First look at our galaxy's black hole released just as society collapses into itself


Andrew Paul
Thu, May 12, 2022, 

No, not this. The actual image is a lot less...obvious.

We’ve seen a lot of marketing gimmicks in our time covering all things pop culture, but we gotta say—you’re wild for this one, NASA. Presumably to get everyone even more hyped for society’s looming self-immolation, astronomers have just released humanity’s first ever glimpse at the incomprehensible terror that is the supermassive black hole around which the entirety of our Milky Way galaxy orbits. Get hyped, y’all!

Hot damn! Just look at that thing... well, not so much “look” at it, since the black hole dubbed Sagittarius A* isn’t technically visible to our pathetic human eyes, seeing as how not even light itself escapes the celestial phenomenon’s cruel grip. But look at its low-res effects on the universe around it!

“Light escaping from the hot gas swirling around the black hole appears to us as the bright ring,” professor of astrophysics Feryal Özel told NBC News this morning, going on to explain,“Light that is too close to the black hole—close enough to be swallowed by it—eventually crosses its horizon and leaves behind just the dark void in the center.” A bit on the nose, Prof. Özel, but you’ll get no argument from us.

According to researchers’ estimates, Sagittarius A* is located approximately 27,000 lightyears away from Earth, and is about 4 million times more massive than our own Sun. The news was first revealed earlier today in a special edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and is actually only the second actual image of a black hole ever taken.

What’s more, this is apparently the first visual confirmation that it is indeed a black hole that lies in the center of our galaxy. Although this theory has been widely accepted for some time, the new image provides incontrovertible evidence to support it. Great job, everyone involved. We’ll do our best to enjoy this before life imitates the art you provided us today.

Send Great Job, Internet tips to gji@theonion.com

BAN HYPERSONIC WMD
U.S. Air Force says it successfully tested hypersonic weapon

A B-52H Stratofortress assigned to the 419th Flight Test Squadron was used over the weekend to launch a hypersonic weapon off the coast of Southern California. 

File Photo by Giancarlo Casem/Air Force

May 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. Air Force said it has successfully conducted a test of a hypersonic weapon over the weekend amid a growing race with China and Russia to develop such military technology.

The military branch announced Monday that a B-52H Stratofortress aircraft successfully released a AGM-1831 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon that achieved speeds five times greater than the speed of sound.

The test was conducted Saturday off the coast of Southern California, it said.

"This was a major accomplishment by the ARRW team for the weapons enterprise and our Air Force," Brig. Gen. Heath Collins, Air Force program executive officer for weapons, said in a statement. "The team's tenacity, expertise and commitment were key in overcoming the past year's challenges to get us to the recent success."

"We are ready to build on what we've learned and continue moving hypersonics forward," he said.

Hypersonic weapons are those that travel at speeds of at least March 5, which is five times faster than the send of sound, and are considerably faster than traditional missiles, making them difficult to intercept.

The test was held more than a month after the administration of President Joe Biden entered a partnership with Australia and Britain to accelerate development of the advanced hypersonic capabilities, and nearly two months after the United States accused Russia of using one of these missiles in its war against Ukraine.

The United States has been seeking to develop hypersonic weapons since the early 2000s but funding has been relatively restrained though both the Department of Defense and Congress have shown growing interest in the weaponry due to advances by Russia and China, according to a report from the Congressional Research service produced early this month.

The Pentagon budget ask for fiscal year 2023 included $4.7 billion for hypersonic weaponry, an increase from $3.8 billion a year prior.

The Air Force said the weapon launched over the weekend is designed to enable the U.S. to "hold fixed, high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk" and that it will expand precision-strike capabilities.

"Our highly skilled team made history on this first air-launched hypersonic weapon," said Lt. Col. Michael Jungquist, commander of the 419th Flight Test Squadron that conducted the weekend test. "We're doing everything we can to get this game-changing weapon to the warfighter as soon as possible."

NASA to announce fate of tremor-detecting InSight Mars lander


1/5

NASA's InSight Mars Lander, which acquired this image in November 2018, has had its mission extended until the end of the year, but dust storms have left some portion of its solar panels covered and scientists are concerned it can't generate enough power to keep going. 

Photo by NASA/UPI | License Photo

ORLANDO, Fla., May 17 (UPI) -- Despite being ravaged by dust storms and struggling to stay powered, NASA's InSight Mars lander has managed to keep making scientific findings -- including its recent detection of a powerful Marsquake.

