An eight billion-year-old radio signal containing extreme levels of energy has been discovered by astronomers. According to the journal Science, a “fast radio burst” was recorded as lasting for just a millisecond. The radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation was identified as FRB 20220610A, and it contained a truly staggering level of energy – releasing the same amount that the sun releases in 30 years. As CNN reports, the true nature of these blasts can often be hard to determine, given that they last for such a short length of time. It is believed, however, that they result from galaxies merging to create new stars. Furthermore, they could also be 'weighed', in order to measure the mass of the elements in the universe which are found between galaxies and unaccounted for. Coauthor Ryan Shannon said: “If we count up the amount of normal matter in the universe - the atoms that we are all made of - we find that more than half of what should be there today is missing. “We think that the missing matter is hiding in the space between galaxies, but it may just be so hot and diffuse that it’s impossible to see using normal techniques.” The huge signal was discovered using the Australian SKA Pathfinder radio telescope, before further observation was undertaken using a telescope in China – which was able to determine that the fast radio burst was the oldest and more remote example discovered to date. It comes after scientists were left baffled following the discovery of a mysterious object which sends radio waves every 21 minutes earlier this year. The really strange thing is, it’s been doing the same thing for 45 years and astronomers are still unsure about what it could be. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

Elon Musk formally renamed Twitter “X” in July, cementing the rebrand by bolting the symbol to the top of the social network’s San Francisco headquarters and replacing Larry the Bird, its mascot since 2012, with a grungy black logo soon afterwards. Linda Yaccarino, X’s new CEO, declared at the time of the rebrand: “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.” Mr Musk had already renamed the company itself X Corp in March, six months after acquiring it for $44m, a purchase he described at the time as “an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”, his vision for a multipurpose competitor to China’s WeChat. The decision was just the latest example of the entrepreneur’s preoccupation with the 24th letter of the alphabet: his first business venture was X.com, he shortened the name of Space Exploration Technologies Corp to SpaceX, he launched the Tesla Model X and has a new artificial intelligence startup named xAI. He even calls his son X Æ A-12 just X for short. So what is the obsession about and where did it begin? His first venture, X.com, was an online banking and financial services platform launched in Palo Alto, California, in 1999 that would ultimately be merged with Confinity to become PayPal, which was in turn then sold to eBay for $1.5bn in 2002, Mr Musk using some of the capital he earned as its largest shareholder to found SpaceX. Julie Anderson Ankenbrandt, a former PayPal executive, explained how Mr Musk’s platform got its name in a Quora post in 2016. “Elon, the other founders of the company that was X.com… and I sat around a backroom table at a long-defunct bar called the Blue Chalk in Palo Alto, trying decide what the name of the company should be… and the question at hand was whether to be Q, X or Z dot com,” she wrote. “Finally, when the waitress/female server brought the next round of drinks Elon asked her what she thought, and she said she like[d] X.com. Elon pounded the table and said ‘That’s it then!’ and everyone laughed, but in the end that was pretty much how it was decided.” Not everyone was happy with the decision, according to Mr Musk’s biographer Ashlee Vance, who told NPR: “Everyone tried to talk him out of naming the company that back then because of the sexual innuendos, but he really liked it and stuck with it.” He liked the name so much he bought the X.com domain back from PayPal in 2017 and thanked the company in a tweet, explaining that it had “great sentimental value” to him. The domain now redirects to the social network that has since taken on its old moniker. Elsewhere, the Tesla Model X – a midsize luxury crossover SUV with falcon wing doors – was named so that, with three other models, the range would spell out “S3XY”, giving you an insight into Mr Musk’s gawky sense of humour. As for his son, the boy’s mother Grimes explained in a tweet of her own that the symbol is used in algebra to denote any unknown variable, perhaps suggesting the child is free to grow up to be whatever they choose to be. The rebranding of Twitter to X sparked a great deal of musing about the letter’s possible significance (or lack thereof), with Lora Kelly of The Atlantic writing: “The letter is associated with such varied contexts as Christian symbolism, middle-school-math equations, gender neutrality, pornography, a kiss.” In Psychology Today, Leon F Selzer discussed its “nihilistic” values, noting that it has associations with everything from the Nazi swastika to a skull-and-crossbones danger warning on a bottle of poison to Roman numerals, voting and Christmas (at least when abbreviated to “Xmas”) and therefore can mean everything and nothing. Meanwhile, in The New York Times, Stella Bugbee suggested the choice was arguably a bit dated and perhaps represented a case of Mr Musk showing his age as a member of, appropriately enough, Generation X. “For marketing purposes in the 1990s, X had a certain cool,” she explained. “It conferred a rejection of authority.” While that observations rings true of such turn-of-the-millennium cultural detritus as, say, the arrival of Microsoft’s XBox in 2001 or Vin Diesel’s action film XXX (2002), it has also been used in the same way before and since: think of country star Loretta Lynn’s notoriety-courting 1972 single “Rated X” or the cult 1980s Los Angeles punk band X, for instance, or the more recent Ti West horror film X (2022). As Lora Kelly observed: “X both reinforces absence and electrifies objects with meaning. It is sacred and profane.” Read More Elon Musk ‘borrowed $1bn from SpaceX’ at same time as Twitter acquisition SpaceX abandons YouTube for live streams of launches in favour of X/Twitter Elon Musk threatens to sue the Anti-Defamation League over lost revenue on X Elon Musk ‘borrowed $1bn from SpaceX’ at same time as Twitter acquisition Starship ‘ready to launch’, Elon Musk says Elon Musk vows to sue ADL for calling him antisemitic over X campaign

