Sagittarius region of milky way. Credit: Wikipedia

A new ‘missing-link’ black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, hidden in the Sagittarius constellation has been found by an international team. The black hole is located ~26,000 light years, or 7.9 Kiloparsecs (kpc), from Earth in a globular cluster called, NGC 6624. A globular cluster is a gravitationally bound swarm of millions of old stars occupying regions that are just a few light years across. The team, led by Dr Benetge Perera, have found evidence that the millisecond pulsar (PSR B1820-30A) – a pulsar is highly magnetized, rapidly rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation – in NGC 6624 is most likely orbiting around an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) located at the cluster’s centre...

Four of the 13 galaxies clusters used in the study. The clusters are, starting at the top left and going clockwise, Abell 262, Abell 383, Abell 1413, and Abell 2390.

Astronomers have used data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to study the properties of dark matter. The study, which involves 13 galaxy clusters, explores the possibility that dark matter may be more “fuzzy” than “cold,” perhaps even adding to the complexity surrounding this cosmic conundrum.
For several decades, astronomers have known about dark matter. Although it cannot be observed directly, dark matter does interact via gravity with normal, radiating matter (that is, anything made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons bundled into atoms)...

NPGL apparently aims to maintain body mass at a constant, come feast or famine.

Study explains why food looks even better when dieting. Up until now, scientists knew that leptin – a hormone released by fatty tissue, reduces appetite, while ghrelin – a hormone released by stomach tissue makes us want to eat more. These hormones, in turn, activate a host of neurons in the brain’s hypothalamus – the body’s energy control center. The discovery of NPGL by Professor Kazuyoshi Ukena of Hiroshima University shows that hunger and energy consumption mechanisms are even more complex than we realized – and that NPGL plays a central role in what were thought to be well-understood processes.

Professor Ukena first discovered NPGL in chickens after noticing that growing birds grew larger irrespective of d...

The new camera was developed for filming chemistry and physics occurring at extreme speeds. Credit: Image courtesy of Lund University

Lund University, Sweden researchers has developed a camera that can film at a rate equivalent to 5 trillion images per second, or events as short as 0.2 trillionths of a second. This is faster than has previously been possible. The new camera will therefore be able to capture incredibly rapid processes in chemistry, physics, biology and biomedicine, that so far have not been caught on film. The researchers have successfully filmed how photons travels a distance corresponding to the thickness of a paper. In reality, it only takes a picosecond, but on film the process has been slowed down by a trillion times.

Currently, high-speed cameras capture images one by...