Tag Archives: heaviest

Newly Discovered Science Stick Insects: Australia’s Heaviest Insects Yet!

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Stick insects from seeds Acrofera Alta

Angus Emmott/James Cook University

A recently identified giant stick insect species, discovered in the wet tropical rainforests of Australia, is poised to be recognized as the heaviest insect ever recorded on the continent.

Acrofera Alta weighs 44 grams, roughly equivalent to a golf ball, and measures around 40 cm in length. To date, only two female specimens have been collected, with a third individual photographed and released by surprised locals.

The genus of these insects has been known since 1835, yet this particular species remained hidden from scientific discovery, likely due to its elusive habitat, according to Angus Emmott from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia.

The lush, damp tropics of northeastern Australia serve as a pristine wilderness, rich with cool rainforests and home to other rare species like tree kangaroos.

So far, Acrofera Alta has only been found in tree canopies above 900 meters, specifically in the mountainous regions of Millaa Millaa and Mount Phypipamee in Queensland.

The species name Alta reflects both the altitude of the forests it inhabits and the height of the trees it commonly frequents.

“It has very large wings, but due to its bulky body, it can only use them to glide down to the ground,” Emmott explains.

Current population status remains uncertain. “We can’t really determine its rarity,” Emmott states. “It’s limited to small stretches of high-altitude rainforests and exists primarily in the canopy, making it less visible to observers unless they survive being affected by cyclones and birds.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Physicists Unveil Heaviest Known Proton-Luminescent Isotope: Astatine-188

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At the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Zibaskira in Finland, physicists utilized a gas-filled recoil separator focal plane spectrometer to observe two attenuation events of the newly discovered isotope astatin-188 (188At), which is composed of 85 protons and 103 neutrons.

Kokkonen et al. Report the discovery of the new nucleus 188At, which is the heaviest proton-emitting isotope known to date.

“Proton emission is a rare type of radioactive decay where the nucleus releases protons, moving toward stability,” explained Henna Kokkonen, a doctoral researcher at Zibaskira University.

“This new nucleus is currently the lightest known isotope of astatin, 188At, containing 85 protons and 103 neutrons.”

“Studying this type of exotic nucleus is exceedingly challenging due to its brief lifespan and low production cross-section. Therefore, precise techniques are essential.”

“The nuclei were produced through fusion deposition reactions by irradiating natural silver targets with a 84Sr ion beam,” added Dr. Kare Auranen of Zibaskira University.

“The detection of the new isotopes was made possible using the Ritu Recoil separator’s detector setup.”

In addition to the experimental findings, the physicists expanded theoretical models to interpret the collected data.

According to the team, 188At can be likened to a strong explosion, resembling “the shape of a watermelon.”

“The nuclear properties suggest a shift in the behavior of the binding energy of valence protons,” Kokkonen stated.

“This is attributed to unprecedented interactions with heavy nuclei.”

“Isotopes are rare globally, and this marks the second occasion I’ve had the chance to make history.”

“All experiments pose challenges, and it is rewarding to conduct research that enhances our understanding of the fundamental limits of matter and nuclear structure.”

The authors intend to refine the current uncertainties and half-life of the attenuation energy by further theoretical exploration of charged particle-damped heavy nuclei, observing the evolution of their shapes, and examining additional decay events of 188At.

“Equally intriguing is the study of the collapse of a currently unknown nuclear isotope 189At, which could be a proton-emitting nucleus, an aspect we have yet to explore in future experiments,” they concluded.

Their paper was published in the journal Nature Communications.

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H. Kokkonen et al. 2025. New Proton Emitter 188At signifies unprecedented interactions in heavy nuclei. Nat Commun 16, 4985; doi:10.1038/s41467-025-60259-6

Source: www.sci.news

Physicists Investigate True Tauonium: The Heaviest and Smallest QED Atom

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Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) Atoms are composed of unstructured point-like lepton pairs held together by electromagnetic forces.

An artist's impression of a true tauonium. Image credit: Fu other., doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2024.04.003.

“QED atom “Like hydrogen, which is formed from protons and electrons, it is formed from lepton pairs through electromagnetic interactions,” said physicist Jinghan Hu of Peking University and colleagues.

