NASA's decision to halt most science operations on its Swift observatory has paid off. Estimates now put the spacecraft's descent past the point of no return to the end of summer rather than the start. The space agency presented the latest set of re-entry forecasts for the spacecraft, which now point to a descent below the critical altitude of 300 km (185 miles) in September rather than July. The figure is important, since the higher the spacecraft is, the better the chances of a successful rescue mission. Scientists continually update forecasts for the orbital decay of spacecraft. Once a mission is within two years of re-entry, those forecasts are updated more frequently. In November 2023, forecasts suggested Swift was entering that two-year window. Others estimated it would remain in orbit well into the 2030s. However, the outlook changed in 2024 as the Sun reached its solar maximum phase and Earth's atmosphere expanded slightly, increasing drag on Swift. By 2025, the picture was less rosy, with most forecasts estimating the observatory would re-enter by summer 2026. NASA put out a call to industry for a solution, eventually awarding the contract to Katalyst. The forecasts eventually became weekly and were key to deciding when to halt most science operations aboard the spacecraft. They will be equally critical in predicting where Swift will be when the reboost mission is launched. Michael Shoemaker, deputy flight dynamics lead in Space Science Missions Operations at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said: "These predictions evolve, based on space weather forecasts and other factors like Swift's current height and orientation. "It's also an iterative process with members of Swift's operations team. They determine new ways to point the spacecraft to reduce drag, and we do some new computations to see how much extra time that buys them." Normally, Swift would slow to view targets such as gamma-ray bursts, but earlier this year, the team decided to put the spacecraft in an orientation to minimize atmospheric drag. The hope was that, by doing so, the team would eke out a little more time for the rescue mission, which is currently due for launch in June or July. The decision appears to have paid off. NASA wrote: "According to the most recent predictions, the Swift team's actions will likely keep the spacecraft above the critical altitude into early fall." That's plenty of time for the reboost mission, which, if successful, could add years to the spacecraft's operational lifetime. ®

James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:

Which came first, galaxies or black holes?

New Webb observations show that some supermassive black holes were enormous from their beginnings, shifting traditional ideas around how black holes form and grow.

Webb looked at an object called QSO1, which existed just 700 million years after the big bang. Despite being more than 13 billion light-years away and only 1300 light-years across, it is relatively easy to study, because its light is being magnified by the gravity of a galaxy cluster that lies between it and us. This object is visible in three different spots (a, b, and c) due to this effect.

QSO1 was observed using a special mode of our Near Infrared Spectrograph that allows us to map data spatially. The result is a map of the motions of the gas that surrounds the black hole, and thus the black hole’s mass - something that was not possible to do before Webb.

The gas around QSO1’s black hole is almost entirely hydrogen and helium, with almost no heavier elements present. Heavier elements are the by-products of star formation, meaning this object isn’t a galaxy rich with stars.

The black hole is immense, ~50 million times the mass of the Sun, and it makes up for two-thirds of the object’s mass. In other nearby galaxies, the supermassive black hole is only a tiny fraction of the host galaxy’s total mass. An object already this massive in the early universe (and without a substantial galaxy surrounding it) wouldn’t have had the time to form its black hole gradually from smaller stellar-mass black holes merging and feeding on nearby material.

It’s possible this is evidence for the existence of types of supermassive black holes that have only been theorized: either primordial black holes that formed in the first second after the birth of the universe; or ones formed directly from the collapse of a large gas cloud. It’s not yet clear from which process QSO1’s black hole resulted, but it was almost certainly born big, and might also be in the early stages of building a galaxy around itself.

Read more: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-reveals-black-h...

Credit: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Lukas Furtak (Ben-Gurion University); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Image description: Space telescope image showing hundreds of bright objects of different size, color, and shape on the black background of space. Colors range from white to deep red. Shapes include elliptical, spiral, dot-like, dash-like, and arcuate. Many of the large objects near the center of the image are fuzzy white, with bright white cores. Many smaller objects scattered throughout the image are pink to red. Three objects in the central part of the image are called out with small white boxes: A box labeled “C” at about 12 o’clock; one labeled “B” at 3 o’clock; and a box labeled “A” at 4 o’clock. Images of the three objects are enlarged in boxes running vertically along the right. From top to bottom these are labeled QSO1A, QSO1B, and QSO1C. At the center of each box is a tiny, circular red dot. QSO1A (top) is notably larger, brighter, and clearer than the other two. QSO1B, in the middle, is smallest and fuzziest, and is somewhat washed out by the light of a larger white object next to it.

