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    Black hole blast outshines 10 trillion Suns

    November 9, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A distant supermassive black hole has set a new cosmic record, unleashing the brightest flare ever seen as it devoured a gigantic star that wandered too close. A colossal black hole 10 billion light-years away has been caught devouring one of the universe’s biggest stars, unleashing a flare 30 times brighter than any seen before. The flare, detected by Caltech’s ZTF, likely marks a tidal disruption event — when a star is shredded by a black hole’s gravity.

    The Universe’s most massive stars typically end their lives in spectacular explosions known as supernovae before collapsing into black holes. But one enormous star seems to have met a very different fate...

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    Rebalancing the Gut: How AI Solved a 25-Year Crohn’s Disease Mystery

    November 7, 2025, Categories  Biology/Biotechnology, Health/Medical

    Graphic of macrophages
    Electron micrographs show how macrophages expressing girdin neutralize pathogens by fusing phagosomes (P) with the cell’s lysosomes (L) to form phagolysosomes (PL), compartments where pathogens and cellular debris are broken down (left). This process is crucial for maintaining cellular homeostasis. In the absence of girdin, this fusion fails, allowing pathogens to evade degradation and escape neutralization (right). (UC San Diego Health Sciences)

    AI uncovers how a severed bond between two gut proteins sparks Crohn’s disease, and how restoring it could heal inflammation. UC San Diego researchers combined artificial intelligence with molecular biology to unravel how immune cells in the gut decide between inflammation and healing, a process gone awry in Crohn’s disease...

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    Superconducting qubit that lasts for over 1 millisecond is primed for industrial scaling

    November 7, 2025, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Princeton's new quantum chip built for scale
    A Princeton team has reported their new qubit lasts for over 1 millisecond, three times longer than the best ever reported in a lab setting, and nearly fifteen times longer than the industry standard for large-scale processors. Credit: Princeton University; Office of Communications; Matt Raspanti (2025)

    In a major step toward practical quantum computers, Princeton engineers have built a superconducting qubit that lasts three times longer than today’s best versions.

    “The real challenge, the thing that stops us from having useful quantum computers today, is that you build a qubit and the information just doesn’t last very long,” said Andrew Houck, Princeton’s dean of engineering and co-principal investigator. “This is the next big jump forward.”

    In an article in the journal Nature,...

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    Universe’s expansion ‘is now slowing, not speeding up’: Evidence mounts that dark energy weakens over time

    November 7, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Universe's expansion 'is now slowing, not speeding up'
    DESI is a state-of-the-art instrument which maps distant objects to study dark energy. Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab

    The universe’s expansion may actually have started to slow rather than accelerating at an ever-increasing rate as previously thought, a new study suggests.

    “Remarkable” findings published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society cast doubt on the long-standing theory that a mysterious force known as ‘dark energy’ is driving distant galaxies away increasingly faster.

    Instead, they show no evidence of an accelerating universe.

    If the results are confirmed, it could open an entirely new chapter in scientists’ quest to uncover the true nature of dark energy, resolve the ‘Hubble tension,’ and understand the past and future of the universe.

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