Latest news with #Hinkle
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Drivers in Birmingham concerned about prices at the pump after Israel attacks Iran
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WIAT) — The price of crude oil rose on Friday in the wake of Israel's attack on Iranian nuclear and military targets. Concerns about escalating violence could impact the flow of crude globally. We talked with drivers in Birmingham to see how concerned they are about paying more at the pump. Gasoline at a Chevron gas station in Avondale was $2.89 for regular gas on Friday afternoon. Michael Hinkle, who drives a 2019 Chevrolet Equinox, said he spends a lot of time behind the wheel playing the role of 'Uber dad': 'Taking my teenage daughter wherever she may want to go, and then my son, he's in sports, so you know, we got to get back and forth to his practice and his games,' Hinkle explained. If gas prices increase significantly, Hinkle said that may have to change. 'We'll probably have to start carpooling games and stuff like that, and I'll tell my daughter she'll have to cut back on going out with friends and everything, just hanging out at the house.' Evanescence coming to Tuscaloosa Sept. 11 Art Carden, who teaches economics at Samford University, explained how this might play out in terms of paying more at the pump. 'If we have a sustained conflict, then maybe we end up with slightly higher prices over the longer term,' Carden said. 'You might want to think about gas mileage the next time you buy a car. But this is anything but catastrophic.' Patrick De Haan, Head of Petroleum Analysis for GasBuddy, said you will be paying more at the pump. 'Diesel prices could go up 10 to 30 cents a gallon over the next week or two starting here and now,' he said. He said gas prices could jump 10 to 15 cents a gallon over the next week or so starting as early as this weekend. De Haan said these are just estimates that could change. He added that the good news at the end of the day is that gas prices are still about 31 cents lower than last year. He noted that if escalations continue and Iran shuts down the vital Strait of Hormuz, which sees a significant amount of crude oil flowing through it every day, the situation could change. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Economic Times
09-06-2025
- Science
- Economic Times
The biggest explosion since the Big Bang; Star ripped apart by a Black Hole unleashes history's most powerful and brightest known explosion
TIL Creatives Astronomers discover new class of extreme outbursts shining 25 times brighter than the strongest supernovae Imagine a star, more than three times the mass of our Sun, straying too close to a supermassive black hole. Instead of quietly fading, it's torn apart, and what follows is one of the most powerful explosions ever witnessed. Astronomers now call these titanic outbursts Extreme Nuclear Transients, or ENTs, and they may be the most energetic cosmic phenomena since the universe's inception. ENTs stand apart from regular tidal disruption events (TDEs) and supernovae by a staggering margin. The largest event recorded, named 'Gaia18cdj', unleashed 25 times more energy than the most powerful supernova ever found, equivalent to what 100 Suns would emit over their entire lifetimes, concentrated in a year. The discovery was led by Jason Hinkle, a doctoral researcher at the University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy. While combing through data from ESA's Gaia mission, Hinkle noticed something odd: smooth, long‑lasting flares from galactic centers that looked nothing like typical cosmic fireworks. 'Gaia doesn't tell you what a transient is, but when I saw these smooth, long‑lived flares… I knew we were looking at something unusual,' Hinkle said Two such flares were traced to 2016 and 2018, with a third dubbed 'Scary Barbie' detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility in 2020. Follow‑up observations from the WM Keck Observatory and other telescopes confirmed their extraordinary brightness and behave differently from more common cosmic explosions. Typical TDEs brighten and fade within weeks, but ENTs linger for months or even years, shining nearly ten times brighter than any previously studied events For co‑author Benjamin Shappee, ENTs offer something deeper than just fireworks.'ENTs provide a valuable new tool for studying massive black holes in distant galaxies, and we gain insights into black‑hole growth when the universe was half its current age,' he rare, estimated to be ten million times less frequent than supernovae, these cosmic giants offer a powerful way to study black holes in action. With upcoming telescopes like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA's Roman Space Telescope, astronomers expect to find more ENTs, painting a richer picture of how black holes shaped our cosmos. As Hinkle puts it, 'This was the final piece of my doctoral work… thrilling to think we're opening a new chapter in understanding how stars die and how black holes shape the universe.'
