There’s an incredibly ancient black hole out there that’s challenging astronomers to explain how it could exist only 400 million years after the Big Bang. It’s at the heart of a galaxy called GN-z11. Astronomers using JWST saw evidence of it gobbling up that galaxy‚ which is one way a black hole can grow. In JWST observations‚ GN-z11 appears to be about 13.4 billion light-years away and is about 100 times smaller than the Milky Way Galaxy. Yet‚ it has a very bright nucleus‚ which tells us there’s a black hole at its heart. An accretion disk surrounds the black hole‚ and it feeds material into the hungry black hole. The motion of the material in the disk heats it‚ causing it to glow in ultraviolet light. That’s what we see as the active galactic nucleus. Artist’s representation of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) at the center of a galaxy. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss A team of astronomers‚ led by Cambridge University professor Roberto Maiolino‚ used the JWST observations to study the motions of material in the galaxy. Finding a black hole like this early in cosmic history is a giant leap forward‚ he said. “It’s very early in the Universe to see a black hole this massive‚ so we’ve got to consider other ways they might form‚” said Maiolino. “Very early galaxies were extremely gas-rich‚ so they would have been like a buffet for black holes.” What Does GN-z11 Tell Us About Black Holes in the Early Universe? No one is quite sure exactly when the first black holes began to form in the early Universe. If you look at standard models about their creation‚ it looks like they take a while to get started. Supermassive black holes—like the ones in the hearts of galaxies—could get started as stellar-mass black holes that continue to accrete matter. If that’s how this one in GN-z11 got started‚ it would have been born when a supermassive star died. Then‚ somehow it grew to be 6 million times the mass of the Sun. But‚ there’s a gotcha. It would take nearly a billion years to accumulate that kind of mass. JWST observations show this black hole at a time when the Universe wasn’t even a billion years old. So‚ something doesn’t add up and perhaps early black holes grew faster than astronomers suspect. Maybe there’s another way for a black hole to grow that fast. The hint lies in its enormous appetite. Very early galaxies like this one have a lot of material to form stars. However‚ that also provides food for black holes. As it turns out‚ GN-z11’s black hole is devouring matter much faster than other black holes do in their galaxies in more modern times. That’s great for the growth of the black hole‚ but not so great if the galaxy wants to make more stars. Artist concept of a growing black hole‚ or quasar‚ seen at the center of a faraway galaxy. This may be how they looked in the early Universe. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) The hungry black hole is actually harming GN-z11. Since it’s consuming a lot of gas‚ it pushes the gas away in an ultra-fast wind. That stops the process of star formation. Since stars are what galaxies produce‚ the black hole’s gobbling can actually “kill off” the galaxy. The bad news (at least for the black hole) is that its appetite for gas will spell its doom as it runs out of material to eat. Going Back to the Beginning Ultimately‚ astronomers want to see the “seeds” of the earliest supermassive black holes in galaxies. These seeds likely formed very early in cosmic time‚ perhaps no later than 200 million years after the Big Bang. The first galaxies assembled fairly quickly and harbored very massive stars that lived perhaps only a few million years. Then‚ they exploded as supernovae and probably left behind the first stellar-mass black holes. Some have suggested that dark matter helped form early black holes by forcing matter in dense regions to collapse. Artist view of merging black holes in the early universe. Supermassive black holes early in cosmic time could have experienced many such “mergers and acquisitions”. Credit: LIGO/Caltech/MIT/R. Hurt (IPAC) However‚ they formed‚ black holes in early galaxies got swept up in early galactic mergers. Those seeds merged‚ too‚ creating ever more massive black holes. That’s probably why astronomers suspect that supermassive black holes grew by accretion‚ but not just with each other. They also grew by accretion of material inside their gas-rich galaxies‚ as GN-z11 seems to show. Future observations using JWST (and future telescopes) should uncover evidence of those black hole “seeds”. That means GN-z11 may not be the oldest black hole for long. Studying black hole seeds should give Maiolino and other astronomers more clues to unravel the story of how these objects formed not long after the Big Bang. For More Information Astronomers Detect Oldest Black Hole Ever ObservedA Small and Vigorous Black Hole in the Early UniverseA Small and Vigorous Black Hole in the Early Universe (arXiv PDF) The post This is the Oldest Black Hole Ever Seen appeared first on Universe Today.

The Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) is something special among telescopes. It’s not built for better angular resolution and increased resolving power like the European Extremely Large Telescope or the Giant Magellan Telescope. It’s built around a massive digital camera and will repeatedly capture broad‚ deep views of the entire sky rather than focus on any individual objects. By repeatedly surveying the sky‚ the VRO will spot any changes or astronomical transients. Astronomers call this type of observation Time Domain Astronomy. When the VRO spots something transient in the night sky‚ it’ll automatically send alerts out to other observatories that will observe the transient object in detail. It could be a distant supernova explosion‚ a hazardous asteroid here in the inner Solar System‚ or anything that registers a change in the sky. The VRO’s job is to spot it and then pass the baton to other observatories. But issuing alerts to other telescopes is just one of the things the VRO will do. The VRO’s primary observing program is called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST.) The LSST will catalogue the entire available night sky by imaging it every night for ten years with its massive 3.2 gigapixel camera. Every five seconds‚ the camera will point to a different part of the sky and capture a 15-second exposure. This decade-long effort will generate an enormous amount of data. It’ll take 200‚000 images per year‚ amounting to 1.28 petabytes of data. There’ll be so much data that the VRO project includes a new data pipeline travelling from its site in northern Chile back to the US. There’s no way that people can process all the data‚ so machine learning will play a big role in handling it and finding what’s hidden. The authors of a new research paper developed a novel way for the observatory to detect anomalies in the immense amount of data it generates. The paper is “The Weird and the Wonderful in our Solar System: Searching for Serendipity in the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.” It’s been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal‚ and the lead author is Brian Rogers from the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. The list of objects and events the VRO will spot contains all the things we’d expect to see. Along with supernovae and asteroids‚ the VRO might spot the elusive Planet 9 that may be lurking in the far reaches of our Solar System. It’ll also see kilonovae‚ gamma-ray bursts‚ variable quasars‚ AGN‚ and even interstellar objects (ISOs) like Oumaumua and Borisov. But to find those objects in all that data requires machine learning. The authors have developed a type of neural network to process the data. A neural network is a type of AI that mimics how the human brain works. It employs a layered network of individual nodes‚ or neurons‚ that somewhat resembles the human brain. In simple terms‚ Neural Networks are a subset of Machine Learning‚ which is a subset of Artificial Intelligence. Without these tools‚ astronomers would have no hope of processing all of the data the VRO will generate. Image Credit: Evan Gough The authors have developed a specific type of neural network called an autoencoder. Autoencoders can perform a very useful function. They take data‚ encode or compress it‚ then reconstitute the data back into a version of itself. By doing that‚ an autoencoder can ‘learn’ which aspects of data are relevant and which are noise. The noise can then be discarded. In their paper‚ the researchers write‚ “We present a novel method for anomaly detection in Solar System object data‚ in preparation for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. We train a deep autoencoder for anomaly detection and use the learned latent space to search for other interesting objects.” This simple schematic illustrates the general architecture of an autoencoder. It takes input‚ encodes it into a latent representation of the input‚ then decodes it and outputs it. Image Credit: Rogers et al. 2024 The authors’ autoencoder is based on finding anomalies like interstellar objects (ISOs.) If the autoencoder can identify them‚ it means that the massive amount of LSST data becomes more manageable. “We demonstrate the efficacy of the autoencoder approach by finding interesting examples‚ such as interstellar objects‚ and show that using the autoencoder‚ further examples of interesting classes can be found‚” they explain. They tested their autoencoder on a simulation of the 10 years of data the LSST will collect. As real data from the LSST arrives‚ they intend to keep testing their autoencoder and strengthening it. “In the meantime‚ this work does not attempt to quantify the likely yield of unusual objects but merely demonstrates that we can find them in a large survey of the type which will be produced by LSST‚” they write. What the authors call ‘reconstruction loss’ plays a large role in the work‚ as do anomalies. When working with known‚ simulated data‚ the researchers measured the autoencoder’s accuracy. They simply measured the output against the input. Reconstruction loss is a measure of how accurate the autoencoder is and it can be quantified. This figure from the research shows how the autoencoder can measure reconstruction loss in its latent space. It shows reconstruction scores for 3.1 million Solar System objects across the reduced feature space. Blue dots‚ which are tiny‚ represent objects with low reconstruction loss. Anomalous objects are shown with enlarged dots of redder colours. “The top 0.01% anomalies are enlarged for this plot. Theylie distant from the majority of normal objects in blue‚” the authors write. Image Credit: Rogers et al. 2024. Anomalies are unusual objects that stand out‚ just as an ISO would. From the figure above‚ the authors identified the top ten anomalies ranked by reconstruction loss. For each of those ten‚ they identified their twenty nearest neighbours. These are not neighbours in the Solar System; they’re neighbours in the latent space. The neighbourhoods of objects are related by aspects of data. They’re data neighbourhoods. For example‚ one of the neighbourhoods is based on measured magnitudes. Another is based on orbital eccentricity‚ and another is based on outlier objects in Jupiter’s vicinity. Each of these panels is a different autoencoder output for the top ten anomalies and their data neighbours. The blue are normal objects‚ and the