Astronomers detect a black hole on the move

Astronomers have detected a moving supermassive black hole

HARVARD-SMITHSONIAN CENTER FOR ASTROPHYSICS

Research News

 

IMAGE: GALAXY J0437+2456 IS THOUGHT TO BE HOME TO A SUPERMASSIVE, MOVING BLACK HOLE. view more 

CREDIT: SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY (SDSS).

Scientists have long theorized that supermassive black holes can wander through space--but catching them in the act has proven difficult.

Now, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have identified the clearest case to date of a supermassive black hole in motion. Their results are published today in the Astrophysical Journal.

"We don't expect the majority of supermassive black holes to be moving; they're usually content to just sit around," says Dominic Pesce, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics who led the study. "They're just so heavy that it's tough to get them going. Consider how much more difficult it is to kick a bowling ball into motion than it is to kick a soccer ball -- realizing that in this case, the 'bowling ball' is several million times the mass of our Sun. That's going to require a pretty mighty kick."

Pesce and his collaborators have been working to observe this rare occurrence for the last five years by comparing the velocities of supermassive black holes and galaxies.

"We asked: Are the velocities of the black holes the same as the velocities of the galaxies they reside in?" he explains. "We expect them to have the same velocity. If they don't, that implies the black hole has been disturbed."

For their search, the team initially surveyed 10 distant galaxies and the supermassive black holes at their cores. They specifically studied black holes that contained water within their accretion disks -- the spiral structures that spin inward towards the black hole.

As the water orbits around the black hole, it produces a laser-like beam of radio light known as a maser. When studied with a combined network of radio antennas using a technique known as very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), masers can help measure a black hole's velocity very precisely, Pesce says.

The technique helped the team determine that nine of the 10 supermassive black holes were at rest--but one stood out and seemed to be in motion.

Located 230 million light-years away from Earth, the black hole sits at the center of a galaxy named J0437+2456. Its mass is about three million times that of our Sun.

Using follow-up observations with the Arecibo and Gemini Observatories, the team has now confirmed their initial findings. The supermassive black hole is moving with a speed of about 110,000 miles per hour inside the galaxy J0437+2456.

But what's causing the motion is not known. The team suspects there are two possibilities.

"We may be observing the aftermath of two supermassive black holes merging," says Jim Condon, a radio astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory who was involved in the study. "The result of such a merger can cause the newborn black hole to recoil, and we may be watching it in the act of recoiling or as it settles down again."

But there's another, perhaps even more exciting possibility: the black hole may be part of a binary system.

"Despite every expectation that they really ought to be out there in some abundance, scientists have had a hard time identifying clear examples of binary supermassive black holes," Pesce says. "What we could be seeing in the galaxy J0437+2456 is one of the black holes in such a pair, with the other remaining hidden to our radio observations because of its lack of maser emission."

Further observations, however, will ultimately be needed to pin down the true cause of this supermassive black hole's unusual motion.

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Co-authors of the new study are Anil Seth of the University of Utah; Jenny Greene of Princeton University; Jim Braatz, Jim Condon, and Brian Kent of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory; and Davor Krajnovi? of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam, Germany.

About the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

The Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian is a collaboration between Harvard and the Smithsonian designed to ask--and ultimately answer--humanity's greatest unresolved questions about the nature of the universe. The Center for Astrophysics is headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with research facilities across the U.S. and around the world.

 

Gigantic jet spied from black hole in early universe

HARVARD-SMITHSONIAN CENTER FOR ASTROPHYSICS

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE MAIN PANEL OF THIS GRAPHIC IS AN ARTIST'S ILLUSTRATION OF A CLOSE-UP VIEW OF A QUASAR AND ITS JET, LIKE THE ONE IN PJ352-52. THE INSET CONTAINS X-RAY DATA FROM CHANDRA... view more 

CREDIT: X-RAY: NASA/CXO/JPL/T. CONNOR; OPTICAL: GEMINI/NOIRLAB/NSF/AURA; INFRARED: W.M. KECK OBSERVATORY; ILLUSTRATION: NASA/CXC/M.WEISS

Astronomers have discovered evidence for an extraordinarily long jet of particles coming from a supermassive black hole in the early universe, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

If confirmed, it would be the most distant supermassive black hole with a jet detected in X-rays. Coming from a galaxy about 12.7 billion light-years from Earth, the jet may help explain how the biggest black holes formed at a very early time in the universe's history.

