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In a remarkable revelation, scientists have observed that our closest supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, has emerged from a prolonged state of dormancy and intensified its luminosity by a factor of a million.

Situated at the core of the Milky Way, this black hole is approximately four million times more massive than the Sun. Previously considered quiescent, it suddenly displayed heightened activity around 200 years ago, devouring cosmic objects that ventured too close, reported the Independent.

The resulting surge in brightness occurred rapidly, analogous to a hidden glow-worm in a forest instantly radiating sunlight, according to researchers. While the precise cause of this awakening remains unknown, scientists are dedicated to studying the black hole’s behaviour in order to unravel the factors that trigger such transitions from quiescence to activity.

In an effort to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe as well as the nature of Dark Matter, researchers have zeroed in on an upcoming set of experiments designed to measure time dilation.

According to the researchers behind the pioneering approach, these time dilation experiments should either add support to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the theories of Leonhard Euler regarding the movement of celestial objects or open the door to a whole new understanding of time and matter.

Einstein and Euler Still Unable to Fully Explain Dark Matter and the Expanding Universe.

After a search of neutron stars finds preliminary evidence for hypothetical dark matter particles called axions, astrophysicists are devising new ways to spot them.

Scientists believe galactic musical sounds were emitted from the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole at the turn of the 19th century.

We may have already found evidence of an evolving, dynamic kind of dark energy, in the form of the radiation emitted when the first stars appeared in the universe.

They created a quantum system with properties analogous to black holes.

A collaborative effort from research teams across multiple organizations in China was successful in using quantum computing technology to test Hawking Radiation, the theory proposed by renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, the South China Morning Post.

Quantum computing is a complex field that involves using mathematics, computer science, and physics to solve complex problems. Interesting Engineering recently reported how a quantum computer recently beat a conventional supercomputer at complex math.

Astronomers have mapped 39 interstellar clouds where high-mass stars are expected to form. This large data set shows that the accepted model of low-mass star formation needs to be expanded to explain the formation of high-mass stars. This suggests the formation of high-mass stars is fundamentally different from the formation of low-mass stars, not just a matter of scale.

High-mass stars play an important role in the evolution of the universe through the release of heavy elements and the shock waves produced when a massive star explodes in a supernova. Despite their importance, the way massive stars form remains poorly understood due to their rarity.

To better understand massive star formation a team led by Kaho Morii, Patricio Sanhueza, and Fumitaka Nakamura used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe 39 infrared dark clouds (IRDCs). IRDCs are massive, cold, and dense clouds of gas and dust; and are thought to be the sites of massive star formation. The team focused on clouds showing no signs of star formation, to understand the beginning of the formation process before young stars ignite. In the 39 clouds, the team found more than 800 stellar seeds, referred to as molecular cloud cores, which astronomers think will evolve into stars.

Near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy sits an immense object that astronomers call Sagittarius A*. This “supermassive” black hole may have grown in tandem with our galaxy, and it’s not alone. Scientists suspect that similar behemoths lurk at the heart of almost all large galaxies in the cosmos.

Some can get really big, said Joseph Simon, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Science at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“The black hole at the center of our galaxy is millions of times the mass of the sun, but we also see others that we think are billions of times the mass of the sun,” he said.

This week, a team of over 1,000 scientists from around the globe released to the public the first batch of data collected with the Dark Energy Spectroscopy Instrument (DESI), a telescope that cosmologists hope will help answer open questions on the nature of dark energy and the evolution of the Universe [1– 3]. “The telescope works better than we ever imagined,” says Michael Levi, a cosmologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), California, and the director of the DESI Collaboration. “We are ready to have everybody look at this [initial] data release and see what they can do with it.”

The goal of the five-year-long DESI survey is to map the Universe deeper in time and higher in detail than any previous telescope (see Feature: Entering a New Era of Dark Energy Cosmology). “We want to go way beyond what was done before and really be able to see the evolution of dark energy over the history of the Universe,” says Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, a cosmologist at LBNL and one of the spokespeople for the DESI Collaboration. To see that evolution, the survey plans to pinpoint the locations of over 40 million galaxies. The key to filling in the cosmic map is the use of robotic technology that automatically alters the placements of light-collecting fibers so that they can retrieve spectroscopic information from targeted bright spots in the sky. The spectral measurements provide information on what an object is and how fast it is moving away from us, which is needed to estimate its distance.

The robotic technology used to target objects had never been tried before, so it was not always clear that DESI would perform as expected, Levi says. But he and other team members have been pleasantly surprised by how smoothly the machine has operated. “DESI has preserved every photon that the Universe gave us,” he says.