It’s August, which means Hot Science Summer is two-thirds over. This week, NASA released an exceptionally pretty photo of Mars, a sharp panorama color altered to make the sky blue (???). California health authorities are warning hunters and trappers about contaminated game after one trapper caught a wild pig with bright blue muscle tissue. The pigs and other wildlife may have been exposed to the anticoagulant rodenticide diphacinone. And an international team of astronomers identified the oldest known black hole ever confirmed—the object was present 500 million years after the Big Bang.
It’s August, which means Hot Science Summer is two-thirds over. This week, NASA released an exceptionally pretty photo of Mars, a sharp panorama color altered to make the sky blue (???). California health authorities are warning hunters and trappers about contaminated game after one trapper caught a wild pig with bright blue muscle tissue. The pigs and other wildlife may have been exposed to the anticoagulant rodenticide diphacinone. And an international team of astronomers identified the oldest known black hole ever confirmed—the object was present 500 million years after the Big Bang.
Additionally, functional brain scanning suggests that video games are more engaging (in a good way) than television viewing or social media use; Chinese astronomers have teased out a triple black hole system from LIGO data; and AI company Anthropic is reporting a new method to prevent LLMs from becoming evil.
Researchers from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory report evidence that a recently observed binary black hole merger may have occurred within the gravitational field of a third object, quite possibly a supermassive black hole. This suggests an entirely new model for binary black hole mergers and the interactions of highly compact objects.
The team analyzed a gravitational wave event called GW190814, the merger of two black holes.