The source of the jet is a quasar - a rapidly growing supermassive black hole - named PSO J352.4034-15.3373 (PJ352-15 for short), which sits at the center of a young galaxy. It is one of the two most powerful quasars detected in radio waves in the first billion years after the big bang, and is about a billion times more massive than the Sun.

How were supermassive black holes able to grow so quickly to reach such an enormous mass in this early epoch of the universe? This is one of the key questions in astronomy today.  

Despite their powerful gravity and fearsome reputation, black holes do not inevitably pull in everything that approaches close to them. Material orbiting around a black hole in a disk needs to lose speed and energy before it can fall farther inwards to cross the so-called event horizon, the point of no return. Magnetic fields can cause a braking effect on the disk as they power a jet, which is one key way for material in the disk to lose energy and, therefore, enhance the rate of growth of black holes.  

"If a playground merry-go-round is moving too fast, it's hard for a child to move towards the center, so someone or something needs to slow the ride down," said Thomas Connor of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, who led the study. "Around supermassive black holes, we think jets can take enough energy away so material can fall inward and the black hole can grow."  

Astronomers needed to observe PJ352-15 for a total of three days using the sharp vision of Chandra to detect evidence for the X-ray jet. X-ray emission was detected about 160,000 light-years away from the quasar along the same direction as much shorter jets previously seen in radio waves by the Very Long Baseline Array. By comparison, the entire Milky Way spans about 100,000 light-years.

PJ352-15 breaks a couple of different astronomical records. First, the longest jet previously observed from the first billion years after the big bang was only about 5,000 light-years in length, corresponding to the radio observations of PJ352-15. Second, PJ352-15 is about 300 million light-years farther away than the most distant X-ray jet recorded before it.. 

"The length of this jet is significant because it means that the supermassive black hole powering it has been growing for a considerable period of time," said co-author Eduardo Bañados of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany. "This result underscores how X-ray studies of distant quasars provide a critical way to study the growth of the most distant supermassive black holes."

The light detected from this jet was emitted when the universe was only 0.98 billion years old, less than a tenth of its present age. At this point, the intensity of the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the big bang was much greater than it is today.   

As the electrons in the jet fly away from the black hole at close to the speed of light, they move through and collide with photons making up the cosmic microwave background radiation, boosting the energy of the photons up into the X-ray range to be detected by Chandra. In this scenario, the X-rays are significantly boosted in brightness compared to radio waves. This agrees with the observation that the large X-ray jet feature has no associated radio emission.

"Our result shows that X-ray observations can be one of the best ways to study quasars with jets in the early Universe," said co-author Daniel Stern, also of JPL. "Or to put it another way, X-ray observations in the future may be the key to unlocking the secrets of our cosmic past."  

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A paper describing these results has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. The other co-authors of the paper are Chris Carilli (NRAO, Socorro, New Mexico); Andrew Fabian (University of Cambridge, UK); Emmanuel Momjian (NRAO); Sofía Rojas-Ruiz (MPIA); Roberto Decarli  (INAF, Bologna, Italy); Emanuele Paolo Farina (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany); Chiara Mazzucchelli (ESO, Chile); Hannah P. Earnshaw (Caltech, Pasadena, California).  

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science from Cambridge Massachusetts and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.

There are now 19 forms of ice, thanks to this discovery
Cheryl Santa Maria

3/12/2021


A recent study published in Nature Communications by researchers at the University of Innsbruck has identified the 19th form of water ice. A second paper by researchers in Japan has also been published, verifying the study.

