The dark object weighs in at seven times the mass of the sun, making it one of the best candidates for a free-floating black hole of stellar mass to date — Black hole hunters are enjoying a boom time. In most galaxies, black holes weighing billions of suns can be found at their cores, and they have even been imaged. In the meantime, scientists routinely detect gravitational waves from merging black holes. Our own galaxy’s supermassive black hole and its more…

A more precise estimate of the particle’s upper limit has been determined after the latest attempt to weigh it. — Neutrinos, perhaps the most mysterious elementary particle, have been weighed for the first time. Neutrinos have a mass of approximately 0.8 electron volts, according to the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment in Germany. Scientists have known for years that the particles should be lighter than 1 eV, but this is the…

To return samples from the Red Planet to Earth, NASA’s Mars Ascent Vehicle will attempt a wildly unconventional launch. — The rover will pick up rock samples left by a previous mission on Mars within a decade. The rocket will be mounted on a flat piece of Earth’s surface and loaded with the explorers. After the rocket’s hatch shuts, the platform will then throw it upward on its side, similar…

Being mauled by a bear is about as extreme as it gets when it comes to radical interventions. There are few events that are so blatantly obvious, so borderline cheesy; metaphors are embarrased by lack of subtlety and remain at a distance. It adds insult to (devastating) injury according to…

Is it possible for the president to change the narrative and bring back democracy? — Only a year ago, President Obama was led by a man who craved the approval of Fox News host Tucker Carlson and considered imposing martial law. Having a president who doesn’t threaten neighbouring countries or corporations using Twitter would be great after Donald Trump. Unfortunately, this is not the case…

There have always been false positives in the search for extraterrestrial life, when scientists believe they’ve found life but they don’t have a convincing case. — It is because of NASA’s twin Viking landers which, in the mid-1970s, delivered controversial evidence of life on Mars that the archetypal example can be drawn. Three other life-detection experiments carried by the landers only produced null results despite the smell of radioactive carbon wafting from the soil. Scientists discovered…

Emails are not liked by anyone. While we also have Slack and Teams, we have yet to let go of this broken piece of the modern world. A pair of researchers, however, have discovered a simple method for decreasing inbox dread: returning to email’s asynchronous roots. Half of us reply…

It’s likely that you were never given plenty of advice when you were growing up. Budgeting, for example. What to look for in a romantic partner. Breaking bad habits. The best way to make friends as an adult is definitely on that list as well. There’s no school curriculum for…

Memory works in what way? The deeper into this we delve, the more questions appear about how memory appeared in the first place. An important breakthrough was achieved in 1995 when the Arc protein was discovered, demonstrating how it contributes to the consolidation of memory through plastic changes in neurons. …