Time of India
09-06-2025
- Science
- Time of India
The biggest explosion since the Big Bang; Star ripped apart by a Black Hole unleashes history's most powerful and brightest known explosion
Imagine a star, more than three times the mass of our Sun , straying too close to a supermassive black hole . Instead of quietly fading, it's torn apart, and what follows is one of the most powerful explosions ever witnessed. Astronomers now call these titanic outbursts Extreme Nuclear Transients , or ENTs, and they may be the most energetic cosmic phenomena since the universe's inception. ENTs stand apart from regular tidal disruption events (TDEs) and supernovae by a staggering margin. The largest event recorded, named 'Gaia18cdj', unleashed 25 times more energy than the most powerful supernova ever found, equivalent to what 100 Suns would emit over their entire lifetimes, concentrated in a year. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like The price of dental implants may surprise you Dental Implants | Search Ads Search Now The discovery was led by Jason Hinkle, a doctoral researcher at the University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy. While combing through data from ESA's Gaia mission , Hinkle noticed something odd: smooth, long‑lasting flares from galactic centers that looked nothing like typical cosmic fireworks. 'Gaia doesn't tell you what a transient is, but when I saw these smooth, long‑lived flares… I knew we were looking at something unusual,' Hinkle said Live Events Two such flares were traced to 2016 and 2018, with a third dubbed 'Scary Barbie' detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility in 2020. Follow‑up observations from the WM Keck Observatory and other telescopes confirmed their extraordinary brightness and longevity. ENTs behave differently from more common cosmic explosions . Typical TDEs brighten and fade within weeks, but ENTs linger for months or even years, shining nearly ten times brighter than any previously studied events For co‑author Benjamin Shappee, ENTs offer something deeper than just fireworks. 'ENTs provide a valuable new tool for studying massive black holes in distant galaxies, and we gain insights into black‑hole growth when the universe was half its current age,' he said. While rare, estimated to be ten million times less frequent than supernovae, these cosmic giants offer a powerful way to study black holes in action. With upcoming telescopes like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA's Roman Space Telescope, astronomers expect to find more ENTs, painting a richer picture of how black holes shaped our cosmos . As Hinkle puts it, 'This was the final piece of my doctoral work… thrilling to think we're opening a new chapter in understanding how stars die and how black holes shape the universe.'
NDTV
06-06-2025
- Science
- NDTV
Astronomers Uncover Most Powerful Explosion Since The Big Bang
Astronomers from the University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy have identified a new class of cosmic explosions, termed "extreme nuclear transients" (ENTs), marking the most energetic events observed since the Big Bang. These phenomena occur when massive stars, at least three times the mass of our Sun, are torn apart by supermassive black holes at the centres of distant galaxies. The resulting explosions release energy equivalent to what 100 Suns would emit over their entire lifespans, making them visible across vast cosmic distances. This discovery offers new insights into the dynamic interactions between stars and black holes in the universe. The team's findings were detailed today in the journal Science Advances. "We've observed stars getting ripped apart as tidal disruption events for over a decade, but these ENTs are different beasts, reaching brightnesses nearly ten times more than what we typically see," said Jason Hinkle, in a statement, who led the study as the final piece of his doctoral research at IfA. "Not only are ENTs far brighter than normal tidal disruption events, but they remain luminous for years, far surpassing the energy output of even the brightest known supernova explosions." The immense luminosities and energies of these ENTs are truly unprecedented. The most energetic ENT studied, named Gaia18cdj, emitted an astonishing 25 times more energy than the most energetic supernovae known. While typical supernovae emit as much energy in just one year as the sun does in its 10 billion-year lifetime, ENTs radiate the energy of 100 suns over a single year. As per a news release by W M Keck Observatory, ENTs were first uncovered when Hinkle began a systematic search of public transient surveys for long-lived flares emanating from the centres of galaxies. He identified two unusual flares in data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission that brightened over a timescale much longer than known transients and without characteristics common to known transients. "Gaia doesn't tell you what a transient is, just that something changed in brightness," said Hinkle. "But when I saw these smooth, long-lived flares from the centres of distant galaxies, I knew we were looking at something unusual."
