The fastest-growing black hole
Astronomers in Australia have discovered a supermassive black hole that’s expanding faster than any other seen before—a cosmic behemoth devouring the mass equivalent of the sun every two days. Expanding at a rate of 1 percent every million years, the observed black hole is roughly the size of 20 billion suns. (An average black hole is about 50 times larger than the sun.) The friction and heat produced by the gases being sucked in make it shine “thousands of times more brightly than an entire galaxy,” says lead researcher Christian Wolf, from Australian National University. Wolf and his colleagues spotted the radiating black hole, known as a quasar, with the help of newly released data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite and NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite. They calculated that it lies approximately 12 billion light-years from Earth, meaning we are seeing it as it was just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang. Astrophysicists are unsure what’s causing the quick rate of expansion, reports ScienceDaily.com. But they hope its discovery will improve our understanding of the early days of the universe.
study suggests that people who burn the candle at both ends during the week can make up for it by sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday. The researchers examined the lifestyle, sleep habits, and health of about 40,000 adults, ages 65 and under, for 13 years. They found that those under 65 who slept no more than five hours every day had a 65 percent higher risk of death during the study period than the people who routinely managed six to seven hours. But those who slept in on weekends after running ragged during the week had no increased risk. The findings run contrary to previous research, which has suggested that the damage of chronic sleep deprivation can’t be undone with a good night’s sleep, reports The Washington Post. Study author Torbjörn Åkerstedt, from the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University, cautions that his findings merit further investigation. But he says the study suggests that “it is possible to compensate for lost sleep.”
rich in heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. “The benefits of fish,” says Harvard epidemiologist Eric Rimm, who chairs the group that wrote the advisory, “are likely at least 50-fold more than any concerns over other compounds that may be in the fish.”