It's no surprise that ice and water are versatile, and the way atoms and molecules are oriented create different forms. There were previously 18 known crystalline forms of water and they have different properties, depending on the temperature and pressure that created them.

The new discovery, dubbed ice XIX, hasn't been found in nature. The lab-created ice is 'exotic', the study's authors say, and important because it provides insight into the properties of previously-known forms.

"While conventional ice and snow are abundant on Earth, no other forms are found on the surface of our planet - except in research laboratories," the authors say in a statement.

"Many varieties of water ice are formed in the vastness of space under special pressure and temperature conditions. They are found, for example, on celestial bodies such as Jupiter's moon Ganymede, which is covered by layers of different ice varieties."

But one can't simply declare a new form of ice. There's a process involved, lead researcher Thomas Loerting, a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, told LiveScience.

It begins with clearly defining the crystal structure, a technical hurdle solved by Ph.D. student Tobias Gasser, who thought to add a percent of normal water to the heavy water - a strategy that substantially sped up ordering.

To define the crystal, Loerting's team had to determine the most basic repeating structure that had all of the atoms located within it. They also had to clarify the symmetry of the structure.

"Only if all of these are known, you are allowed to name your ice … Ice XIX is now the name for the new ice phase discovered in our work," Loerting told LiveScience.

SIBLING PAIRS

Provided by The Weather NetworkIllustration showing the relationship between the ice VI and XIX unit cells viewed down their c-axes, and the differences in their diffraction patterns, with colour coding red for ice XIX and blue for ice VI. Caption and photo: Uni Innsbruck

More than a decade ago, a variant of the new ice was discovered and named ice XV. Three years ago, Loerting's team changed XV's "manufacturing" by slowing down the cooling process and increasing the pressure, allowing them to arrange the hydrogen atoms in a way that produced XIX.

"Ice XV and ice XIX represents the first sibling pair in ice physics in which the oxygen lattice is the same, but the pattern how hydrogen atoms are ordered is different," the authors say in a statement.

"This also means that for the first time it will now be possible to realize the transition between two ordered ice forms in experiments," Loreting added.

Perseverance's first focus on Mars is a rock named using Navajo language


The Máaz rock takes its name from the Navajo word for Mars.

IMAGE: NASA / JPL-CALTECH

BY KELLEN BECK

3/13/2021

The Perseverance Mars rover has its eyes set on its first area of interest, a rock that's been given the Navajo-inspired name Máaz, NASA shared Thursday.

Working with the Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice President, the Perseverance team has been naming different areas of Mars and points of interest relevant to the mission using the Navajo language. Aaron Yazzie, a Navajo (Diné) engineer on the mission team helped the crew get permission and collaborate with the Navajo Nation.

Before the rover's successful landing in Jezero Crater, a spot now named after acclaimed sci-fi author Octavia E. Butler, the mission team divided up the area into zones named after national parks and preserves. Perseverance landed in Tséyi', the zone named for Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, an area in Navajo Nation that has geology reminiscent of the red planet.

The team has around 50 Navajo names to be used for findings. Yazzie put forward a handful of naming ideas for features including "bidziil" meaning "strength," "hoł nilį́" meaning "respect," and "tséwózí bee hazhmeezh" meaning "rolling rows of pebbles, like waves." The translation for Perseverance is Ha'ahóni.

"This fateful landing on Mars has created a special opportunity to inspire Navajo youth not just through amazing scientific and engineering feats, but also through the inclusion of our language in such a meaningful way," Yazzie said in the press release.

The names that have come out of the mission thus far aren't official ones, just informal nomenclature used by NASA and the general public. Official names must be designated by the International Astronomical Union.

Due to the limitations of Perseverance's programming language, the rover can't quite store or read many of these exact Navajo words because of the accent marks needed to convey intonations. For now, the rover is keeping track without any accent marks.

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Government leaders won't attend '#March4Justice' on Parliament, inspired by Brittany Higgins rape allegation

3/14/2021

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack says he appreciates it is an important issue, but he won't attend a march to demand action on violence against women.(AAP: Mick Tskikas)

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack won't attend a public march on Monday planned to demand action on violence against women at Parliament House, following a month of accusations that it harbours a toxic workplace.

