List of All Articles with Tag 'a'

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 29, 2023--

By Andrew Chung and John Kruzel The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down race-conscious admissions programs at

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 29, 2023--

Snap said Thursday that it has garnered more than 4 million paying customers for its subscription service Snapchat+.

By Joseph Ax The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down race-conscious policies in college admissions, ending decades

A low intergalactic grumbling is emanating from deep space, according to scientists. And no, it’s not the start of the end times. Astronomers say they detected the first-of-their-kind low frequency ripples, described as a “cosmic bass note” of gravitational waves, which is thought to be caused by supermassive black holes merging across the universe. The discovery could unveil new secrets about how the monster black holes, which lie at the centre of galaxies, work. The objects are millions – possibly billions – the times the mass of the sun, but little is known about them because no light can escape. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “This is huge news,” said Dr Stephen Taylor, chair of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (Nanograv) consortium, which led the team which made the discovery, and an astrophysicist at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University. Dr Michael Keith, of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and a member of the team which helped find the signal, added: “The results presented today mark the beginning of a new journey into the universe to unveil some of its unsolved mysteries. “We are incredibly excited that after decades of work by hundreds of astronomers and physicists around the world, we are finally seeing the signature of gravitational waves from the distant universe.” Before the discovery, scientists have only captured short “chirps” of gravitational waves which are linked to the massive objects merging. But the “bass note” comes after they tuned into a deeper range of frequencies. It is thought to be caused by a single complete gravitational wave travelling at the speed of light. Astronomers think it is produced by the entire population of supermassive black hole binaries from over roughly the last 8bn years of the universe. “We think each pair contributes a little wave, which is added to a little wave of another, and all together that is what we may see right now – a sort of murmur of the entire population,” said Prof Alberto Vecchio of the University of Birmingham and a member of the European Pulsar Timing Array. Prof Andrew Pontzen, a cosmologist at University College London, added: “It’s not often that we get a glimpse of the universe through a totally new lens, but after 15 years of patient work, Nanograv seems to be providing just that. It’s tremendously exciting to see initial evidence for these waves, which will eventually teach us an enormous amount about supermassive black holes, hundreds of millions of times the mass of the sun.” The findings were published on 29 June by Astrophysical Journal Letters. 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.

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 29, 2023--

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 29, 2023--

Fans of The X Files have got a new alien-related US government drama to get stuck into, it seems. Senior Republican Marco Rubio claims that those who have reported alien aircraft being retrieved by the US government “have held very high clearances and high positions within our government." The Florida senator and vice chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence did not reveal who had come forward with claims, but said: “Frankly, a lot of them are very fearful.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “Fearful of their jobs, fearful of their clearances, fearful of their career.” At the start of June, James Comer, chair of the influential House Oversight Committee, said the group was looking into allegations that a top-secret military program already had a fully intact UFO. Republicans Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, a committee member, and Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who is not a committee member but has made claims about a government cover-up on the subject in the past, are to lead the probe. The investigation came after David Grusch, a 36-year-old airforce veteran, made public claims about UFOs. Grusch previously worked at the National Reconnaissance Office, on what is now referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs). Grusch told NewsNation that the government had retrieved a number of “non-human origin technical vehicles,” some of which contained “dead pilots”. “There are people who have come forward to share information with our committee over the last couple of years,” Rubio said on 26 June. Referring to Grusch, he added: “I would imagine some of them are potentially some of the same people perhaps he’s referring to.” Following the NewsNation interview, Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough said it had “not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of any extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.” NASA also said that despite one of its priorities being the search for extraterrestrial life, it had not found credible evidence. Rachel Partlow, communications director for Burchett, told Newsweek on 27 June that the congressman was “aware” of Grusch's claims. She declined to comment on whether the veteran would be brought in to provide testimony, with hearing dates not yet set in stone. 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.

By Blake Brittain Two U.S. authors sued OpenAI in San Francisco federal court on Wednesday, claiming in a

By Karen Sloan The experience of two highly selective public U.S. law schools offers a guide for other

By Joseph Ax, Sharon Bernstein and Gabriella Borter For decades, selective U.S. colleges and universities have considered, among