An Ignoble Experiment: The closest black hole to Earth is no more

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March 4, 2022

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Anal bulbs, detachable butt hairs and booty camouflage: Welcome to #InverteButtWeek on Twitter

(By Robert Whyte, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81785362)

Sometimes the best view of an insect, spider, crab or clam is the sight of its rear end.

Animal butts come in a mind-bending variety of shapes and sizes, and the butts of invertebrates — animals without backbones — are especially diverse and often delightfully weird. From marine worms with hundreds of butts to moths with long, pulsing butt appendages, many invertebrates possess truly bizarre posterior structures or use their behinds in ways that are unthinkable (or perhaps enviable) for humans.

So it's no wonder that these bountiful bottoms inspired a group of artists and science communicators to launch #InverteButtWeek on Twitter from March 1 to March 8, inviting all to partake in a celebration of marvelous invertebrate butts. But be prepared: anal bulbs, flaps, bubbles, probes, pores and chimneys are just the tip of the invertebutt iceberg.

Full Story: Live Science (3/4)

History & Archaeology

Rare 14th-century gold 'leopard' coin could sell for 140,000 British pounds

(Courtesy of Dix Noonan Webb)

An exceptionally rare gold coin stamped with a leopard sitting upright and wrapped in a banner was unearthed by a metal detectorist in England and is heading to the auction block.

The coin was minted in the Tower of London from 23-karat gold during the 14th century. It looks nearly brand-new and is one of just a handful of surviving leopard coins from a failed currency experiment by King Edward III.

Full Story: Live Science (3/4)

Space Exploration

The closest black hole to Earth is no more — in fact, it never existed

(ESO/L. Calçada)

In 2020, astronomers identified a nearby star system that appeared to contain something phenomenal: the closest black hole to Earth, sitting a mere 1,000 light-years away (that's less than 1% of the width of the Milky Way).

Now, new research from some of those same astronomers suggests that they may have been deceived by a cosmic illusion. In a new study published March 2 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, researchers took another look at that star system — named HR 6819 — with the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope. What appeared in 2020 to be a system of three massive objects — a large star orbiting a black hole every 40 days, with a second star orbiting much farther away — actually contains no black hole at all, the researchers wrote.

Full Story: Live Science (3/3)

Math & Physics

Nuclear fusion is one step closer with new AI breakthrough

(Curdin Wüthrich/SPC/EPFL)

The green energy revolution promised by nuclear fusion is now a step closer, thanks to the first successful use of a cutting-edge artificial intelligence system to shape the superheated hydrogen plasmas inside a fusion reactor.

The successful trial indicates that the use of AI could be a breakthrough in the long-running search for electricity generated from nuclear fusion — bringing its introduction to replace fossil fuels and nuclear fission on modern power grids tantalizingly closer.

Full Story: Live Science (3/4)

In the Sky

Rocket will collide with the moon tomorrow. Here's what you need to know.

(NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio by Ernie Wright)

A 3-ton (2.7 metric tons) discarded rocket stage will smash into the moon Friday (March 4) while traveling at 5,771 mph (9,288 km/h). Here's everything you need to know before it happens.

Full Story: Live Science (3/3)

Curious Creatures

False widow spider preys on baby bat in never-before-seen encounter

(Ben Waddams)

An invasive spider in the U.K. snagged two bats in its web, and only one bat survived the grisly encounter, thanks to the help of a local resident who freed the entangled creature before it met its doom.

The noble false widow spider (Steatoda nobilis) originally hails from the Madeira archipelago and Canary Islands in the North Atlantic Ocean, but the species is now found in other parts of Europe, as well as in Asia and the Americas. The black widow look-alike reached southern England in 1879 and has since spread toward Scotland and into Wales and Ireland, according to a statement.

Prior to a new case report, published Feb. 21 in the journal Ecosphere, no spider in the Steatoda genus had ever been observed preying on bats — or any mammal, for that matter. But last July, Ben Waddams, a wildlife artist based in Shropshire, England, snapped photos of several bats trapped in a S. nobilis web at his home.

Full Story: Live Science (3/3)