SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 19, 2023--

Earth has been hit by a blast from a dead star so energetic that scientists cannot explain it. The burst of gamma rays, originating in a dead star known as a pulsar, is the most high energy of its kind ever seen. It was equivalent about ten trillion times the energy of visible light, or 20 tera-electronvolts. Scientists are unable to explain exactly what kind of a scenario could lead a pulsar to emit such intense energy, and the researchers behind the breakthrough say that it “requires a rethinking of how these natural accelerators work”. Scientists hope that they can find yet more powerful energy blasts from pulsars, with a view to better understanding how they are formed. Pulsars are formed when a star dies, exploding in a supernova and leaving behind a tiny, dead star. They are just 20 kilometres across, and spin extremely fast with a powerful magnetic field. “These dead stars are almost entirely made up of neutrons and are incredibly dense: a teaspoon of their material has a mass of more than five billion tonnes, or about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza,” said Emma de Oña Wilhelmi, a scientist at the High Energy Stereoscopic System observatory in Namibia that detected the blast. As pulsars spin, they throw out beams of electromagnetic radiation, throwing it out like a cosmic lighthouse. That means that someone in one spot – like the Earth – will see the radiation pulses flash in a regular rhythm as they spin past. The radiation is thought to be the result of fast electrons that are produced and thrown out by the the pulsar’s magnetosphere, which is made up of plasma and electromagnetic fields that surround the star and spin with it. Scientists can search the radiation for different energy bands within the electromagnetic spectrum, helping them understand it. When scientists previously did that with the Vela pulsar examined in the new study, they found that it was the brightest everseen in the radio band, and the brightest persistent source in the giga-electronvolts. But the new research found that there is a part of the radiation with even more high energy components. “That is about 200 times more energetic than all radiation ever detected before from this object,” said co-author Christo Venter from the North-West University in South Africa. Scientists don’t know exactly how that could happen. 
“This result challenges our previous knowledge of pulsars and requires a rethinking of how these natural accelerators work,” says Arache Djannati-Atai from the Astroparticle & Cosmology (APC) laboratory in France, who led the research. “The traditional scheme according to which particles are accelerated along magnetic field lines within or slightly outside the magnetosphere cannot sufficiently explain our observations. “Perhaps we are witnessing the acceleration of particles through the so-called magnetic reconnection process beyond the light cylinder, which still somehow preserves the rotational pattern? But even this scenario faces difficulties to explain how such extreme radiation is produced.” An article describing the findings, ‘Discovery of a Radiation Component from the Vela Pulsar Reaching 20 Teraelectronvolts’, is published today in the journal Nature Astronomy. Read More ‘Ring of fire’ solar eclipse this month will be last until 2046 Mystery behind massive star suddenly vanishing decoded New discovery is ‘holy grail’ breakthrough in search for aliens, scientist say ‘Ring of fire’ solar eclipse this month will be last until 2046 Mystery behind massive star suddenly vanishing decoded New discovery is ‘holy grail’ breakthrough in search for aliens, scientist say