Key points:

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack won't attend the demonstration because he has meetings all day

The protest follows a month of accusations that Parliament House harbours a toxic workplace

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese says he will attend the protest, along with other colleagues

Appearing on Insiders, Mr McCormack was asked why he couldn't take 10 minutes to speak with the women and men expected to descend on the nation's capital tomorrow.

"No, I have meetings all day," Mr McCormack told David Speers.

"Look, at the end of the day, we want Parliament to be a place which is a fit and proper workplace, and I know that indeed in my office I've said that to my staff, I've made sure that they know all the proper processes and protocols.

"If there are issues that people feel that they are not being supported in and there are issues that indeed are very grave, then they should be dealt with by the proper authorities, so department in cases of harassment and the police if the matters are more serious than that."

Women like Brittany Higgins have inspired the marches.(Supplied)

The black-clad protesters plan to demonstrate on the first day of parliamentary sittings since the scandal-plagued fortnight in which allegations about the culture in the building were raised.

The national day of action will also see marches held across the country, though the main event in Canberra had to be changed due to COVID-19 safety measures.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he also would not attend the march, but would be happy to meet with the organisers to hear what they wanted the government to do.

"I would be happy to meet with a delegation from the group that is coming to Canberra," Mr Morrison said.

"I will meet them as I do with many groups. I will meet them privately in my office and I will listen carefully."

VIDEO Duration: 1 minute 7 seconds1m 7s

WATCH

PM rules out attending march set to take place outside Parliament House

Federal Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said he would attend the March4Justice protest with colleagues to show his support for the campaign.

"It is important we listen to what the community is saying — that was the message that Grace Tame, the Australian of the Year, said at the national press club," Mr Albanese told Sky News.

"We do have a scourge of violence against women and against children — we do need to listen to what people are saying and tomorrow is an opportunity to do that."

What's happening?

Janine Hendry is calling on people to surround Parliament House in silent protest against discrimination and alleged sexual abuse.(ABC News: Tamara Penniket)

The protests are being organised by Melbourne academic Janine Hendry, who initially outlined her hopes for "extremely disgruntled women" to link arms and form a human chain around Parliament House in Canberra.

Monday is the first day of parliamentary sittings since late February, when Parliament was engulfed by an allegation made by Brittany Higgins that she was raped inside the office of then-defence industry minister Linda Reynolds.

Separately, Attorney-General Christian Porter has also emphatically denied a historical rape allegation going back more than 30 years and is currently on mental health leave.

Organisers hope the Canberra march will see thousands of protesters take to the lawns of Parliament House, but protests will also be held in all major cities and dozens of regional locations.

Will it be COVID-safe?

The main event in Canberra has been approved by ACT Health authorities, though concessions have been made to ensure the protests are in accordance with the rules there.

Organisers initially wanted to encircle Parliament House in Canberra.

(ABC News: Jenny Magee)

While the initial plan was to form a human ring around Parliament, that plan had to be ditched for safety reasons.

"Due to COVID restrictions, we can't do this but we will be still making an impact," Ms Hendry said.

Anyone attending the main march will be required to check in with the ACT's Check In CBR app, and hand sanitiser will be available at the event.
What do the protesters want?

The march on Parliament House will culminate in organisers delivering a petition calling for a range of actions including:

Independent investigations into cases of gendered violence

Strengthening of the Sex Discrimination Act

Mandatory gendered violence and sexual harassment training for MPs and their staff

For all Australian parliaments to have a 50:50 gender split by 2030

At least one of the protesters' demands has already been met, with Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week announcing sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins would conduct a review into the workplace culture at Parliament House.

Sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins is reviewing

 the workplace culture at Parliament House.(AAP: David Moir)

At the time, Mr Morrison acknowledged the culture in Parliament had to change.

"The Parliament of Australia should set the example for others to follow," he said.