“Their properties have been studied for things like testing QED theory, fundamental symmetries, gravity, and exploring physics beyond the Standard Model.”

“The first QED atom was discovered in 1951. It was in a bonded state and was named positronium.”

“The second one, discovered in 1960, was in a captive state and was named Muonium.”

“No other QED atoms have been discovered in the past 64 years.”

“A new collider is proposed to discover true muonium, which decays to its final state with electrons and photons,” they said.

“The heaviest and smallest QED atoms are tauonium, ditauonium, or true tauonium”

in new paper in a diary science bulletinphysicists introduce a new method to identify true tauonium.

“Tauonium, which consists of tauon and its antiparticle, has a Bohr radius of only 30.4 femtometers, which is about 1/1741 times smaller than the Bohr radius of a hydrogen atom,” the researchers said.

“This means that tauonium can test the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics and QED on a smaller scale, providing a powerful tool for exploring the mysteries of the microscopic world of matter.”

“We will observe taunium by collecting data at 1.5 ab-1, which is close to the threshold for tauon pair production, in an electron-positron collider and selecting signal events containing charged particles accompanied by undetected neutrinos carrying away energy. We have demonstrated that the significance exceeds 5σ.

“This provides strong experimental evidence for the presence of tauonium.”

“We also found that by using the same data, the accuracy of measuring the tau lepton mass can be improved to an unprecedented level of 1 keV, two orders of magnitude higher than the best accuracy achieved in current experiments.”

“This result not only contributes to the accurate verification of the electroweak theory in the Standard Model, but also has profound implications for fundamental physics questions such as the universality of leptonic flavors.”

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Jin Hung Fu other. A new method for determining the heaviest QED atoms. science bulletin, published online on April 4, 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.scib.2024.04.003

Source: www.sci.news

Astronomers discover the heaviest supermassive black hole pair ever measured

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Astronomers are gemini north telescope measured a binary supermassive black hole located within the elliptical galaxy B2 0402+379.

Artist's impression of the supermassive black hole binary in elliptical galaxy B2 0402+379. Image credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. daSilva / M. Zamani.

The pair of compact objects at the center of B2 0402+379 are the only supermassive black hole binaries ever resolved in enough detail that both objects can be seen separately.

It holds the record for the smallest distance ever directly measured – just 24 light years.

While this close separation portends a strong merger, further research reveals that the pair has been stuck at this distance for more than 3 billion years, raising questions. What is the holdup?

To better understand the dynamics of this system and its stalled merger, Stanford University professor Roger Romani and his colleagues turned to archival data from Gemini North. Gemini multi-object spectrometer (GMOS) This allowed them to determine the speed of stars near the black hole.

“The excellent sensitivity of GMOS allowed us to map the increasing velocity of stars as they approach the center of the galaxy. This allowed us to estimate the total mass of black holes present there.” Professor Romani said.

The authors estimate that the binary star's mass is a whopping 28 billion times that of the Sun, making the pair the most massive binary black hole ever measured.

This measurement not only provides valuable background on the formation of binary systems and the history of their host galaxies, but also confirms the long-held belief that the mass of supermassive binary black holes plays a key role in preventing potential mergers. This supports the theory.

“The data archive provided by the International Gemini Observatory holds a goldmine of untapped scientific discoveries,” said Dr. Martin Still, NSF program director for the International Gemini Observatory.

“Measuring the mass of this extreme supermassive binary black hole is an awe-inspiring example of the potential impact of new research exploring its rich archive.”

Understanding how this binary formed can help predict if and when it will merge. Also, some clues indicate that the pair formed through multiple galaxy mergers.

First, B2 0402+379 is a “fossil cluster,” meaning it is the result of an entire galaxy cluster's worth of stars and gas merging into a single giant galaxy.

Additionally, the presence of two supermassive black holes, coupled with their large combined mass, suggests that they resulted from the merger of multiple smaller black holes from multiple galaxies.

After galaxies merge, supermassive black holes do not collide head-on. Instead, they start slingshotting each other as they settle into a certain trajectory.

Each time a black hole passes, energy is transferred from it to the surrounding stars.

Losing their energy, the pair are dragged together, and gravitational radiation takes over, merging them just a few light years away.

