‘Not-quite-primordial’ black holes may explain baffling JWST discovery

 

Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and D. Kocevski (Colby U.)/Space Telescope Science Institute Office of Public Outreach

Joel Kontinen

Some evolutionists believe that there  were some black holes before the creation of the world, This probably occurred before the big bang that started it all.

There may have been black holes in the early universe before the first stars, and a group of theoretical physicists has proposed a new way to explain how they could have formed using the heat of the cosmic microwave background. The idea may be a better explanation for the “little red dots” identified by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) – distant galaxies that seem to host surprisingly large numbers of astonishingly ancient black holes.

 Source: 

 Matt von Hippel 2026 'Not-quite primordial' black holes may explain baffling JWST discovery | New Scientist 3 September

 

Venus may have had a moon for nearly "2 billion years"

 

Image courtesy of NASA imiages/Shutterstock

Joel Kontinen

Darwinian fables are interesting, as there is no proof of them being true. As with Venus having a moon many billions of years ago.    

Venus has no moon, but a modelling study suggests it probably did have one for "nearly 2 billion years" – before the planet ate it. Understanding this could help us learn about Venus’s previous habitability.

Many large objects probably hit Venus in the early solar system, which could have formed a moon, similar to the giant impact that is thought to have formed Earth’s moon. “There’s a very good chance that Venus did have a moon-forming impact,” says Stephen Kane at the University of California, Riverside..

 Kane and his colleagues modelled what would have happened if Venus did have a moon, and found that in almost all scenarios, it would have been consumed by the planet,.

Venus rotates quite strangely with respect to the sun, completing a rotation once every 243 days, compared with its orbit of 225 days. This is possibly a result of its thick atmosphere slowing its spin.

In contrast, Earth’s much faster spin transfers angular momentum to our moon, meaning it is moving away a few centimetres each year. For Venus, the opposite would have been true. “The moon is transferring angular momentum inward instead of outward,” says Kane. “It causes the moon’s orbit to catastrophically collapse.”

The researchers found that at the upper limit of their models, a moon about half the mass of our own could have survived around Venus for 1.7 billion years. At twice the mass of our moon, it would have survived just 30 million years, because of the stronger tidal effect.

Paul Byrne at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, says the model is interesting but hard to prove. “It’s exceedingly hard to test this idea because there is basically nothing left behind.” This is because Venus’s surface has been repeatedly resurfaced by volcanism, he says.

In Genesis, God created the Earth and its moon without any evolution.

Source:

Jonathan O’Callaghan 2026 Venus may have had a moon for nearly 2 billion years | New Scientist 2 September 

The first signs of dark matter particles may finally have been spotted

 Inside the LUX-ZEPLIN detector. Image courtesy of Matthew Kapust/Sanford Underground Research Laboratory

Joel Kontinen

Most of the matter in the universe is dark matter, but for decades physicists haven’t been able to directly observe it – that may have just changed.

Some researchers think that dark matter does not exist.  Some think that it does.

Researchers may have spotted the first signs of a dark matter particle. If the result is confirmed, it could be one of the most monumental discoveries in the history of physics.

Dark matter makes up about 85 per cent of the universe, but for decades physicists have been unable to determine what it itself is made of. Hypotheses have ranged from different sorts of particles and forces to strangely-behaving gravity and everything in between – but the leading idea has always been that of the weakly-interacting massive particle, or WIMP. As we have built more and more powerful detectors to search for WIMPs, though, their failure to show up has led many to doubt their existence and move on to more exotic ideas.

Source:

Leah Crane 2026 The first signs of dark matter particles may finally have been spotted | New Scientist 1 September 

Galapagos corals suggest climate change drives stronger El Niños

 

Image courtesy of NOAA.

Joel Kontinen

A super El Niño that is gathering strength in the Pacific Ocean may have been made worse by climate change, according to new analysis of coral records that suggest El Niños have become more intense as global temperatures have climbed.

Julia Cole at the University of Michigan and her colleagues hope corals can provide the answer. They collected living and dead corals from around the Galapagos Islands in the eastern Pacific ocean, where El Niños first develop.

They used uranium and thorium dating to identify the age of the corals, then analysed the chemistry of their skeletons to track changes to sea temperatures during their lifetime. In that way, they built a time series of sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific spanning the past 1000 years.

