Feb 1st, 2026 - Scientists have traced a 3,000-light-year-long cosmic jet streaming out from the first black hole ever imaged to its likely source point with the help of "significantly enhanced coverage" from the global Event Horizon Telescope, a new study published this week revealed. The findings, published in the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics" on Wednesday, could help pinpoint exactly from where and how black holes launch vast cosmic jets that travel at nearly the speed of light. M87 is a supermassive black hole located in the Messier 87 Galaxy around 55 light years from Earth, and is 6.5 billion ... [Read More]

Jan 30th, 2026 - ATLANTA (AP) — There were only 10 reported cases of Guinea worm infections confined to three countries in 2025, a historic low announced Friday by The Carter Center. The new mark comes barely a year after the death of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter , who often said he hoped to outlive the Guinea worm . When the former president's center launched an eradication program in the mid-1980s, the parasite still afflicted millions of people in developing countries. "We think about President Carter's legacy" and his push to get to zero cases, said Adam Weiss, director of the center's Guinea ... [Read More]

Jan 30th, 2026 - Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... On a recent afternoon, Carl Jackson and his family were hunting for pythons on a dirt road about 30 miles east of Naples in Big Cypress National Preserve. Jackson said he turned his truck around to retrace his tracks. A few miles down the road he noticed something — python tracks crossing the road, and they were over the tracks of his tires. The snakes must have just crossed! He jumped out of the truck and followed the tracks, which seemed to be from a smaller snake, into the underbrush between the road and a canal. Within seconds he saw a big ... [Read More]

Jan 30th, 2026 - Weak magnetic hiccups can cascade into a flare and a lingering rain of plasma. Imagine standing on a snowy mountain ridge. A single fracture forms in the ice crust, or a small patch of heavy snow shifts just an inch. That tiny movement destabilizes the snowpack below, which pushes against the next layer. Within moments, the entire mountainside is a cascading white sheet of destruction. We call this phenomenon an avalanche. Now, thanks to the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft, we know that our Sun—a churning ball of million-degree plasma—operates by the same ... [Read More]

Jan 30th, 2026 - ST. PAUL, Minn., Jan. 30 (UPI) -- One of the longest-running searches for extraterrestrial life is coming to end this year as U.S. scientists wrap up a popular program that enlisted millions of home computer users to analyze radio signals received from space. After years poring through immense amounts of generated data, the program's co-founders at the University of California at Berkeley told UPI this week they are probing 100 detected signals deemed to be the best candidates for messages from "ET" before the effort is wrapped up for good, 27 years after it was launched. But even though the ... [Read More]

Jan 30th, 2026 - Sky This Week is brought to you in part by Celestron. Friday, January 30 The Moon passes 4° north of Jupiter this evening at 9 P.M. EST. The pair is visible most of the night in the central region of Gemini. Early in the evening, the nearly Full Moon hangs to the upper left of bright Jupiter. The gas giant outshines either of the Twins' brightest stars, Castor and Pollux.  Over in the north, the constellation Camelopardalis arcs above the North Star late tonight. A few degrees from the Giraffe's magnitude 4.3 alpha star lies Collinder 464 (Cr 464), a bright open cluster that ... [Read More]

Jan 30th, 2026 - The method uses common battery industry chemicals to create a stable protective coating that slows degradation, with early testing showing promise though long-term data remains pending. Lithium-ion batteries are used in smartphones, laptops, electric cars, and stationary energy storage systems. Although their design has hardly changed in years, one key problem remains: the gradual aging of cells. That's why lithium-ion batteries lose capacity over time. A team of researchers at the University of Maryland (via NewScientist ) have discovered a new solution that could extend the service life of ... [Read More]

Jan 29th, 2026 - China is betting on 'optical' computer chips – will they power AI? As generative artificial-intelligence models become more sophisticated and eat up more energy to produce images and videos, the electronic chips that power them are reaching their limits of speed and efficiency . Optical chips – semiconductor chips that run on light rather than electricity – could solve these problems, say researchers working in the field. Such chips, also called photonic chips, are still years away from being integrated into consumer computers and are unlikely to wholly replace electronic ... [Read More]