🚀Black Hole Flare is Biggest and Most Distant Seen

Caltech astronomers analyzed observations from the ZTF (Zwicky Transient Facility) and Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey to describe J2245+3743, the most powerful and distant flare ever recorded from a supermassive black hole.

This distant AGN (Active Galactic Nucleus) J2245+3743, estimated at 500 million solar masses and 10 billion light-years away, rapidly brightened by a factor of 40, peaking at 10 trillion suns' luminosity.

According to co-author K. E. Saavik Ford, this massive TDE (Tidal Disruption Event) from a star 30+ times solar mass implies stars within AGN disks can grow unusually large by accreting disk matter.

President Trump renominated billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman to lead NASA on Tuesday, months after pulling the original nomination in May over a "thorough review of prior associations."

Trump stated on Truth Social that Isaacman, the founder of Shift4 and a veteran of two private spaceflights, is "ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era."

The initial withdrawal in May followed a public spat between Trump and Elon Musk, an Isaacman ally. Isaacman still requires Senate confirmation to replace interim head Sean Duffy.

Prune August, a PhD student at the Technical University of Denmark, led research modeling how repeated meteorite impacts could re-inflate collapsed exoplanet atmospheres around M dwarf stars.

Using an energy balance model, simulations found that 5-10 km diameter impactors striking every 1 to 100 Gyr could regenerate detectable transient CO2 atmospheres.

The work suggests that atmospheric collapse, typically seen as detrimental, actually shields volatiles on the frigid nightside, offering a "viable pathway" for maintaining detectable atmospheres, according to the researchers.

Vast CEO Max Haot's team launched the Haven Demo spacecraft, a pathfinder mission to validate design elements for their planned commercial space station habitat

The half-ton Haven Demo lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, deployed its solar array, and is now flying at a 300-mile (500 km) altitude to test computer and propulsion systems.

According to CEO Max Haot, achieving Haven Demo's mission success establishes Vast as a "proven spacecraft company" ahead of the Haven-1 human-rated station launch planned for 2026.

University of Geneva (UNIGE) astrophysicists analyzed galaxy cluster dynamics to verify if dark matter's gravitational influence aligns with the same physical laws as ordinary matter.

Observations confirmed dark matter's behavior is consistent with Einstein's theory of general relativity, without requiring modified gravity theories to explain galactic rotation curves.

This finding reinforces the standard cosmological model, indicating the search for dark matter should focus on new particles rather than new laws of physics, say the authors.