The quake, measured by the lander on May 4, was the most intense detected so far by InSight and shook the red planet for more than 9 hours.

The craft has met most goals from its two-year mission -- a mission extended through the end of this year -- but NASA officials say they are concerned if it can keep going because of dust accumulation on its solar panels.

NASA on Tuesday will offer an update on InSight's power situation -- whether it is generating enough power to continue its mission -- and whether anything can be done to improve it, in addition to the lander's overall long-term fate.

After landing on Mars in 2018, InSight was tasked with probing the planet's interior to learn more about how it works.

While Earthquakes are caused by plate tectonics -- when the plates that make up Earth's crust shift and collide -- Mars doesn't have a crust made up of plates, so planet's tremblers are caused by slightly different phenomena.

"On Mars, quakes are caused by the contraction of the crust due to cooling and vertical motions from thermal uplift or sinking," Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for the InSight mission and a principal scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told UPI.

Meaning that, like baking a cake or muffins, the top of the planet's crust expands and contracts as the middle heats up -- or cooks, in the case of food -- and it expands upwards, pushing against the top. This upward expansion causes cracks in the top of a cake, and has a similar effect on the planetary crust of Mars.

InSight has detected more than 1,300 Marsquakes, and scientists think underlying magma reserves on the planet cause the quakes, even though volcanoes aren't actively erupting on the planet's surface.

Previous Marsquakes were deeper below the planet's crust, and only detected with InSight's suite of instruments, but the May 4 quake could have been felt if a person were standing on the surface, scientists said.

Registering as a magnitude 5, Banerdt said that while it's weak in comparison to many quakes felt on Earth, it reached an intensity for which scientists have been looking.

"This quake is sure to provide us with a view inside the planet we've never seen before," he said.

The finding is a win for the ailing lander, which in January sat through a massive dust storm that covered its solar panels, making it more difficult for to charge up its batteries.

Another similar massive dust storm ended the Opportunity rover's extended mission in 2018, after the rover could no longer power itself up.

To help extend its life expectancy, the team put InSight into safe mode for a few months.

Eventually the craft was able to return to full power and is proving its worth by detecting this latest monster quake. Dust continues to accumulate on the lander's solar panels, however, and unless there's a way to shake it off, eventually it will succumb to the elements, NASA has said.

Engineers predict that could happen sometime this year, possibly before the end of its current mission.

Scientists find evidence of water in Mars rock, but no signs of life


Swedish scientists analyzed this Martian meteorite that was found on Earth and concluded that it had only very limited interaction with liquid water.

 Photo courtesy Josefin Martell/Lund University/UPI

May 16 (UPI) -- Swedish scientists say a study of a meteorite from Mars indicates that it had only very limited exposure to liquid water -- an indication that it's unlikely life was present on the Red Planet in recent times.

Scientists at Lund University in Sweden agree that widespread presence of water would have been a prerequisite for life on Mars, but advanced scans of a 1.3-billion-year-old Martian meteorite revealed only trace contact with hydrogen, the key element in water.

The results of their study were published last week in the academic journal Science Advances.

While samples of Martian rocks are being collected by NASA's Perseverance rover and are expected to be available by 2030, scientists got a jump on the process with a Martian "Nakhlite" meteorite -- rock ejected from the Red Planet by a meteorite impact hundreds of millions of years ago.

The chunk is known as the Miller Range 03346 nakhlite, a 1.6-pound rock that scientists discovered in Antarctica's Miller Range in 2003.

Josefin Martell, geology doctoral student at Lund University, said the goal of studying the meteorite was answering whether there was ever a "major hydrothermal system" on Mars.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is seen on the surface of the Red Planet on February 24. The rover, among other things, is collecting rock samples from the surface for analysis. 

File Photo by NASA/UPI

"Since water is central to the question of whether life ever existed on Mars, we wanted to investigate how much of the meteorite reacted with water when it was still part of the Mars bedrock," Martell said in a statement.

Researchers used neutron and X-ray tomography to study meteorite -- neutron tomography was used because neutrons are very sensitive to hydrogen -- and found that only a fairly small part of it seems to have reacted with liquid water.

Thus, they reasoned, it probably wasn't a large hydrothermal system that produced the reaction, but rather "small accumulations of underground ice" that melted when the meteorite impacted the planet about 630 million years ago.

