Scientists have found an array of “dashes” within our universe, all arranged in an unexpected pattern. The vast structures are lying in the middle of our Milky Way galaxy and point towards the black hole at its core. There are hundreds of them, each five to 10 light-years long, researchers say. “It was a surprise to suddenly find a new population of structures that seem to be pointing in the direction of the black hole,” Northwestern University’s Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, who led the research. “I was actually stunned when I saw these. We had to do a lot of work to establish that we weren’t fooling ourselves. And we found that these filaments are not random but appear to be tied to the outflow of our black hole. By studying them, we could learn more about the black hole’s spin and accretion disk orientation. It is satisfying when one finds order in a middle of a chaotic field of the nucleus of our galaxy.” Scientists have no confirmed explanation for where the structures came from, and much about their existence remains a mystery. But one possible explanation is that they were thrown out from after some activity a few million years ago. In the early 1980s, Professor Yusef-Zadeh found a set of gigantic, one-dimensional filaments hanging across our galaxy, near Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. The new filaments were previously undiscovered, and are much shorter and lie across, spreading out from the black hole. “We have always been thinking about vertical filaments and their origin,” he said. “I’m used to them being vertical. I never considered there might be others along the plane.” The research is described in a new paper, ‘The Population of the Galactic Center Filaments: Position Angle Distribution Reveal a Degree-scale Collimated Outflow from Sgr A* along the Galactic Plane’, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Read More Most powerful space telescope ever built identifies ancient star-studded galaxy Academics prepare for mission to Mars in bid to prove water theory Japan to launch satellite made of wood in 2024

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 30, 2023--

TikTok said on Tuesday it will begin launching a new tool that will help creators label their AI-generated content

Artificial intelligence startup Cohere has raised $270 million from a mix of venture capital and strategic investors including

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott on Monday rolled out his education and technology plan, arguing that, under President Joe Biden, the role of parents has been minimized in decisions over childhood education and social media habits.

MrBeast has smashed yet another YouTube record after racking up the most views for a non-music video in 24 hours. The hugely popular content creator had his most recent success with his ‘Stranded at Sea’ video, which was posted on August 6. The clip sees MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, spend a week out in the middle of the ocean with his pals, tasked with keeping themselves out of the elements and tackling tough conditions on an unprotected floating platform. It managed an incredible 46 million views in the space of just 23 hours, and he shared the news with his followers that it was a record-breaking clip. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “New video broke the world record for most views in 24 hours on a non music video! I’m living the life I would dream of every night when I was 13. I love all of you and thank you so much for watching our videos! I’ll never take you all for granted,” he wrote on Twitter. It’s not the first YouTube record MrBeast has set during his time posting on the site. He set the record for the fastest non-music video to reach 100 million views with his Squid Game video in 2021. 7 Days Stranded At Sea www.youtube.com Earlier this year he also overtook Pewdiepie for the most total channel views with a mind-boggling 29,077,461,841 hits. Meanwhile, Andrew Tate was upset recently that he didn’t win a MrBeast competition, and he’s claimed the YouTuber’s latest giveaway is a “lie” and is the work of “Satan”. It came after MrBeast previously announced that he’d be giving away his Twitter revenue for a month to the person who could achieve the most likes with their reply to his Tweet. 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.

Tim Cook has seen “the entire third season of Ted Lasso” on the Apple Vision Pro headset as he confirmed the company’s new and highly anticipated product is set to release on schedule. The headset, announced in June this year, is a virtual reality tool that allows people to see apps projected on top of the room around them. Apple said it allows apps to be “freed from the confines of a display” and mark a shift towards “spatial computing”. During the launch event in June, the tech giant said the headset would cost a whopping $3,499 and be available early next year in the US. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, the tech giant’s boss emphatically said the headset, deemed one of Apple’s most important products since the iPhone, is on track for release. Mr Cook was asked whether the product was still set for release in early 2024. The Apple boss replied saying “it is on track”, and added that he was “using it on a regular basis”. “I watched the entire third season of Ted lasso on the Vision Pro,” he said. “And of course there’s some things that I have access to that other people don’t have. “It is more complex and requires innovation not only in development but also in the manufacturing,” he said. Mr Cook also discussed Apple’s environmental initiatives, including plans to power 100,000 homes in Brown County, Texas with clean energy. While announcing the Vision Pro headset, Apple had said the device is the “most ambitious” product it has ever created. The headset has glass on the front and inside and an aluminium frame and a soft band that raps around the head. Apple said during the product’s announcement that its ambitious display is detailed enough to show 4K video natively. With the headset, Mr Cook said users will be able to “interact with digital content just like it’s in your physical space”, and will no longer be “limited by the display”. Apple also announced the new Apple watch last week – its first “totally carbon neutral” product. Read More iPhone 15 and Pro: Apple opens pre-orders for new handset What is USB-C, the charging socket that replaced Apple's Lightning cable? Apple unveils Watch Series 9 with new processor and hands-free features Apple Store goes offline as Apple opens pre-orders for iPhone 15 Apple to update iPhone 12 after fears over radiation iPhone 12 is not emitting dangerous radiation, Apple says, amid fears of Europe ban