"The Parliament of Australia should reflect best practice in the prevention of, and response to, any instances of bullying, sexual harassment, or sexual assault."

Ms Hendry said she believed the marches, which she labelled apolitical, would ensure that lasting change.

"Women who have never marched before are joining us in action. Women who have been marching all their lives are still here," Ms Hendry said.

"There are people from every political party and no political party."

Advocates push to outlaw gender assignment surgery on intersex children in Tasmania

By April McLennan
3/14/2021

Robert Wilson is frustrated by the lack of support available 

for intersex people in Tasmania.(ABC News: April McLennan)

Robert Wilson is not your average chicken farmer.

Key points:

Some members of Tasmania's intersex community are frustrated at a lack of dedicated health services and support available in the state

Advocates say operations should be delayed until children can consent to procedures, but some medical professionals say operations earlier in life are necessary

Surgery on intersex children without their consent could be criminalised by the state government if it accepts a proposal by the Tasmania Law Reform Institute

Born intersex, he has a variation of both male and female genitalia.

Mr Wilson said he began to notice something different about his body when he was about eight years old.

"All the kids were in the bath together and my brother use to say to me, 'you're not like me, you're like half Marg, our sister, and half me.'"

"The average person knows what a male looks like and what a female looks like, but to try and explain when you've got a mix of the two … people just can't comprehend," he said.

Intersex people are born with variations of sex characteristics, affecting about 1.7 per cent of all births.

In Australia, children with intersex variations may be given hormone treatment or have surgeries to 'normalise' their bodies.

Three days after he was born, Mr Wilson underwent surgery.

"The doctors decided, because I peed out of a penis, that I'd be made a boy.

"So, they just incised out the women's uterus and stitched it up."

Robert Wilson had his first operation when he was just three days old.

(ABC News: April McLennan)

Concerns around consent

Equality Tasmania and Intersex Peer Support Australia's Tasmanian representative Simone-Lisa Anderson said everyone should be able to choose what happens to their bodies.

"Unfortunately, the harms that happen because of these normalisation surgeries are life-long," Ms Anderson said.

"When they're older and they can choose, there's a lot better outcomes, there's less life-long issues, there's less psychological issues because they got to choose."

But some medical professionals believe surgery is necessary despite concerns around child consent.

Helen McArdle says surgery is sometimes necessary for intersex children

(Supplied: Australian Medical Association)

The Tasmanian president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), Helen McArdle said only essential surgery should be performed on children.

"If surgery is required to enable appropriate functioning, as opposed to gender reassignment, then it may be that we shouldn't wait until a child is 18 to undertake the consent, because that could cause a lot of health problems in the meantime," Ms McArdle said.

"If say a boy can't go to the toilet appropriately, then it may be that the surgery is necessary for medical reasons."

Better support services needed

Mr Wilson said the surgery performed on him as a child has led to ongoing health problems, leaving him frustrated at the lack of health services and support available in Tasmania.

"The local doctor didn't want to know about it," he said.

"So, I went to another one at the surgery and she was a gynaecologist and she sent me to the [Launceston] General.

"I went round to the General and I think it was show and tell."

Mr Wilson said after spending 14 hours at the Launceston General Hospital he was sent home without help.

Mr Wilson says he's had difficulty accessing the support services he needs close to home.(ABC News: April McLennan)

The AMA said assistance can be provided for intersex patients to access medical procedures interstate.

"It's very difficult to develop the expertise locally to deal with that group," Ms McArdle said.

Ms Anderson says there needs to be better support for intersex people who have undergone surgery.(ABC News: Janek Frankowski)

"So, if we don't have the service, either in a regional area or in Tasmania as a whole, then patients are supported to go and seek advice elsewhere, mostly that's Melbourne."

However, Ms Anderson said there needed to be more support for people who had undergone the surgeries.

"Especially psychological support and support to reduce some of these life-long issues that are physical," she said.

"It's basically, let's do these surgeries while these kids are young and then forget about them."

Performing sex-assignment surgery on intersex children without their consent could be criminalised in Tasmania if the state government accepts a proposal put forward by the Tasmania Law Reform Institute.