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Famous Kody, an internet personality and TikTok star, has died at the age of 21. The influencer also went by the name Mr Blicky on social media. He died following injuries sustained in a car crash in July. Last month, TikTok user JuiciNicole revealed that Famous Kody – real name Zyquan Mitchell – was in a medically induced coma. “He is fighting but he is stable,” Nicole wrote at the time. “We’re asking for prayers from everyone and positive vibes only, guys.” The influencer’s sister Zy'Kevia posted a statement confirming the news and paying a moving tribute to him. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “Life will never be the same. Your smile was always priceless and could brighten up the whole room. Zyquan how could you leave me, we were just getting started. Lord, I truly don’t understand. My baby brother (big brother) as you will say. Zyquan I’m gonna miss you. Lord why.” @_xykevia Life will never be the same ? your smile was always priceless, could brighten up the whole room . ? Zyquan how could you leave me , we was just getting started. Lord i truly don’t understand. ? My baby brother (big brother) as you will say . Zyquan I’m going miss you . Lord why ?? @Mr.Blicky??♂️? #mrblicky??♂️ #fyp His friend JuiciNicole also wrote: “With pain in my heart and tears in my eyes just know @Mr.Blicky i love u!. And I appreciate u and the friend u was to me! Plz help ease this pain tho I am broken!” Famous Kody was known for sharing videos of himself lip-syncing to songs and also called himself a “Brand Ambassador” in his social media profiles. The Atlanta local had 693.2K followers on Tikok and 102k followers on Instagram. Earlier this year, he shared pictures of himself with his daughter Kahlani Dior Mitchell who was born in 2023. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign launch by noting that more people watched her gaming online than listened to the 44-year-old begin to make his case to the voters. Mr DeSantis started his campaign on Twitter Spaces alongside platform owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and entrepreneur David Sacks. The launch was marred by tech issues, with the live broadcast crashing several times and the sound dropping out, which Mr Musk blamed on the servers being overwhelmed by the number of people trying to listen in. Ben Collins of NBC News tweeted on Wednesday night that “David Sacks just ludicrously made up that Ron DeSantis’ Twitter space was the largest group that ‘has ever met online.’ There are 100,000 people in this thing.” “We had more people join when I played Among Us,” Ms Ocasio-Cortez added. More than 400,000 people watched Ms Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar play the game Among Us on Twitch in the lead-up to the 2020 election – one of the 20 most watched streams on the platform at the time, according to The Verge. Ms Ocasio-Cortez was far from the only one mocking the debacle of Mr DeSantis’s disastrous launch. Donald Trump Jr echoed his father’s ‘”low energy” comments about former Florida Governor Jeb Bush during the 2016 campaign, saying that “DeSantis is making JEB! look high energy right now”. Memes began to be shared of the Twitter Spaces chaos, including an edited video of Mr Trump tackling Mr DeSantis to the ground. After the tech issues plaguing the Twitter Spaces event finally faded, Mr DeSantis was mocked for his voice. “Now that the space has worked long enough for DeSantis to deliver consecutive desentences, all I’m seeing are tweets about how annoying his voice is,” Bobby Lewis tweeted. DNC member Thomas Kennedy added: “Holy s*** this is the worst campaign launch I have objectively ever seen. Embarrassing technical difficulties and consists of DeSantis rambling with his annoying nasally voice about the most niche hyper online right-wing issues that your average voter finds weird and alienating.” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, tweeted that “the initial space topped out at over 600k but this one is stuck at 139k”. The second space later hosted on the account of Mr Sacks reached more than 300,000 listeners, according to Twitter. “BuzzFeed exploding the watermelon hit 820,000 concurrent viewers in 2016,” Tom Gara noted. MSNBC host Chris Hayes said: “I’m sorry but this is an ASTOUNDINGLY HUMILIATING degree of incompetence. Unspinnable failure. Total and complete. Fully public.” Former Obama official and Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor tweeted on Wednesday evening that “doing a Twitter spaces conversation with Elon at some point during your campaign is a good idea, even if its glitchy. Making this awkward mess your presidential announcement is truly a disaster”. The right-wing account Catturd added: “I left the Space - It was so terrible and boring I couldn’t take it anymore. I’m going to go watch some paint dry so I can be more entertained.” Rep Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump supporter, simply wrote: “DeSedative.” Read More DeSantis wants to model America after Florida. Civil rights groups are sounding the alarm on his ‘hostile’ agenda DeSantis dismisses climate change, calling it ‘politicisation of weather’ Ron DeSantis news – live: DeSantis’ glitch-filled 2024 launch on Elon Musk’s Twitter Spaces branded ‘DeSaster’

