Black holes are great at sucking up matter. So great, in fact, that not even light can escape their grasp (hence the name).
But given their talent for consumption, why don’t black holes just keep expanding and expanding and simply swallow the Universe? Now, one of the world’s top physicists has come up with a new explanation.
Conveniently, the idea could also unite the two biggest theories in all of physics.
How are stars and planets born? What happens to its planets when a star dies?
Come along on an epic interstellar journey, billions of years long, through the life and death of a planetary system: https://go.nasa.gov/2EqOwlb
The death of a binary star can be a spectacularly violent thing.
This picture shows the binary system R Aquarii, a red giant throwing off its outer envelope, which is being greedily cannibalised by its companion, a much smaller, denser white dwarf.
The dramatic moment you’re looking at unfolded just 650 light-years from Earth – practically right next door in astronomical terms, which is why astronomers have a keen interest in the event.
Nearly 100 times farther from the Sun than the Earth is, there’s a point where the charged particles from the Sun no longer reach into the uncharged particles of interstellar space, or the pockets of space that exist between the various star systems of the universe.
This point, known as a heliopause, marks the very edge of the solar system where human beings themselves live.
The heliopause border around the solar system was first “discovered” by scientists using NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft as far back as 30 years ago. But recently, a newer NASA spacecraft, the New Horizons space probe, has found actual evidence of that point in space.
IonQ was founded on a gamble that ‘trapped ion quantum’ computing could outperform the silicon-based quantum computers that Google and others are building. As of right now, it does. IonQ has constructed a quantum computer that can perform calculations on a 79-qubit array, beating the previous king Google’s efforts by 7 qubits.
Their error rates are also the best in the business, with their single-qubit error rate at 99.97% while the nearest competitors are around the 99.5 mark, and a two-qubit error rate of 99.3% when most competitors are beneath 95%. But how does it compare to regular computers?
According to IonQ, in the kinds of workloads that quantum computers are being built for, it’s already overtaking them. The Bernstein-Vazirani Algorithm, a benchmark IonQ is hoping will take off, tests a computer’s ability to determine a single encoded number (called an oracle) when the computer can only ask a single yes/no question.
How much do you know about anatomy? Cardiology? Have you ever set foot in a scientific lab? Once you visit BioInteractive’s virtual lab, you’ll feel as if you have.
The website is offered by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit organization that funds biomedical research. It features free virtual labs for anatomy, bacterial identification, immunology, neurophysiology and cardiology.
The concept is simple: You tool around virtual, web-based spaces as if you were a scientist. And you learn in the process. It’s designed to help users practice the skills and techniques of scientific research.
Past experience matters too. For example, if the last time a person felt a twinge in their lower back it developed into sciatica, with significant pain that took months of therapy to come right, the next time they experience a twinge in their back the person is likely to experience more anxiety and pain. Pain, you see, isn’t an input to the body, rather pain is an output of the brain’s threat detection system.
Another major factor is a person’s current state of mind. They may rate a noxious stimulus differently from day to day, or even within a day. Indeed, from your own experiences, you might appreciate that pain associated with an injury isn’t constant throughout the day.
There’s also significant variation in pain sensitivity and tolerance between people.
Posted in futurism
What caused Antarctica’s increased snowfall from 1901–2000? A warming atmosphere. But even with the extra snowfall, it’s still losing mass. Learn how we make future predictions of how ice sheets will shift: https://go.nasa.gov/2EnWVWj