James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:

Which came first, galaxies or black holes?

New Webb observations show that some supermassive black holes were enormous from their beginnings, shifting traditional ideas around how black holes form and grow.

Webb looked at an object called QSO1, which existed just 700 million years after the big bang. Despite being more than 13 billion light-years away and only 1300 light-years across, it is relatively easy to study, because its light is being magnified by the gravity of a galaxy cluster that lies between it and us. This object is visible in three different spots (a, b, and c) due to this effect.

QSO1 was observed using a special mode of our Near Infrared Spectrograph that allows us to map data spatially. The result is a map of the motions of the gas that surrounds the black hole, and thus the black hole’s mass - something that was not possible to do before Webb.

The gas around QSO1’s black hole is almost entirely hydrogen and helium, with almost no heavier elements present. Heavier elements are the by-products of star formation, meaning this object isn’t a galaxy rich with stars.

The black hole is immense, ~50 million times the mass of the Sun, and it makes up for two-thirds of the object’s mass. In other nearby galaxies, the supermassive black hole is only a tiny fraction of the host galaxy’s total mass. An object already this massive in the early universe (and without a substantial galaxy surrounding it) wouldn’t have had the time to form its black hole gradually from smaller stellar-mass black holes merging and feeding on nearby material.

It’s possible this is evidence for the existence of types of supermassive black holes that have only been theorized: either primordial black holes that formed in the first second after the birth of the universe; or ones formed directly from the collapse of a large gas cloud. It’s not yet clear from which process QSO1’s black hole resulted, but it was almost certainly born big, and might also be in the early stages of building a galaxy around itself.

This image: an image detail from NIRCam on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows one of the triple images Webb captured of QSO1, gravitationally lensed by Abell 2744, an enormous mega-cluster of galaxies also known as Pandora’s Cluster.

Pulled out to the right is a map showing the speed that gas is moving toward or away from the telescope (rotational velocity) in different parts of QSO1. The map was made with data collected using NIRSpec’s integral field unit (IFU), a combination of camera and spectrograph. The IFU gathers an image along with 900 spectra from a square patch of sky 3 arcseconds by 3 arcseconds, creating maps showing differences in brightness of thousands of wavelengths between 0.6-micron and 5.3-micron light across the object. The gas velocity is calculated based on Doppler shift: The colors are shifted slightly toward shorter (bluer) wavelengths where material is moving toward us, and longer (redder) wavelengths where it is moving away.

The Webb data shows that the glowing gas has Keplerian rotation: It is orbiting a central point in the same way that planets orbit a star. This means that most of the mass of QSO1 must reside in a single point in the center, i.e., a black hole. Because the velocity of the orbiting gas follows very simple laws of gravity, the data can then be used to calculate the mass of the black hole: It appears to be 50 million solar masses, or 50 million times the mass of our Sun. This is at least two-thirds of the entire mass of QSO1.

Read more: science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-reveals-black-h...

Credit: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ignas Juodžbalis (Cambridge), Cosimo Marconcini (University of Florence), Roberto Maiolino (Cambridge), Francesco D'Eugenio (Cambridge), Hannah Übler (MPE); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Image description: Image at left. Pullout with map on right. Left: Space telescope image labeled QSO1A shows small, red, circular object outlined with white square. Scale bar in bottom left corner labeled 1 arcsecond shows that image is about 4 arcseconds across and object is about 0.4 arcseconds across. Right: Enlarged view of Little Red Dot overlaid with dumbbell-shaped array of pixels ranging in color from blue to orange. Dumbbell shape is vertical, and pixels are oriented at 45 degrees. Below pixels is blue to orange scale bar showing that color of each pixel is related to gas velocity in kilometers per second. Left side of scale bar grades from blue (labeled 20) to gray (labeled 0). Blue arrow pointing left from 0 to 20 beneath left (blue) side of scale bar is labeled toward. Orange arrow pointing right from 0 to 20 beneath the right (orange) side labeled away. Pixels on lower half of dumbbell shape are blue to gray. Most pixels on upper half are orange to gray, but some are blue.