This process has been observed directly in pairs of stellar-mass black holes, first documented by the detection of gravitational waves in 2015, but has never been observed in binaries of supermassive black holes.

With new knowledge about the system's extremely large mass, astronomers concluded that it would take a very large number of stars to slow down the binary enough to make its orbits so close together. .

In the process, the black hole seems to have blown away almost all the material around it, depleting the galaxy's center of stars and gas.

The merger of the two companies stalled in the final stages, as there was nothing left to further slow the companies' trajectory.

“Galaxies with lighter black hole pairs usually seem to have enough stars and mass to quickly merge the two,” Professor Romani said.

“The pair is so massive that we needed a lot of stars and gas to get the job done. But binaries scour the galaxy for such material, causing it to stagnate, making it impossible for our research to do so.” has been made accessible.”

It remains to be determined whether the pair will overcome stasis and eventually merge on a timescale of millions of years, or remain in orbit forever in limbo.

If they merged, the resulting gravitational waves would be 100 million times more powerful than those produced by the merger of stellar-mass black holes.

The pair could potentially conquer that final distance via another galactic merger. In that case, additional material, or potentially a third black hole, could be injected into the galaxy, slowing the pair's orbits enough for a merger.

However, given that B2 0402+379 is a fossil cluster, further galaxy mergers are unlikely.

“We're looking forward to tracking the core of B2 0402+379 to find out how much gas is present,” said Tirth Surti, an undergraduate at Stanford University.

“This should give us more insight into whether supermassive black holes may eventually merge or remain stuck as binaries.”

of result will appear in astrophysical journal.

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Tirth Surti other. 2024. Central kinematics and black hole mass of 4C+37.11. APJ 960, 110; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad14fa

Source: www.sci.news

Potentially the heaviest neutron star ever observed found in mysterious object

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A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive star

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg3005

Some 40,000 light-years away, a strange object could be either the heaviest neutron star or the lightest black hole ever seen, and it resides in a mysterious celestial void that astronomers have never directly observed. .

Neutron stars form when a star runs out of fuel and collapses due to gravity, creating a shock wave called a supernova and leaving behind an extremely dense core. Astrophysical calculations show that these nuclei must remain below a certain mass, about 2.2 times the mass of the Sun, or they will collapse further to form a black hole.

However, black holes have only been observed to have a mass more than five times that of the sun, leaving a gap in scale between neutron stars and black holes. Gravitational-wave observatories have observed several dense objects in this gap, but astronomers have never discovered them with conventional telescopes.

now, Ewan Barr Researchers at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy discovered an object with 2.5 times the mass of the Sun by observing pulsars orbiting around it. A pulsar is a neutron star that emits pulses of light at regular millisecond intervals due to a strong magnetic field.

As predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, pulsars emit light with great regularity, but very large nearby objects can distort these rhythms. Dr. Barr and his team were able to calculate the mass of the pulsar's partner by observing the pulsar's pulses for more than a year using his MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.

“What we've discovered in this binary system appears to go beyond that [upper limit for neutron star mass]This suggests that there is some new physics going on here and that this is either a new type of star, or simply a black hole, the lightest stellar-mass black hole yet discovered. “There will be,” Barr said.

Pulsars are located in globular clusters, which are dense regions of stars and some rare objects that can pass close to each other. These unusual interactions could explain the mysterious object, Barr said.

If it's a black hole, researchers will be able to test theories of gravity that weren't possible before. “A pulsar is just a ridiculously accurate measuring device in orbit around a black hole, but it's not going anywhere. It's going to be around for the next billion years,” Barr says. “So this is an incredibly stable and natural test bed for investigating the physics of black holes.”

“If it's a neutron star, it would be more massive than any neutron star we've ever seen,” he says. Christine Dunn At Durham University, UK. “This actually tells us about the ultimate density that a star can support before it collapses under its own gravity and becomes a black hole. We need to understand the physics of matter at such extreme densities. I don't know what the limits are.”

Barr and his team plan to observe the pulsar with other telescopes over the next few years, looking for clues about what the object is. If it were a black hole, we would see the pulsar's orbit change over time, as the black hole dragged through spacetime around it, much like a ship dragging a small boat behind it. Or if it's a neutron star, more sensitive instruments might be able to detect the light.

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Source: www.newscientist.com