epic list of 100 fascinating things we learned in 2020. Don’t worry, it’s not all about zoonotic diseases and the efficacy of face masks.
We recently found out, for example, that Bob Odenkirk almost nabbed the role of
The Office’s Michael Scott; and Paul Rudd was in the running for Jim Halpert. And as for those centuries-old rumors that Renaissance painter Raphael died of syphilis? A new study explained why they’re probably just rumors. 2020 also gave us dazzling, high-resolution photos of the sun, the truth about a massive fossil egg previously known as “The Thing,” and intriguing details about Britain’s most infamous 19th-century shipwreck.