Two experiments this month announced results that hinted towards an unknown force of physics. Plus everyone’s favourite black hole image got an upgrade and astronomers found a supermassive black hole that’s sloshing around. All this, plus what to look out for in the night sky this month in this episode of Night Sky News! #nightskynews #newphysics
00:00 – Introduction
00:29 – Night Sky
05:35 – A new black hole image
11:30 – A FIFTH force of physics?!
20:48 – A sloshing supermassive black hole
24:04 – Ingenuity’s rescheduled first flight
25:28 – Bloopers
Info from NASA on the delay to Ingenuity’s first flight:
Event Horizon Telescope collaboration (2021; the new black hole image) –
LHCb collaboration (2021; beauty quark decays) –
Muon (g-2) collaboration (2021; muon wobbling) –
Bai & Berger (2021; speculating about dark matter and muons) –
Arcadi et al. (2021; speculating about dark matter and beauty quarks) –
Pesce et al. (2021; sloshing black hole) –
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📚 “Space: 10 Things You Should Know”:
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📚 German translation “Das kleine Buch vom großen Knall” :
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🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive
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The artwork in the background is a scientifically accurate map showing the orbits of more than 18000 asteroids in the Solar System, created by Eleanor Lutz. Find out more and buy one here:
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👩🏽💻 I’m Dr Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at Christ Church college, University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online – you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.