Flower Girls is a personal illustration series I created for International Women's Day on March 8th. After Pictoplasma announced their #StickyCharacters open call, six illustrations from the series were turned into bumper stickers with short character-driven slogans. One of the works - the dreamy dandelion character - was selected for this year's official PictoBerlin exhibition and presented as an XXL art print.

hiroki.sato has added a photo to the pool:

hiroki.sato has added a photo to the pool:

Ondanks zijn wankele fysieke basis selecteert bondscoach Ronald Koeman spits Memphis Depay voor het WK voetbal. „Ik geloof dat hij nog steeds van meerwaarde kan zijn.”

Premier Rob Jetten verdedigde op een veiligheidsconferentie de NAVO als hoeksteen van de Europese veiligheid. Maar hij waarschuwde dat internationaal recht voor iedereen moet werken. En sancties tegen het Internationaal Strafhof? „Totaal onacceptabel.”

Het is een patroon: wanneer de VS en Iran het mogelijk eens worden, intensiveert Israël de strijd in Libanon. Intussen weet het zich amper raad met de glasvezeldrones van Hezbollah.

Hugo Broos has transformed Bafana Bafana, creating a side strong on teamwork and held together by Teboho Mokoena

This article is part of the Guardian’s 2026 World Cup Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 48 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from three countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 11 June.

Continue reading...

Parsnip at a clip! The root veg is affordable now, and paired with pears, the retro combo works wonders in Alice Zaslavsky’s midweek soup

• Check out more Alice Zaslavsky recipes

Some vegetables are a Tuesday night no-brainer, while others feel like more of a Sunday schlep. Poor parsnip falls into the latter category, relegated to slow braises and weekend roasts.

Weather-resistant root veg like parsnips, swedes and celeriac are affordable at this time of year, but their fibrousness doesn’t yield as easily or quickly as tender, fair-weather veg.

Continue reading...

Burnham joins senior figures such as Torsten Bell saying the former PM’s essay does not address today’s challenges

• UK politics live – latest updates

Tony Blair’s criticism of the Labour party fails to engage with inequality and the “extremes of austerity”, senior party figures have said.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who is widely expected to launch a leadership challenge if he wins next month’s Makerfield byelection, said the essay merited a “considered response” and he would set one out on Thursday.

Continue reading...

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns of ‘catastrophic collision of disease and conflict’ as suspected cases reach 900

The head of the World Health Organisation has called for an immediate ceasefire in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to help tackle the Ebola outbreak there.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on social media that the region was in the midst of a “catastrophic collision of disease and conflict with the Ebola outbreak in Ituri province outpacing the response.”

Continue reading...

Simon Stiell said burning fossil fuels was driving intense heatwaves as UK and France broke temperature records on consecutive days

The UN climate chief has said an extreme early heat event sweeping parts of western Europe was “a brutal reminder of the spiralling impacts of the climate crisis”, after France and the UK set new temperature records for May on two consecutive days.

Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said on Wednesday the “main culprit” was humanity’s burning of coal, oil and gas – known to be the primary driver of climate change.

Continue reading...

Social

Als u denkt dat het niet gekker kan, kan het altijd gekker en in Amsterdam kan het dan vaak nog veel en veel gekker: de vergadering van de gemeenteraad werd (terwijl een insprekende burger een spontane 2 minuten stilte hield voor Gaza, koekkoek) vanmiddag verstoord door een paar gekken met Pallievlaggen en een spandoek waarop de tekst "HANNIE&HAMAS = GEWAPEND VERZET" was geklad. Nou weten wij niet of u een geschiedenisnerd bent, maar tussen Hannie Schaft en Hamas zit dus als u het ons vraagt behoorlijk wat verschil. Hamas doet namelijk dingen als vrouwen verkrachten, kinderen vermoorden en onschuldige burgers onthoofden, terwijl Hannie Schaft zich dan weer bezighield met vooral eh ja niet die dingen. Het kan zijn dat ze een andere Hannie bedoelde, een Hannie die wel jongeren op muziekfestivals doodschiet of kidnapt, maar dan nog blijft het tamelijk walgelijk allemaal. Dat vond Halsema trouwens ook. BIJ1 dan weer niet, dat deelde beelden van de actie met emoji's van spierballen erbij op (en verwijderde die even later weer?). Amsterdam, Amsterdam. We zijn weer eens: teleurgesteld maar niet verrast.
UPDATE: Totale leipheimer Angelo Delsen (SP) wilde de twee minuten stilte, die was onderbroken, alsnog in zijn eigen spreektijd te doen. Daar had de rest van de raad geen zin in.

Ja daar staat dus HANNIE&HAMAS = GEWAPEND VERZET