coloured dots show how the top ten anomalies relate to them. In this figure‚ ISOs are number 6‚ shown in red. The critical takeaway is that the anomalies are easily distinguished from normal objects and are grouped by certain characteristics like orbital eccentricity or magnitude. Image Credit: Rogers et al. 2024. Astronomy is changing. Our observatories and telescopes are becoming so powerful and automated that they create a massive universe of data. It’s beyond the capability of the astronomical community to deal with the data without automated help. By training the autoencoder to detect anomalies‚ it can sift through the LSST data and flag anomalies. The authors are quick to point out that the autoencoder is not completely automatic. It still needs human help. “After evaluating the deficiencies of standalone unsupervised methods‚ we demonstrated the power of human feedback in detecting anomalies <;>; using a supervised approach‚” they write. “Using human feedback can increase the relevance‚ accuracy and precision of the anomaly detection system.” It’s not hype to say that the Vera Rubin Observatory will change our understanding of our Solar System and things well beyond it. Its first light is scheduled for January 2025. It’ll take a while to test and commission all of the equipment‚ but sometime after that‚ the data will start to flow. Once it does‚ there’ll be no stopping it‚ and astronomers will need tools like autoencoders to help them find anomalies. “By putting the right anomalies in the right hands‚ we can multiply the value of the data collected by LSST and precipitate potential follow-up studies for the most interesting objects found in the survey‚” the researchers write in their work. “We have demonstrated that deep autoencoders can fulfil this role as an unsupervised detection model by performing on the scale of LSST and that they can enable efficient anomaly discovery for the most interesting Solar System objects.” The post Vera Rubin Will Help Us Find the Weird and Wonderful Things Happening in the Solar System appeared first on Universe Today.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx delivered its precious cargo to Earth on September 24th‚ 2023. The sample from asteroid Bennu is contained inside the spacecraft’s sampling head‚ and it’s in safe hands at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Two stubborn fasteners delayed the opening of the sampling head‚ but they’ve been removed‚ and now we can see inside. What looks like unremarkable dirt is primordial asteroidal material that’s billions of years old‚ a natural treasure trove that eager scientists can’t wait to begin studying. The head and its sample are in the hands of the astromaterials curation team at Johnson Space Center. On January 10th‚ they opened the Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM.) The leading image shows what greeted them. The sample material includes dust and rocks up to about .4 in (one cm) in size. Credit: NASA/Erika Blumenfeld &; Joseph Aebersold The next step is to remove the round metal collar and place the sample into trays. Each tray will be photographed‚ weighed‚ packaged‚ and stored. The final mass will be determined in the weeks ahead‚ including the 70.3 grams (2.48 oz) removed previously. That material was on the sampling machinery but outside of the capsule. OSIRIS-REx’s goal was to return 60 grams of material‚ so it’s already exceeded that amount. The curation team will catalogue all of the samples later this year. After that‚ scientists from around the world can request access. This map shows the 38 institutions that will be the first to receive Bennu samples. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona. Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid‚ a primitive chunk of rock that forms a link to the past when the rocky planets were forming. Scientists have already found carbon and water in the previously removed material. In fact‚ according to initial analysis‚ its carbon concentration is close to 5%. That’s among the highest non-terrestrial carbon percentages ever measured. “The OSIRIS-REx sample is the biggest carbon-rich asteroid sample ever delivered to Earth and will help scientists investigate the origins of life on our own planet for generations to come‚” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson at the time. Once scientists get their hands on more of the material‚ they’ll doubtlessly find other interesting components. Maybe even some of life’s building blocks‚ like amino acids. Bennu’s water and carbon content could indicate that life’s building blocks originated in asteroids like Bennu. The sample also gives researchers an opportunity to test their findings against previous observations of Bennu. Astronomers studied the asteroid’s composition with OSIRIS-REx’s instruments as it approached Bennu‚ and the samples will tell them how accurate their efforts were. It’s an opportunity to verify and improve spacecraft instruments and remote sensing methods. Bennu’s boulder-strewn surface. The asteroid is a rubble pile rather than a monolithic body. Image Credit: NASA/University of Arizona. Scientists suspect that Bennu could actually be older than our Solar System. If that’s true‚ then it’s a window into the distant past when only the solar nebula and the proto-Sun existed. It may contain insights into how everything formed‚ including the Sun. Bennu may also be one of the remaining pieces of a much larger body. Scientists think that the parent body broke apart between 700 million and two billion years ago. Scientists hope to learn more from the Bennu sample about its parent body and how Bennu migrated to the inner Solar System. In a notable act of foresight‚ 75% of the sample will be stored for the future. Instruments and analysis techniques will only improve over time‚ and these pristine samples will be available when they do. NASA has done the same with other materials like lunar samples‚ and it’s paid off. The Bennu samples can only enhance our understanding of our Solar System and how everything came to be. From its ancient early beginnings in the solar nebula to its present-day location in the inner Solar System‚ Bennu is a well-travelled message-bearer. Now that we have some of that message in our labs‚ scientists can reveal what Bennu has to say. The post Finally‚ Let’s Look at the Asteroid Treasure Returned to Earth by OSIRIS-REx appeared first on Universe Today.

