Einstein’s theory of relativity is still relevant today, over a century later. It correctly anticipated the emergence of the supermassive black hole in galaxy M87, which was observed for the first time a few years ago by scientists working on the Event Horizon Telescope project. More examination of M87 now reveals that the enigmatic creature is rotating once more, in line with relativity.

Massive black hole at the heart of M87, with 6.5 million times the mass of the sun, anchors the entire galaxy. Energized plasma jets from black holes like M87 can travel hundreds of light years at almost the speed of light when they consume other astronomical objects. To test one of Einstein’s predictions, the study team, led by Chinese Academy of Sciences post-doctoral researcher Cui Yuzhu, concentrated on the relativistic jets in M87.

According to scientific theory, black holes start to spin faster when their parent stars collapse, much like a figure skater who speeds up when they draw in their arms. The spin may eventually accelerate because to stuff falling into the accretion disk. A spinning black hole should apply tremendous gravitational pressure on adjacent space, as predicted by general relativity, leading to a phenomena known as frame-dragging. Although astronomers have conjectured that relativistic jets may be propelled by this mechanism, no one has ever been able to observe black holes to confirm that they spin.

In terms of intergalactic distance, M87 is located approximately 55 million light-years distant, which is close. Nevertheless, 170 observational campaigns between 2020 and 2022 were necessary to obtain sufficient data for a determination. The Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), East Asian VLBI Network (EAVN), and China’s Tianma 65-meter radio telescope were among the radio telescopes utilized by the team to observe M87.

The jet that extends from M87 is not aligned with the spin axis, according to an analysis of the radio data. More significantly, it has the quality of precession—moving across time. This wobble indicates that the black hole is whirling; scientists calculate that it occurs on an 11-year cycle. This demonstrates once further the validity of General Relativity.

“This important discovery excites us,” Cui Yuzhu says. “Since the misalignment between the black hole and the disk is relatively small and the precession period is around 11 years, accumulating high-resolution data tracing M87’s structure over two decades and thorough analysis are essential to obtain this achievement.”

Although M87’s spin is confirmed by the available data, it is still unknown how quickly M87 spins and what exactly frame-dragging does to the accretion disk. Making those conclusions will require additional research, and scientists will undoubtedly search for the same behavior in other galaxies.

The planet Saturn has been referred to as having rings for hundreds of years. On the scale of a human lifetime, this striking planetary feature might as well be eternal, but we are discovering that these rings may eventually disappear and that they did not always there. The huge ring system’s origin has baffled scientists, and a recent supercomputer simulation suggests a dramatic lunar crash. Saturn’s moons might have begun crashing into one another to form the famous rings when the dinosaurs were sauntering around the planet.

The new study is the result of cooperation between Durham University, Glasgow University, and NASA’s Ames Research Center. It was published last week in The Astrophysical Journal. It expands on the knowledge gained by scientists from missions such as Cassini-Huygens, which established the surprising young age of Saturn’s moons and rings. This raised concerns about what precisely occurred in Saturn’s orbit to separate it from the other gas giant planets.

The scientists used Durham University’s Distributed Research utilizing Advanced Computing (DiRAC) supercomputer to investigate that conundrum. DiRAC performed simulations with about 100 times the resolution of previous models, simulating nearly 200 different scenarios of precursor moons pulverizing around Saturn.

Part of the frustrating issue with Saturn’s rings is that practically all of them are made of ice. The Roche Limit, where larger bodies will be ripped apart by the planet’s extremely powerful gravity, is where the rings now orbit. Moons can form when material combines outside of this area. The simulation suggests that what we see today might have been created tens of millions of years ago by the collision of two icy moons. Such objects would not have had extensively distributed stony cores, but their ice would have been distributed across the Saturnian system.

According to the models, if two moons collided, the resulting debris would likely shower other moons as well, possibly starting a chain reaction that would dump additional ice into the ring system. This could also account for the current moons of the planet’s relative youth. The majority of Saturn’s moons could be formed by the recombination of material that failed to settle inside the Roche Limit.

The question of how these putative moons ended up on a collision course is not addressed by this research. However, the team surmises that they may have been propelled into resonance by tiny gravitational pulls from the sun, which can force orbits to tilt and lengthen and cross previously separated pathways. The fact that Saturn’s moon Rhea is barely past the resonance point indicates that at some point in the past, as it slowly migrated away from the planet, it passed that boundary. Its orbit, however, is symmetrical and flat. This provides fresh proof that Rhea is a younger planet, possibly made of leftover material from the massive collision that created the rings. NASA wants to use a metal serpent to examine the possibility of life in Enceladus’ subterranean oceans, and this work may have an impact on that effort.

Even though Nvidia’s x90 cards garner the majority of media attention, the company’s high-volume GPUs have consistently been the x60 series over the years. This also applied to Ampere, since the RTX 3060 was frequently cited as the top 1080p GPU for Nvidia PC gamers who desired to maximize their settings. However, the cheaper Turing-era GPUs have long outperformed the 3060 on Steam. After dominating the leaderboard for some time, the $150 GTX 1650 has finally been overthrown as of October. The RTX 3060 has officially surpassed all other GPUs to earn the top rank on Steam.

Over the weekend, Valve’s survey bots worked hard to generate the most recent results of the well-known hardware poll. After more than 2.5 years on the market, the RTX 3060 has made a significant ascent to the top of the GPU ladder. The rankings are as of the end of September. In the Steam Survey, it’s a changing of the guard as the Ampere successors to the Turing and Pascal cards take center stage. The RTX 3060, which increased by 1.37% to capture the top spot on the leaderboard, made the largest overall change last month; the other rising cards only saw a slight improvement in their rankings. With 6.10% of the Steam pie, the RTX 3060 is at the top of the chart.

We’re willing to bet that gamers looked at the RTX 4060, said, “nah,” and decided to just purchase an RTX 3060, if we were to speculate as to why the RTX 3060 standings suddenly shot up. After all, the 12GB model is now a great price when compared to the 8GB RTX 4060, and it’s still great for 1080p gaming. Although using an Ampere card prevents you from taking use of DLSS 3 frame generation, most games do not yet support this technology. It’s also not necessary for older games or eSports. Additionally, thousands of games will be able to generate frames starting in 2019 thanks to AMD’s Fluid Motion Frames.

All things considered, AMD GPUs are still completely absent from the Steam poll; the first red team GPU to show is integrated Radeon graphics, ranked 12th. The most widely used AMD add-in card is the RX 580, which came out in the 2017 Polaris era. This $229 GPU was designed for 1080p gaming, and the RX 7800 and 7700 XT GPUs that were just released do not appear to be available either. With barely 0.22% of the market, the flagship RX 7900 XTX is still buried at the bottom of the rankings, while the 7900 XT, its younger brother, hasn’t even made an appearance on the chart since it was introduced about a year ago.