The new iPhone 15 Pro lineup offers a lot to get excited about: They're slimmer and thinner, the new cameras are professional-grade and the switch to USB-C charging will make your life easier. But one new feature easily stands out as the most fun: The Action Button.

A team of some of the world's leading social media researchers has published four studies looking at the relationship between the algorithms used by Facebook and Instagram and America's widening political divide

Players can redeem Fortnite promo codes for August 2023 by logging in to their Epic Games account and inputting the code in the 'Redeem Code' section.

L3Harris Technologies is selling its commercial aviation solutions business to private equity firm TJC L.P. for $800 million,

TL;DR: As of June 30, get the All-in-One Adobe Creative Cloud Suite Certification Course Bundle

'AGT' Season 18 Episode 14 to bring 11 contestants and once again 2 of them will be chosen to move ahead

TROY, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 14, 2023--

Apple has unveiled an augmented reality headset which it claims to be “the most advanced personal electronic device ever”. Called Vision Pro, it is labelled as “mixed reality” as it combines “virtual reality” – in which the wearer is fully immersed in the digital world – with “augmented reality” – where digital images are overlaid onto the real world. Apple CEO Tim Cook said: “Blending digital content with the real world can unlock experiences like nothing we’ve ever seen.” The device, which resembles a pair of ski goggles, features a glass 23-million-pixel screen which covers the upper face and is controlled using the wearer’s eyes, hands and voice. It enables what Apple calls “spatial computing” – where the wearer can interact with digital content “just like it’s in your physical space”. The headset features built-in speakers and attaches using an adjustable headband, while a wire leads from the device to a battery pack which sits in the user’s pocket. Vents draw in air to cool the device down, rendering it “virtually silent”, Apple claimed. Vision Pro will cost 3,499 US dollars (£2,800) – roughly 10 times the price of the Meta Quest 2, the leading VR headset from Facebook’s parent company, which retails for £299.99. It will be available online and in Apple stores in the US from early next year and will come to more countries “later next year”. After years of speculation, the product was unveiled at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference at its California headquarters on Monday. This is the first augmented reality headset released by Apple, and the first new product it has launched since announcing the Apple Watch in 2015. Mr Cook, who succeeded Steve Jobs as Apple CEO in 2011, said: “I believe that augmented reality is a profound technology. Blending digital content with the real world can unlock experiences like nothing we’ve ever seen. “Vision Pro is a new kind of computer that augments reality by seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world. “With Vision Pro, you’re no longer limited by a display. Your surroundings become an infinite canvas. “There are certain products that shift the way we look at technology and the role it plays in our lives. “Apple’s Vision Pro, together with Vision OS, introduces an entirely new spatial computing platform, a platform that presents incredible possibilities for our users and exciting new opportunities for our developers.”

A xQc fan said, 'Dude gets winded walking up stairs, and he thinks he can last 90 minutes on the field in any position?'

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) bars the use of all transmitting devices in the off chance that transmissions could interfere with a plane’s navigation and communications equipment and cause system malfunctions.