El Niño and La Niña events are measured by changes to sea surface temperatures in the Pacific, so by building this time series, Cole and her colleagues could track the fluctuating ENSO cycle through the centuries.

Climate change and evolution seem to be  trends of the day.

Source:

Madeleine Cuff 2026 Galapagos corals suggest climate change drives stronger El Niños | New Scientist 27 August 

Fastest star ever spotted at the centre of our galaxy

 

Image courtesy of ESO and Digitized Sky Survey 2 O.

Joel Kontinen

Some stars are slow but others are fast. Now scientist have discovered the fastest star at the centre of our galaxy.

Stefan Gillessen at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and his colleagues found S301 using the Very Large Telescope in Chile.

At its closest approach, S301 is only about 1.8 billion kilometres from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. That’s just 12 times the distance between Earth and the sun, 10 times closer to Sagittarius A* than the previous record-holder. “If you were living on a planet around this star, the size of the black hole at the closest approach would appear similar to the full moon from Earth – it would be absolutely stunning,” says Gillessen.

“Earth does this as well, and we can measure with satellites around Earth that there is a very, very slight frame dragging from Earth’s rotation,” says Tuan Do at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wasn’t involved in the research. “This is doing the same thing, just with much different objects.”

Measuring Earth’s spin is relatively easy, but a black hole’s spin is much harder to determine because of its lack of a visible surface. The most precise way to measure it would be by measuring frame dragging, and S301 is the first star close enough to feel that effect.

“We drop a leaf in the wind and see how the air is moving by measuring that leaf,” says Gillessen. “A star is just the perfect leaf to drop to see the movement of space-time.”

Actually measuring the spin of Sagittarius A* using this method will probably take around a decade, he says, but that may speed up if we find more stars like it.

“With one star, it would take a while, but it would still be the best constraint on spin that we’ve ever had by far,” says Ziri Younsi at University College London. “If you can find another star that’s even closer, that’s better still. If you can find a population of these stars, then you’re in business.”

But when we finally do measure the spin of a black hole, it will be a crucial piece of the cosmic jigsaw. It will not only help us understand how black holes have contributed to the evolution of the universe, but will also provide a probe into the behaviour of gravity in extreme environments, which has proved extremely difficult to study.

 Source: 

By Leah Crane 2026 Fastest star ever spotted at the centre of our galaxy | New Scientist 28 August 

Two emerging tick viruses that can be deadly are spreading in the US

 

Image courtesy of Jason Ondreicka/Alamy.

Joel Kontinen

Two tick-borne viruses – Heartland virus and Bourbon virus – have killed at least seven people in the US so far and appear to be spreading. Nebraska has just become the ninth state to detect one or both viruses in local ticks. New York also recently reported its first case of Bourbon virus in a person.

Are these viruses going to keep expanding in ticks? Are we going to see more and more cases of human infections? These are questions that a lot of my colleagues and I are wondering about,” says  Joseph J Fauver at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

When God created the world everything was fine but then after the fall of man he fall on while ticks and  other creatures poisoned Earth. Tics spread viruses when God  cursed mankind  and  animals after the fall of man in Genesis 3.

Source:

Alice Klein 2026 Two emerging tick viruses that can be deadly are spreading in the US | New Scientist 20 August

 

Lack of sleep may cause anxiety by making us less adaptable to threats

 

Image courtesy of Millennium Images/plainpicture

Joel Kontinen

A lack of sleep can cause anxiety, which would  cause less adaptable threats.

We often feel more anxious and stressed when we are tired, and scientists may have partly uncovered why. A lack of shuteye may make it harder for our brain to adapt to new, potentially threateninig environments, keeping us in a hyperalert state. This might have been an advantage for our ancient human ancestors, who were more vulnerable to predators, but may be less useful in our modern world.

“Our biodies and brain view sleep loss as a reason to turn on the emergency engines in order to survive,” says Eti Ben Simon at the University of Texas at Dallas, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It is a ‘better safe than sorry’ approach we received from evolution to better deal with challenges in tough times.”

 Source:

Tosin Thompson 2026 Lack of sleep may cause anxiety by making us less adaptable to threats | New Scientist 24 August