Over four nights in April 2017, eight different radio-wave telescopes across the globe fixed their gazes on a single infinitesimally small point—the black hole at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy (M87*). Around 55 million light-years from Earth, M87* and the hot plasma surrounding it create only a minuscule smudge on the night sky. To resolve an image from that distance would require a 13,000-kilometer telescope—roughly the diameter of Earth. Alternatively, the researchers of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Project stitched together an Earth-sized telescope using a set of radio-wave telescopes distributed around the globe. These telescopes were synchronized…
Comments closedMonth: August 2020
Check out this audio journey into the center of a supermassive black hole posted to Science You Can Bring Home To Mom’s new YouTube Channel! Transcript and sources below. Transcript: [Intro Music] A Journey to the Center of a Black Hole by Sav Miller I don’t know about you, but personally, I want to be thrown into a supermassive black hole when I die. I haven’t gotten around to putting it in my will—I still have to work out all the legal details—but consider this a formal declaration of how I would like to be laid to rest. In fact,…
Comments closed
In 2016, in a Mexican hospital, Dr. John Zhang and his team delivered a baby boy who had three genetic parents. The boy was conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF) and a novel method called spindle nuclear transfer. Spindle nuclear transfer involves transferring the mixed DNA from the mother and father to a new donor egg from a third person. In this case, the boy’s mother had a rare neurological disorder called Leigh syndrome caused by a defect in her mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). As I mentioned last week, mtDNA is passed directly from the mother through the mitochondria in her…
Comments closed
These past few weeks, I have written about many different genetic disorders and risk factors that stem from inherited errors in the DNA or mistakes in the division of chromosomes. But this week, I want to pivot a bit to talk about disorders that originate in a special form of DNA called mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Most of the DNA in your cells is housed within the nucleus, a central organelle (literally “little organ”—organelles are the “organs” of your cell with their own specific function). The nucleus keeps the DNA separate from all of the enzymes and chemical reactions of the…
Comments closed