Scientists said the findings "have direct implications for the habitability of the Martian subsurface in the Nakhlite source region, where any habitable environments were localized and very short-lived, reducing the chance of life's emergence or survival on Mars" during its most recent historical period.

"Of course, that doesn't mean that life couldn't have existed in other places on Mars, or that there couldn't have been life at other times," Martell noted.

Dispatches from Mars: Perseverance rover sends images

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover, using its Mastcam-Z camera system, captured this view of the Martian sunset on November 9, 2021, the 257th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Martian sunsets typically stand out for their distinctive blue color as fine dust in the atmosphere permits blue light to penetrate the atmosphere more efficiently than colors with longer wavelengths. But this sunset looks different: Less dust in the atmosphere resulted in a more muted color than average. The color has been calibrated and white-balanced to remove camera artifacts. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

Starbucks to cover eligible travel expenses for employees seeking abortions

Starbucks, which employs more than 240,000 people in the United States, told workers it will cover eligible travel expenses for those who want to have an abortion or a gender-affirming procedure.

 File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

May 16 (UPI) -- Starbucks employees who want to have an abortion or gender-affirming procedure will have their eligible travel expenses paid for by their company, the Seattle-based coffee giant announced Monday.

Amazon, Apple, Salesforce and Microsoft are among other firms to offer travel reimbursement for workers seeking out such procedures in the wake of a leaked draft showing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that would strike down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Eligibility is open to the coffee chain's employees enrolled in its insurance plan if they have to travel 100 miles or more from home to access abortion or gender-affirming services. The reimbursement also applies to employees' dependents enrolled in the company's health plan, Starbucks said.

Starbucks employees over 240,000 people in the United States.

"Regardless of what the Supreme Court ends up deciding, we will always ensure our partners have access to quality health care," Starbucks acting executive vice president of partner resources Sara Kelly said in a letter to employees, as reported by Newsweek.

Various mental illnesses share genetic similarities, study shows

By HealthDay News

More than half of people with mental illness have two or three conditions, and about one-third have four or more, which can make identification and treatment difficult. 

Photo by tiyowprasetyo/Pixabay

Many people who get a diagnosis for one mental illness may find they have additional psychiatric conditions, and new genetic research offers an explanation why.

A number of mental illnesses share genetic similarities, researchers found. This discovery helps explain why multiple conditions are common among people with psychiatric disorders, the investigators pointed out in a new study.

More than half of people with mental illness have two or three conditions, and about one-third have four or more, which can make identification and treatment difficult.

However, the new findings could lead to new ways of diagnosing mental illness and new therapies for a number of disorders at one time, according to the study authors.

"If you had a cold, you wouldn't want to be diagnosed with coughing disorder, sneezing disorder and aching joints disorder," said study lead author Andrew Grotzinger. He is an assistant professor in the department of psychology and neuroscience at University of Colorado at Boulder.

"This study is a stepping stone toward creating a diagnostic manual that better maps on to what is actually happening biologically," Grotzinger said in a university news release.

Using genetic material donated by hundreds of thousands of people to large datasets, the researchers conducted a genetic analysis of 11 major mental illnesses: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, anorexia nervosa, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, problematic alcohol use, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism.

There is no gene or set of genes associated with all 11 disorders, but the researchers found that a number of subsets have genetic similarities. Those subsets include bipolar disorder and schizophrenia anorexia nervosa and obsessive-compulsive disorder and major depression and anxiety.

For example, 70% of the genetic signal associated with schizophrenia is also associated with bipolar disorder. But under current diagnostic guidelines, people aren't typically diagnosed with both disorders, the study team noted.

The researchers also found strong shared genetics between anorexia nervosa and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that people genetically predisposed to a smaller body type or low body mass index also tend to have a genetic predisposition to these disorders.

In total, the researchers identified 152 genetic variants shared across multiple mental health disorders, including variants already known to affect certain types of brain cells.

Much more research is needed to pinpoint the exact effects of the gene variants identified in the study, but just understanding the genetics underlying their disorders may provide comfort to some patients with multiple mental health disorders, Grotzinger said.

"It's important for people to know that they didn't just get a terrible roll of the dice in life - that they are not facing multiple different issues but rather one set of risk factors bleeding into them all," he added.

The results were published recently in the journal Nature Genetics.

