Female guide sets new Everest record
Himalayas: A Nepali Sherpa broke her own record as the most successful female climber of Mount Everest by reaching the summit of the world’s highest peak yesterday.
Lhakpa Sherpa and several other climbers took advantage of favourable weather to reach the 29,032ft summit early in the morning, her brother and expedition organiser Mingma Gelu said. He said she was in good health and was safely descending from the peak.
Sherpa, 48, never had a formal education because she had to start earning a living by carrying climbing gear and supplies for trekkers.
Yesterday’s successful ascent was her 10th, the most times any woman has climbed Everest.
Another Nepalese Sherpa guide, Kami Rita, reached the summit for the 26th time on
Saturday, breaking his own record for the most climbs of Everest.
Rita led a group of Sherpa climbers who fixed ropes along the route so that other climbers and guides can make their way to the top of the mountain later this month.
Seoul: South Korea says North Korea has fired a total of three short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff say the three missiles launched from the North’s capital region yesterday flew toward the waters off the country’s eastern coast.
The launches came just hours after North Korea confirmed its first case of the coronavirus since the pandemic began.
They could underscore North Korea’s determination to press ahead with its efforts to expand its arsenal despite the virus outbreak to rally support behind the leader, Kim Jong Un, and keep up pressure on its rivals amid long-dormant nuclear diplomacy.
Arizona: The world got a look yesterday at the first wild but fuzzy image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy.
Astronomers believe nearly all galaxies, including our own, have these giant black holes at their centre, where light and matter cannot escape, making it extremely hard to get images of them.
Light gets chaotically bent and twisted around by gravity as it gets sucked into the abyss along with superheated gas and dust.
The colourised image unveiled on yesterday is from the international consortium behind the Event Horizon Telescope, a collection of eight synchronised radio telescopes around the world.
Previous efforts had found the black hole in the centre of our galaxy too jumpy to get a good picture.
The University of Arizona’s Feryal Ozel called the black hole “the gentle giant in the centre of our galaxy” while announcing the new image.
The Milky Way black hole is called Sagittarius A*, near the border of Sagittarius and Scorpius constellations. It is four million times more massive than our sun.
This is not the first black hole image. The same group released the first in 2019 from a galaxy 53 million light-years away. The Milky Way black hole is much closer, about 27,000 light-years away. A light year is 5.9 trillion miles.
The project cost nearly $60million (£49m) with $28 million coming from the US National Science Foundation.