Astronomers have detected the brightest and fastest-growing black hole to have existed in the last 9 billion years. The enormous cosmic entity is 3 billion times more massive than the Sun and swallows up an Earth-size chunk of matter every second. The newly discovered supermassive black hole, known as J1144, is around 500 times as massive as Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. A ring of superhot plasma around the enormous void also emits around 7,000 times more light than our entire galaxy. Australian astronomers discovered the cosmic juggernaut using data from Australian National University’s SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey, which aims to map out the entirety of the sky in the Southern Hemisphere. “Astronomers have been hunting for objects like this for more…

Ocean currents play a big role in floods, droughts, and other large-scale weather patterns. They’re notoriously complicated and there’s debate among researchers about how to untangle conflicting sources of information. Satellite data seems to suggest that ocean currents are, on average, becoming more intense. But satellite data only stretches back about 30 years – so it’s hard to be conclusive. Now those findings have been backed up by several million more years of data, thanks to researchers at the University of Sydney – and some rocks. “If we think of the long-term evolution of the Earth, either in the past or into the future, then three decades is not a lot,” says Dr Adriana Dutkiewicz, geologist at the University of Sydney. Dutkiewicz, along with colleague Professor Dietmar Müller, went to geological records taken from…

The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed a stark scenario. It highlighted that little progress has been made in terms of limiting temperatures to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels; and in order to meet such a goal, emissions must peak in the next couple of years. While the report showed some scepticism about the potential of some technologies designed to limit emissions, there was some optimism around cities. Debra Roberts, the IPCC cochair, recently referred to cities as “a key place for mobilisation”1. But why does the IPPC focus on cities, an invention from thousands of years ago with a reputation for bad air quality, in a world where electric vehicles and machines that suck carbon from the air are developing rapidly? THE URBAN FOOTPRINT SHAPES…