More information

Mental Health America has more on mental health conditions.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Study: Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine saved 110,000 lives in United States in 2021

By HealthDay News

Use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine prevented more than 110,000 deaths and 690,000 hospitalizations in the United States in 2021, researchers report.

 File Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo

As the United States mourns 1 million deaths from COVID-19, a new study indicates the grim tally could have been worse. Use of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine prevented more than 110,000 deaths and 690,000 hospitalizations in the country in 2021, researchers report.

The vaccine also prevented 8.7 million symptomatic cases of infection and saved more than $30 billion in health care costs and more than $40 billion in lost productivity, the study authors noted.

"The analyses show that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine contributed substantial public health impact in the U.S. in 2021, and had a deep effect on the trajectory of the pandemic," said Manuela Di Fusco, of Pfizer's health economics and outcomes research team.

The Pfizer vaccine was the first COVID-19 shot available in the United States. It was given to nearly six in 10 people nationwide who were fully vaccinated in 2021, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The findings were published online Sunday in the Journal of Medical Economics. All of the study authors received funding from Pfizer either as employees, consultants or employees of firms paid by Pfizer.

Despite the use of COVID-19 vaccines, the U.S. death toll during the pandemic neared one million last week.

"We must remain vigilant against this pandemic and do everything we can to save as many lives as possible," Biden said.

In this study, researchers estimated the impact of the Pfizer vaccine using a model, real-world data and clinical trial data.

The model used data on the number of people vaccinated, the effectiveness of the vaccine in various age groups, and the chances of being infected, developing symptoms and being hospitalized.

It also included the effects of long COVID, the number of working days likely lost due to short-term illness and the economic impact of premature deaths from the disease.

The model did not include the impact of the more transmissible Omicron variant that became the dominant coronavirus strain at the end of the study period.

The vaccine "was estimated to prevent millions of COVID-19 symptomatic cases, thousands of hospitalizations and deaths, and generated billions in societal economic value in the U.S. in 2021," Di Fusco said in a journal news release.

The findings "highlight the opportunity to continue widespread vaccination uptake to prevent COVID-19-related disease and generate societal benefits," she added.

A number of limitations could have resulted in the numbers in the study being underestimates, according to Di Fusco and colleagues. These include not factoring in the vaccine's potential to reduce transmission of the coronavirus, the severity of cases and the overall impact of long COVID .

The researchers also noted that their findings can't be applied to other COVID-19 vaccines or groups of people not specifically analyzed in the study.

More information

There's more on COVID-19 vaccines at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

New Zealand announces 'landmark' 15-year climate change action plan

Part of New Zealand's plan to combat climate change includes the clean car upgrade program, which allows families to swap their old vehicles for electric or hybrid upgrades, including assistance to pay for the new vehicles. 

Photo by Sarah Silbiger/UPI | License Photo

May 16 (UPI) -- In a major step forward for New Zealand's commitment to climate change action, the country's government announced Monday its 15-year plan to end fossil-fuel reliance, reduce landfill-bound waste and assist some drivers with buying electric vehicles.

The comprehensive plan to tackle climate emissions includes a cap on how much greenhouse gas New Zealand can emit, allowing the nation to meet its goals of helping limit the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

About $4.5 billion from the country's emissions trading scheme went toward establishing the climate fund.

In a statement, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called the announcement a "landmark day" in her country's transition to lower emissions, the New Zealand Herald reported.

"The emissions reduction plan delivers the greatest opportunity we've had in decades to address climate change," Ardern said. "We can't opt out of the effects of climate change, so we can't opt out of taking action."

Climate change minister James Shaw said the action plan would put New Zealand on a path toward a net-zero future where the transport infrastructure would improve, more people could purchase electric vehicles and farmers could grow crops using more sustainable practices, according to the Guardian.

The clean car upgrade program included in the plan seeks to transform 30% of the light vehicles on New Zealand roads -- including cars and vans -- into zero-emissions vehicles.

The program, targeted at lower- and middle-income families, will offer a "scrap and replace" trial of trading in their vehicles while receiving cheaper-to-operate electric or hybrid vehicles in return.

Transport minister Michael Wood anticipates the program, toward which $1.2 billion has already been allocated, will lower emissions to an equivalent of taking 181,000 cars off the road through 2035.

Study: Children living in poverty face higher risk for intensive care admission, death

A new study suggests children of color and those living in poverty are at higher risk for death after hospitalization. 