While millions of people own cats and dogs and wouldn’t dream of getting rid of them, pets pose a health risk to humans that is massively overlooked, according to a new study. Since the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world with devastating impact, it has become evident how much of a risk new viruses can pose to our well-being. However, experts are warning that it is not just the wildlife trade or exotic animals that we should be concerned about, as pets could also be sources of zoonotic diseases (which jump from animals to humans). Back garden pets, house pets, working animals and even rodents and pests could host new viruses that could affect humans, according to a new study. It warns that the urbanisation of our habitats and climate change will have an impact on diseases and their dynamics. The study was shared in Science Translational Medicine and penned by disease ecologist Amandine Gamble along with a group of colleagues, who gave examples of how companion animals (aka pets) and stray animals carried a risk of zoonotic spillover. While the risk is thought to be small, experts warn it is significantly underappreciated, especially given the frequent proximity human beings have to pets and strays. The study said: “These animals can play critical roles in zoonotic spillover by enabling the maintenance of a zoonotic pathogen, facilitating its spatial spread, acting as a bridge between otherwise unconnected species, or providing particular opportunities for its evolution.” While the zoonotic spillover that caused Covid-19 sparked a global pandemic, any instance of infection that jumps from animal to human is known as a zoonotic, regardless of the numbers affected. Pet parrots are a known transmitter of the Chlamydia psittaci bacterium to humans. Elsewhere, bats and horses are also known sources of zoonotic diseases. In terms of common household pets, cats can act as a link to a number of fatal diseases. The experts explained: “Numbers of infections are low, but plague is endemic in 17 western U.S. states, and many of the small mammals on which cats prey carry Y. pestis. “Consequently, outdoor cats and cats with incomplete veterinary care, combined with human interaction, suggest that cat-transmitted plague can be considered an increasing public health risk.” They conclude that “it is critical to implement surveillance programs allowing us to track changes in pathogen dynamics”. Sign up to 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.

Fans can now manually equip or unequip their Gas Mask in Call of Duty: Warzone once Urzikstan goes live on Wednesday, Dec. 6.

Arm Ltd. is expected to unveil its filing for an initial public offering as soon as Monday, giving

Meta Platforms on Thursday launched two new AI-based features for video editing that could be used for posting

Researchers funded by the US Air Force are developing a new type of device that can invite comparisons to a weapon used by a Batman villain. Scientists, including Patrick Hopkins from the University of Virginia in the US, are working on a new device to be used for on-demand surface cooling for electronics inside spacecraft and high-altitude jets. The device may seem similar to the freeze gun used by Batman villain Mr Freeze to “ice” his enemies. “A lot of electronics on board heat up, but they have no way to cool down,” said Dr Hopkins, whose lab has been granted $750,000 over three years to develop the technology. On Earth, electronics in military craft can rely on nature to cool themselves, but in space, this may be a challenge, scientists said. Citing an example, researchers said the Navy uses ocean water in its liquid cooling systems while flying jets can rely on air that is dense enough to help keep components chilled. “With the Air Force and Space Force, you’re in space, which is a vacuum, or you’re in the upper atmosphere, where there’s very little air that can cool,” Dr Hopkins said. “So what happens is your electronics keep getting hotter and hotter and hotter. And you can’t bring a payload of coolant onboard because that’s going to increase the weight, and you lose efficiency,” he explained. In such extra-terrestrial environments, a jet of plasma, the fourth and most common state of matter in the universe, can be used in the interior of a craft. “This plasma jet is like a laser beam; it’s like a lightning bolt. It can be extremely localized,” Dr Hopkins explained. One of the strange qualities of plasma is that while it can reach temperatures as hot as the surface of the Sun, it chills before heating when it strikes a surface. In the new research, published recently in the journal ACS Nano, scientists fired a purple jet of plasma generated from helium through a hollow needle encased in ceramic, targeting a gold-plated surface. When researchers turned on the plasma, they could measure temperature immediately at the point where the plasma hit, and could see that the surface cooled first and then heated up. “We were just puzzled at some level about why this was happening, because it kept happening over and over,” Dr Hopkins said. “And there was no information for us to pull from because no prior literature has been able to measure the temperature change with the precision that we have. No one’s been able to do it so quickly,” he said. The strange surface-cooling phenomenon, according to scientists, was the result of blasting an ultra-thin, hard-to-see surface layer, composed of carbon and water molecules. Researchers compare this to a similar process that happens when cool water evaporates off of our skin after a swim. “Evaporation of water molecules on the body requires energy; it takes energy from body, and that’s why you feel cold. In this case, the plasma rips off the absorbed species, energy is released, and that’s what cools,” the researchers explained. Using the method, scientists could reduce the temperature of the setup by several degrees for a few microseconds. While this may not be dramatic, they said it is enough to make a difference in some electronic devices. Now, thanks to the Air Force grant, researchers are looking at how variations on their original design might improve the apparatus. “Since the plasma is composed of a variety of different particles, changing the type of gas used will allow us to see how each one of these particles impact material properties,” researchers said. Read More Scientists discover 3,000-year-old arrowhead made of ‘alien’ iron Carcinogens found at nuclear missile sites as reports of hundreds of cancers surface India’s moon rover confirms sulphur and detects several other elements near the lunar south pole China’s ‘government-approved’ AI chatbot says Taiwan invasion likely Russian cyber-attacks ‘relentless’ as threat of WW3 grows, expert warns How new bike technology could help cyclists tell drivers not to crash into them