Subscribe now
Birds of Georgia, John Abbot, United States, 1804. (Egerton Ms 1137, f. 28

Don't Miss: Centuries worth of artefacts from documenting animals

3 May 2023

New Scientist's weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn't miss
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) ??? a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration ??? was designed to capture images of a black hole. In coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers revealed that they succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of the supermassive black hole in the centre of Messier 87 and its shadow. The shadow of a black hole seen here is the closest we can come to an image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light cannot escape. The black hole???s boundary ??? the event horizon from which the EHT takes its name ??? is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 40 billion km across. While this may sound large, this ring is only about 40 microarcseconds across ??? equivalent to measuring the length of a credit card on the surface of the Moon. Although the telescopes making up the EHT are not physically connected, they are able to synchronize their recorded data with atomic clocks ??? hydrogen masers ??? which precisely time their observations. These observations were collected at a wavelength of 1.3 mm during a 2017 global campaign. Each telescope of the EHT produced enormous amounts of data ??? roughly 350 terabytes per day ??? which was stored on high-performance helium-filled hard drives. These data were flown to highly specialised supercomputers ??? known as correlators ??? at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory to be combined. They were then painstakingly converted into an image using novel computational tools developed by the collaboration.

Don’t Miss: Learning about how the first black hole image was taken

15 February 2023

New Scientist's weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss
The best films of 2023, from Dune: Part Two to Patrick and the Whale

The best films of 2023, from Dune: Part Two to Patrick and the Whale

29 December 2022

From blockbuster sci-fi to epic biopics and jaw-dropping documentaries, here are the films we can’t wait to see in 2023
Troll. COURTESY OF NETFLIX ?? 2022

Don't miss: Troll, where heroes fight to save Oslo from an ancient foe

23 November 2022

New Scientist's weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss
Don’t miss: Strange World, animated sci-fi with Jake Gyllenhaal

Don’t miss: Strange World, animated sci-fi with Jake Gyllenhaal

16 November 2022

New Scientist's weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss
Angela Bassett as Ramonda in Marvel Studios' Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ?? 2022 MARVEL.

Don’t Miss: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – the fight for survival

9 November 2022

New Scientist's weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss
Don't Miss: Lessons from plants and how they can help us thrive

Don't Miss: Lessons from plants and how they can help us thrive

21 July 2021

New Scientist's weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn't miss
Don't Miss: Asteroids is a cracking book about our future in space

Don't Miss: Asteroids is a cracking book about our future in space

7 July 2021

New Scientist's weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn't miss
Don't miss: Sci-fi shoot-em-up Boss Level with Naomi Watts

Don't miss: Sci-fi shoot-em-up Boss Level with Naomi Watts

3 March 2021

New Scientist's weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn’t miss
Don't Miss: Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel about AIs and love

Don't Miss: Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel about AIs and love

24 February 2021

New Scientist's weekly round-up of the best books, films, TV series, games and more that you shouldn't miss

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. We'll also keep you up to date with New Scientist events and special offers.

Sign up
Piano Exit Overlay Banner Mobile Piano Exit Overlay Banner Desktop