Photo by skeeze/Pixabay

May 16 (UPI) -- Children living in under-served neighborhoods in the United States who are hospitalized for any reason are at higher risk for being admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit and dying while there, a study presented Monday found.

Black children treated in hospital pediatric intensive care units nationally are also more likely to die than those of other races and ethnicities, the analysis of Medicaid data presented during the American Thoracic Society's international conference in San Francisco showed.

Children covered by Medicaid from households with the lowest income levels were 21% more likely to be admitted to hospital pediatric intensive care units compared to those living in higher-income households still receiving Medicaid, the data showed.

Once in the pediatric intensive care unit, or PICU, they were 12% more likely to die, the researchers said.

Compared with White children on Medicaid, Black children who receive the government-funded health insurance for people with low incomes were 15% more likely to be admitted to the PICU and 18% more likely to die there, according to the researchers.

"It is clear that children living in underserved areas and racial or ethnic minority groups are at higher risk of death in intensive care," study co-author Dr. Hannah Mitchell said in a press release.


"It is important that doctors working in this field understand this and investigate why this is happening," said Mitchell, a fellow in critical care medicine at Evelina Children's Hospital in London.

RELATED 1 in 3 U.S. children lack adequate health insurance, study finds

The findings are based on an analysis of Medicaid claims data collected between 2007 to 2014 from 12 states nationally, the researchers said.

The researchers used patient ZIP codes to pinpoint areas of "local socioeconomic deprivation," based on the percentage of the population living below 150% the federal poverty line, they said.

Among more than 4 million patients age 21 years and younger included in the study, nearly 275,000 were admitted to a hospital PICU and 2.5% of them ultimately died there, the data showed.

RELATED Low-income children receive sub-par care for brain injuries, study says

Of those treated in hospital PICUs, 44% were White and 32% were Black, the researchers said.

Previous studies have suggested that children from low-income families receive worse medical care for everything from appendicitis to brain injuries.

"Children coming from underserved areas might be more likely to receive care in lower quality hospitals [and] once in the hospital, certain children might be more likely to be treated differently by doctors," Mitchell said.

"More research is needed to understand which of these is the main driver of disparate outcomes, so that targeted interventions can be developed to try to help deal with the problem," she said.

CAPITALI$M KILLS
COPD risk higher among people exposed to pesticides at work

By HealthDay News

A recent study found that workplace exposure to pesticides at any point was associated with a 13% increased risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Photo by ernestoeslava/Pixabay

Workplace exposure to pesticides may boost a person's risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a new study finds.

COPD is a group of lung diseases that cause airflow blockage and breathing problems. Emphysema and chronic bronchitis are the two main types of COPD. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control 


"In a large population-based study, occupational exposure to pesticides was associated with risk of COPD," the study authors conclude. Efforts to reduce workplace exposures "can prevent the associated COPD burden," the team concluded in their report published online recently in the journal Thorax.

This added risk is separate from smoking and asthma, two major risk factors for COPD, the researchers noted in a journal news release.

Workplace exposures are important preventable causes of COPD, and an estimated 14% of COPD cases are work-related, the researchers explained.

But it can be challenging to pinpoint which jobs and work exposure levels might pose the greatest risk, according to the team led by Sara De Matteis of the National Heart & Lung Institute at Imperial College London, in England.

To learn more, her team looked at more than 94,500 40- to 69-year-olds in the United Kingdom. Most had never smoked (59%) and just 5.5% were current smokers. About 11% had been diagnosed with asthma.

Overall, 8% had COPD. That included 17% of current smokers, 9% of former smokers and 7% of never-smokers.

Just over 4% of those with COPD and 3.5% of those without COPD had been exposed to pesticides at work. But 48% of those with COPD and 47% of those without COPD had been exposed to several agents, including biological dusts, mineral dusts, gases and fumes, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, aromatic solvents, chlorinated solvents, other solvents and metals.

Most study participants had low levels of exposures to these agents at work, the study authors noted.

After accounting for potentially significant factors, the investigators concluded that workplace exposure to pesticides at any point was associated with a 13% increased risk of COPD. A combination of long-term and high level of exposure was associated with a 32% increased risk.

No significantly increased risk of COPD was observed for any of the other workplace agents included in the study, including dusts and metals, the team reported.

The researchers noted that because this was an observational study, it doesn't prove cause and effect. They also said they couldn't pinpoint the effects that particular pesticides had on COPD risk.

More information

To learn more about COPD, visit the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.