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers Just Discovered The Biggest Explosions Since The Big Bang
A never-before-seen type of giant space explosion – the biggest bangs since the Big Bang – has been accidentally captured by the Gaia space telescope. From the hearts of distant galaxies, the mapping telescope recorded sudden, extreme increases in brightness – colossal flares of light that lingered far longer than any such flares had been known to previously. These blasts were calculated to release as much energy as 100 Suns would over the course of their combined lifetimes. Analysis of that light revealed something that was both new and familiar at the same time: stars being torn apart by black holes, but on a scale we hadn't observed before. Each star was a large one, at least three times as massive as the Sun; and each black hole was a supermassive beast lurking in the center of the star's host galaxy. Such events are usually known as tidal disruption events, or TDEs. Astrophysicists are calling these new ones 'extreme nuclear transients' – ENTs for short. "We've observed stars getting ripped apart as tidal disruption events for over a decade, but these ENTs are different beasts, reaching brightnesses nearly 10 times more than what we typically see," says astrophysicist Jason Hinkle of the University of Hawaiʻi's Institute for Astronomy (IfA). "Not only are ENTs far brighter than normal tidal disruption events, but they remain luminous for years, far surpassing the energy output of even the brightest known supernova explosions." The rather tame term 'tidal disruption' is used to describe what gravitational forces do to an object that gets too close to a black hole. At a certain point, the power of the external gravitational field surpasses the gravity holding an object together, and it comes apart in a wild scream of light before at least partially falling into the great unknown beyond the black hole's event horizon. There are telescopes trained on the sky to catch these screams, applying a wide field of view to take in as much of the sky as possible, waiting for those unpredictable flares that denote the death throes of an unlucky star. Astronomers have managed to observe a good number of TDEs, and know roughly how they should play out. There's a sudden brightening in a distant galaxy, with a light curve that rises to a rapid peak before gradually fading over the course of weeks to months. Astronomers can then analyze that light to determine properties such as the relative masses of the objects involved. Gaia was a space telescope whose mission was to map the Milky Way in three dimensions. It spent a great deal of time staring at the sky to capture precise parallax measurements of the stars in the Milky Way. On occasion, however, it managed to exceed its mission parameters. When combing through Gaia data, Hinkle and his colleagues found two strange events: Gaia16aaw, a flare recorded in 2016; and Gaia18cdj, which the telescope caught in 2018. Both events bore a strong similarity to an event recorded by the Zwicky Transient Facility in 2020. Because that event was so insanely powerful, and because it was given the designation ZTF20abrbeie, astronomers nicknamed it "Scary Barbie". Hinkle and his team determined that Gaia16aaw and Gaia18cdj are the same kind of event as Scary Barbie, and set about trying to figure out what caused them. They ruled out supernova explosions – the events were at least twice as powerful as any other known transients, and supernovae have an upper brightness limit. A supernova, the team explained, typically releases as much light as the Sun will in its entire, 10-billion-year lifespan. The output of an ENT, however, is comparable to the lifetime output of 100 Suns all rolled together. Rather, the properties of the ENT events, the researchers found, were consistent with TDEs – just massively scaled up. That includes how much energy is expended, and the shape of the light curve as the event brightens and fades. ENTs are incredibly rare – the team calculated that they are around 10 million times less frequent than supernovae – but they represent a fascinating piece of the black hole puzzle. Supermassive black holes are millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, and we don't have a clear idea of how they grow. ENTs represent one mechanism whereby these giant objects can pack on mass. "ENTs provide a valuable new tool for studying massive black holes in distant galaxies. Because they're so bright, we can see them across vast cosmic distances – and in astronomy, looking far away means looking back in time," says astrophysicist Benjamin Shappee of IfA. "By observing these prolonged flares, we gain insights into black hole growth during a key era known as cosmic noon, when the universe was half its current age [and] when galaxies were happening places – forming stars and feeding their supermassive black holes 10 times more vigorously than they do today." The research has been published in Science Advances. Titan's Atmosphere 'Wobbles Like a Gyroscope' – And No One Knows Why A 'Crazy Idea' About Pluto Was Just Confirmed in a Scientific First A Giant Mouth Has Opened on The Sun And Even It Looks Surprised