The state government said it would consider the recommendations made by the institute.

Trade war? China was buying goods from Australia long before 1788


By business reporter Gareth Hutchens
3/13/2021 ABC.AU

A drawing of a Macassan sea captain known as Pobassoo 

(by William Westall in 1803.(Supplied: Campbell Macknight)


What is international trade?

In a simple sense, it's the exchange of goods and services between countries.

It allows people to have access to items from foreign lands.

When practised, it can also encourage cultural exchange and promote friendships (or antagonisms) with other groups.

It just depends how it's conducted.

Australia has a long history of trade

From the 1700s (at least), well before the colony of New South Wales was established in 1788, the Aboriginal people of northern Australia were trading trepang (sea cucumber) with fishermen from Makassar, a port-city on the island of Sulawesi (now Indonesia).

The "Macassan" fishermen would sail to Australia around December each year, with the north-west monsoonal winds.

They would spend months living on Australian beaches, collecting and processing the trepang, before returning home with their haul.

Their catch was destined for China.

"The north coast of Australia, southern China and Makassar were all connected by an international trading network that centred on trepang," curator Alison Mercieca, of the National Museum of Australia, said in a 2008 lecture.

That trade network matured over centuries, and became a popular source of food for the Chinese market.

"Throughout the nineteenth century it would appear that a majority of trepang traded from Makassar was supplied by the fleets which sailed to Arnhem Land and perhaps even supplying about a quarter of the total Chinese market by the mid-nineteenth century," she said.
Islam arrived in Australia before the British

That trepang industry facilitated an important cultural exchange.

Hundreds of foreign words from the Indonesian archipelago and beyond were absorbed by local languages in northern Australia.

"As a result of this longstanding contact, Yolngu languages are tinted with Malay, Bugis and Makassarese inflections much like English is inflected with French," wrote Regina Ganter, an historian specialising in interactions between Indigenous, Asian, and European peoples in Australia, in 2013.

According to oral tradition, when the Macassans returned home with their cargo, Aboriginal people would sometimes join them, sailing back on the small Macassan boats called praus, to spend the dry season in Sulawesi or travel further afield.

The Muslim Macassans also shared their religious ideas with their trading partners from the south.

"According to descriptions by Yolngu elders, prayer-men (or imam) accompanied the Macassan trepang fleets," Professor Ganter wrote.

"These were the ceremonial leaders, a role referred to as 'sick-man' (buwagerul) in the Yolngumatha language of north-east Arnhem Land.

"David Burrumarra [a Yolngu elder] remembered in the 1980s with amazing detail how an imam or 'sick-man' would climb to the top of the mast to chant when the fleet departed, and pray at sunset, resounding an 'ama!' towards the setting sun, then bow his head to the ground and exclaim 'walata'walata!'"

Walitha'walitha is also the name of the creation spirit which belongs to the Wuramu song cycle of northeast Arnhem Land, Ganter noted.
The 'Malay Road' in the ocean

In 1803, the navigator Matthew Flinders, after completing his survey of the Gulf of Carpentaria, recorded in his journal an encounter with a number of Maccasan sailing boats.

"These people were Mahometans," he wrote in one entry, using an old-fashioned term for Muslim.

"According to Pobassoo [a Macassan chief with whom Flinders spoke] sixty praus belonging to the Rajah of Boni and carrying a thousand men, had left Macassar with the north-west monsoon, two months before."

Boni was one of the most powerful states in Sulawesi at the time.

Flinders was so impressed by the number of praus he saw off the north-eastern tip of Arnhem Land, he called the channel of water through which they were passing the "Malay Road".

Trepang trade collapses

That traditional trepang trade network was shut down after the 1906-07 season by the South Australian government, which administered the Northern Territory at the time.

The government refused to grant fishing licences to non-Australian operators, putting an end to the Macassan voyages.

At the time, sophisticated alternative networks of Australian international trade had already been established, for products such as whale oil, wool and gold.