Scientists have grown human kidneys in pigs, for the very first time. Researchers at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wuyi University created human-pig chimeric embryos containing a combination of human and pig cells. When they transferred into 13 surrogate pig mothers, they developed kidneys that contained mostly human cells at a rate of 50 to 60 per cent, giving hope for potential transplants in the future. “Rat organs have been produced in mice, and mouse organs have been produced in rats, but previous attempts to grow human organs in pigs have not succeeded,” said the senior author Liangxue Lai. “Our approach improves the integration of human cells into recipient tissues and allows us to grow human organs in pigs.” The kidneys were not entirely human as they included vasculature and nerves made mostly from pig cells, meaning they could not be used for transplantation in their current form, but it is still a pretty impressive step. And apart from the kidneys, the embryos were dominated by pig cells, with very few human cells in the brain or central nervous system. Making brains using human and pig cells is very controversial for ethical reasons, so there are tight regulations for this kind of research. Meanwhile, pig cells tend to outcompete human cells during development, so previous experiments have created embryos that are almost entirely pig. The latest work, published in Cell Stem Cell, overcame this by genetically engineering a single-cell pig embryo so that it lacked two genes needed for kidney development. This created a gap within the embryo that could be filled by human cells. “We found that if you create a niche in the pig embryo, then the human cells naturally go into these spaces,” said Prof Zhen Dai of Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, another senior author. The scientists said that being able to incubate a fully human kidney inside a pig would be likely to take many years. “We would probably need to engineer the pigs in a much more complex way and that also brings some additional challenges,” said Miguel Esteban, also of the Guangzhou institute and a senior author. A central challenge would be to allow human nerves and vasculature to develop within the target organ without nerve cells developing in the central nervous system that could lead to a humanised brain. “Even theoretically it’s not clear how you’d do that,” said Ilic. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Offset encouraged Kai Cenat to try some ZaZa and the streamer, though initially reluctant, eventually obliged

Twitter has rebranded to X as part of Elon Musk’s plan to create an “everything app”. The tech billionaire, who took over the platform in October 2022, launched the new logo over the weekend after crowdsourcing ideas for users. He also reportedly informed employees by email that Twitter would become X, as well as redirected the domain X.com to Twitter.com. Mr Musk said Twitter’s famous blue bird logo would eventually be phased out entirely. Linda Yaccarino, who Mr Musk hired to be the chief executive of Twitter last month, confirmed the switch in a series of tweets late on Sunday. “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression,” she wrote. “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.” Ms Yaccarino described the app as the “future state of unlimited interactivity”, incorporating audio, video, messaging, payments and banking. “There’s absolutely no limit to this transformation,” she added. “X will be the platform that can deliver, well... everything.” Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, said on Sunday that the move would further alienate Twitter’s original, and once fiercely loyal, user base. “On the one hand, you can make the argument he would be getting rid of an iconic brand. On the other hand, he is signalling it is a new day for what was once Twitter and that the company is heading in a different direction with a different user base.” Mr Musk said in a Sunday post he wanted to change Twitter’s logo and polled his millions of followers whether they would favour changing the site’s colour scheme from blue to black. He posted a picture of a stylized X against a black outer space-themed background. “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” he said. Under Mr Musk’s tumultuous tenure since he bought Twitter in October, the company has changed its business name to X Corp, reflecting the billionaire’s vision to create a “super app” like China’s WeChat. In April, Twitter’s legacy blue bird logo was temporarily replaced by Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog, helping drive a surge in the cryptocurrency’s market value. The company came under widespread criticism from users and marketing professionals when Musk announced early this month that Twitter would limit how many tweets per day various accounts can read. The daily limits helped Meta Platforms-owned rival service Threads, which crossed 100 million sign-ups within five days of its 5 July launch. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment about the latest changes. Additional reporting from agencies Read More TikTok is now most favourable single source of news in UK teenagers, research shows Apple’s next iPhone may include new battery technology, report suggests DMs may come to Threads soon as app’s user base grows to one-fifth of Twitter’s Battery breakthroughs are about to trigger a transport revolution

The fate of what could be the priciest merger in tech industry history will soon be in the hands of a federal judge who must decide whether to stop Microsoft from closing its deal to buy video game company Activision Blizzard