President Biden needs to man up and make a strong deal to harden the US border in exchange for OKing aid to Ukraine.  It’s the right thing to do for every reason.  The US border is‚ put simply‚ no longer a border‚ as even the president apparently now admits.  December shattered all records for CBP encounters‚ with more than 276‚000. Seven million migrants have been arrested crossing over from Mexico since Biden took office; more than 85% were later released into the...

The Senate this week is awaiting news of a border deal that has been subject to high-level negotiations for months. Leaders hope to begin consideration of the impending agreement in the coming days — even though its chances of clearing the House look bleak. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told attendees at a White House meeting last week that he is aiming to start the floor process for the border-Ukraine bill as soon as this week‚ sources told Punchbowl News‚ and Senate...

Crisis! Invasion! A national security and humanitarian catastrophe! GOP politicians have been shrieking about the U.S.-Mexico border since President Biden took office. Yet when offered the chance to beef up security there‚ House Republicans refuse. It’s an election year‚ after all. And when it comes to immigration‚ the problem is much more valuable than its cure. Southwest border encounters have been rising in recent months‚ and cities across the country have struggled to manage an...

Harvard University has shed fresh light on the ongoing investigation into plagiarism accusations against former president Claudine Gay‚ including that an independent body recommended a broader review after substantiating some of the complaints. In a letter Friday to a congressional committee‚ Harvard said it learned of the plagiarism allegations against its first Black female president on Oct. 24 from a New York Post reporter. The school reached out to several authors whom Gay is accused of...

Dexter Scott King‚ the youngest son of Martin Luther King Jr.‚ died Monday morning after a “valiant battle with prostate cancer‚” the King Center announced. Dexter’s wife‚ Leah Weber King‚ wrote in a statement that Dexter “transitioned peacefully in his sleep at home with me in Malibu.” She said her husband of 11 years “gave it everything and battled this terrible disease until the end.” “As with all the challenges in his life‚ he faced this hurdle with bravery and might‚” she wrote.

The Supreme Court is allowing US Border Patrol agents to remove razor wire deployed by Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott’s security initiative at the US-Mexico border while the state’s legal challenge to the practice plays out. The vote was 5-4. The justices’ order is a major victory for President Joe Biden in his ongoing dispute with Abbott over border policy‚ which had become especially fraught in recent days after three migrants drowned in a section of the Rio Grande that state officials have...

With Ron DeSantis suspending his presidential campaign on Sunday‚ Nikki Haley gets the one-on-one match-up with Donald Trump for which she's been longing. "At one point in this campaign‚ there were 14 of us running‚" she says in an email fundraising pitch‚ sent out shortly after the DeSantis news broke. "But today‚ it's officially a two-person race between me and Donald Trump!" Ms Haley's showdown with Mr Trump in the state-by-state contest to choose a Republican presidential candidate...