Indeed, by the 1880s, the United Kingdom was colonial Australia's largest trading partner, supplying 70 per cent of its imports and accepting 80 per cent of its exports.

After federation in 1901, Australia's heavy dependence on British trade continued.

"The new nation accepted its dependence on British capital and diplomacy and felt no immediate pressure to communicate with its neighbours to the north," wrote Paul Thomas, an affiliate researcher at Monash University, in Macassan History and Heritage: Journeys, Encounters and Influences, in 2013.
Twentieth century sees trade shift away from Britain

Through the 20th century, Australia's trade relationships evolved and deepened.

But it took decades to shed its reliance on Britain.

From 1901 until the Second World War, a small number of major agricultural products were exported to markets in the British Empire.

The UK bought 50.7 per cent of Australia's total exports in 1901, rising to 62 per cent during the First World War, and remaining above 50 per cent until the start of the Second World War.

It wasn't until the 1940s that Australia's exported goods began diversifying significantly, towards manufactured goods and resources.

By 1963-64, the United Kingdom was still Australia's largest destination for exported goods, but it was deepening its trade ties with its European neighbours (after joining the European Free Trade Association in 1960).

In 1966-67, Japan became Australia's leading export destination.

It retained that dominant position for the rest of the century, while Australia kept diversifying its export and import bases as it reduced tariffs and joined the global market.

Japan surpassed by larger trading partner

In 2009-10, China surpassed Japan as Australia's leading export destination.

It is now Australia's biggest trading partner for exports and imports.

In 2019-20, 39 per cent of all goods exported by Australia went to China, and 27 per cent of all goods imported were from China.

According to the Bureau of Statistics, the value of Australian exports to China doubled in the five years between 2014-15 to 2019-20, from $75 billion to $150 billion.

That growth was driven by exports of resource commodities, with iron ore accounting for 56 per cent of exports in 2019-20 alone.

More than a century after northern Australia's trepang trade was scuppered, modern Australia has emphatically returned its attention to its northern neighbours.

Concerns about China?

However, some analysts are now asking if Australia has become too reliant on China.

In the late 1940s, Australia's top five merchandise export markets accounted for around 70 per cent of its exports, but that fell to 50 per cent in the 1970s, 80s and 90s with the trend towards greater diversification in its export markets.

"However, from the start of the resources boom in the last half of the 2000s, the share has risen again with the top five markets now accounting for just over 65 per cent of Australia's merchandise exports in 2014-15 (with China accounting for 32 per cent)," DFAT warned a few years ago.

Since then, analysts have noted a growing asymmetry in the trade relationship too.

"Australia has no realistic alternative market to China for a third of its exports and no viable source but China for almost a fifth of its imports," wrote David Uren, for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, in November.

"By contrast, it is only as a supplier of minerals that Australia has any significance to the Chinese economy.

"The asymmetry in the trade relationship has been laid bare by Beijing's exercise of economic coercion, with interruptions to Australia's sales to China of barley, coal, cotton, beef, lobsters and threats to more, including wine, sugar, timber, copper, wool, education and tourism," wrote Uren in November.
The 'Quad' regional meeting

Last week, the leaders of the United States, India, Japan and Australia held an historic quadrilateral meeting, where they discussed the global roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines, and the threat posed by China's emerging power.

It was a delicate position for Australia to be in, given relations with its powerful northern neighbour are so volatile.

Asteroid Discovered Just Three Days Ago Will Skim Earth Closer Than The Moon On Monday

PIXABAY | URIKYO33

SPACE

Alexandra Lozovschi


March 13, 2021

A newly discovered asteroid is on course for an extremely close encounter with Earth on Monday and will skim the planet from just 167,400 miles away, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have announced.

Known as 2021 EQ3, the object was first picked up by NASA asteroid trackers on March 10, just five days before its impending close brush with Earth. The rock is believed to be up to 124 feet wide and will safely pass by our planet at 23:48 p.m. EST on March 15.

Closer Than The Moon

Countless asteroids of different sizes fly past Earth every month, most of them only getting within a few million miles from the planet’s surface. Monday's celestial visitor, however, will creep in closer than the moon.

Earth's natural satellite sits at an average distance of 238,900 miles. This means that, during its close flyby next week, asteroid 2021 EQ3 will be cruising by at exactly 0.72 the distance to the moon.

While a close brush with an asteroid of any size is certainly unnerving, these occurrences are a lot more frequent than we might expect. According to The Watchers, 24 other known asteroids have flown past Earth within 1 lunar distance since the beginning of the year, four of which zipped past us this month alone.

No Reason To Panic

PIXABAY | URIKYO33


Monday's near-miss is no cause for concern, as 2021 EQ3 is expected to harmlessly dart past Earth and then exit the inner solar system.

“Scientists determine the orbit of an asteroid by comparing measurements of its position as it moves across the sky to the predictions of a computer model of its orbit around the sun,” explained NASA.


“The more observations that are used and the longer the period over which those observations are made, the more accurate the calculated orbit and the predictions that can be made from it.”

In this particular case, scientists used a total of 16 observations to gauge out the asteroid's orbital path and establish when and how close the rock will pass by Earth, showed a JPL report issued on March 11.

Buzzing The Moon

Based on the characteristics of its orbit, 2021 EQ3 has been labeled as an Apollo-type asteroid, a group of space rocks that can potentially cross Earth's orbit as they zip around the sun.

The asteroid takes about 3.21 years to complete a full orbit around our star and will linger in the Earth-moon system a few hours, just enough to do a flyby of the moon about four hours after its swoops past our planet.

The rock is predicted the hurtle past Earth at a little over 26,750 mph, picking up a bit of extra speed as it gears up to buzz the moon at 28,655 mph at 03:52 a.m. on March 16.

It Fares On The Smaller Side

As far as near-Earth asteroids go, 2021 EQ3 is not among the heftiest to wander this close to our planet. While the space rocks' maximum diameter is estimated at 124,67 feet, the object can range in size to as little as 55,77 feet across, data from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) indicates.

At the upper end of that size estimate, the asteroid is almost twice as big as the famous Chelyabinsk meteor, which exploded in the sky over Russia in 2013, wreaking havoc in the city of Chelyabinsk.

Days after Monday's close encounter, a much larger Apollo asteroid will fly by Earth on a momentous close approach. As The Inquisitr previously reported, a massive 2,230-foot rock will swing by on March 21 on the largest asteroid flyby of the year, passing at a safe distance of 1.25 million miles.

Belgian cops injured after violence break out on sidelines of BLM protest

A Black Lives Matter march was held in the eastern Belgian city of Liege to protest against the arrest of a woman for "rebellion" who has since accused the police of racism.

File image: Police look at a screen of a collapsed house after an unknown type of explosion in Liege, Belgium, December 2, 2020. (AP)

Several police officers have been wounded as a result of violence and looting that broke out on the sidelines of a Black Lives Matter demonstration in the eastern Belgian city of Liege, police said.

The march was held to protest against the arrest of a woman for "rebellion" in the city on Monday who has since accused the police of racism, a police spokeswoman said.

The police have rejected that charge, claiming that the woman had resisted arrest.

The spokeswoman said that on Saturday "young people joined the group of peaceful protesters and then left the demonstration to go and wreck the city centre".

They "threw stones at the central police station and police vehicles," she told AFP.

An officer on a motorcycle who was knocked to the ground and assaulted has been hospitalised, while several other officers were also wounded, she added.

"We are dealing with two hundred young people, 'casseurs', who move very quickly, in groups, and loot stores."

"Casseurs" is a French term which translates as "breakers" and describes black-clad protesters who infiltrate protests to smash property and provoke clashes with police.

"They ransacked a whole McDonald's," said the spokeswoman in the city in Belgium's French-speaking Wallonia region.

Clashes were continuing into Saturday evening and police reinforcements were being deployed, she added.

The police urged citizens not to go to the city centre, and the mayor had told shops in the affected area to close.