Discovery of the Milky Way's first microblazar

This is Space Time, Series 29, Episode 116, for broadcast on the 28th of September, 2026. Coming up on Space Time. A micro-blazer detected in the Milky Way galaxy for the first time. The discovery of at least three separate water episodes on the red planet Mars. And SpaceX's Starship about to launch on its first orbital flight. All that and more coming up on Space Time. Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary. A micro blazer has been discovered for the first time in our Milky Way galaxy. The observations, reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, suggest that this newly found object might be generating the fastest particles ever detected in the galaxy. Blazars are a type of quasar, a superluminal jet of particles streaming out from a supermassive black hole as it feeds on infalling material on an accretion disk. But whereas a quasar represents this active galactic nuclei seen at an angle, Blazer is the term used to describe the quasar when it's being viewed directly head-on. The term micro is added when the quasar, or blazer in this case, is generated not by a supermassive black hole, but by a stellar-mass black hole. This newly identified micro blazer, first ever discovered in the Milky Way, is located about 12,000 light-years away, in the constellation Scutum. It's catalogued as IRAS 18293-0941 and consists of a stellar-mass black hole with about 10 times the mass of our Sun in a binary system with a spectral-type Erby blue star orbiting each other approximately every 11 Earth days. The jets are being produced by matter being sucked off the binary companion star onto the black hole. First, the matter forms an accretion disk around the black hole, where it's crushed and torn apart, releasing huge amounts of energy. Then, just before the remaining material crosses the event horizon to fall forever into the black hole singularity, some of this material is picked up by magnetic fields on the accretion disk and then shot out into space, perpendicular to the accretion disk, forming two superluminal jets, one on each side of the disk. IRAS 18293-0941 was first catalogued back in 1983 by the Dutch-American IRAS satellite. Astronomers' attention was drawn to the object because in many radio observations it appeared to have a bright compact core and radio emissions coming out of one side only, the side facing the Earth. And that was hinting at the possibility of a jet pointing directly towards the Earth. So, an extensive observational campaign was launched using radio telescopes for high-resolution images, which showed the jet interactions, and optical telescopes for spectra and measuring velocities in the system. X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes for probing the hot plasma around the black hole were also employed, as were infrared images showing the warm dust surrounding the system. The authors were then able to identify a region where the jet was smashing into a molecular cloud of gas and dust, causing the particles in the cloud to be accelerated to ultra-high energies, likely up to petra-electron volts. And this would make this micro-blazer one of the most powerful particle accelerators in the galaxy. The radio imaging revealed not only the jet, but also its interaction with the surrounding clouds. See, first the jet crosses a region of about 100 light-years, where it's already cleared out the interstellar medium. After that, it then hits the relatively dense molecular cloud remaining, which consists primarily of molecular hydrogen and dust. This interaction creates a bright spot in the cloud, with the interstellar materials being ionized and the dust heated. It's here where particles are being accelerated to nearly the speed of light. And with energies up to petra-electron volt levels, it makes this microblazer one of the most powerful particle accelerators in the Milky Way, and around 100 times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which is the strongest particle accelerator on Earth. One of the study's authors, Benito Marcotte from Astron in the Netherlands, says microblazers have been predicted for about 30 years now. This new discovery not only sheds fresh light on the origins of the most energetic particles in the Milky Way, but it also teaches astronomers about similar larger systems which have already been found in other galaxies. The observations also allow astronomers to study more remote blazars created by distant supermassive black holes, which are too remote to be resolved in images. See, having an analogue object in our own galaxy allows for more detailed study of the blazar's physics. Now, cosmic particles with energies reaching up to petra-electron volts have been detected by cosmic ray observatories on Earth before. But for more than a century, it's remained unclear as to where and how these particles are being accelerated to such high energies. One candidate accelerator has always been the idea of shockwaves created by powerful black hole jets hitting the interstellar medium, which is exactly what we've seen with this microblazer. This is space time. Still to come, early Martian rocks revealing at least three separate water episodes on the red planet, and SpaceX's Starship about to launch on its first orbital flight. All that and more still to come on Space Time. Space Time. A new study is showing a region of the Red Planet now being explored by NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has undergone at least three separate interactions with liquid water. When the six-wheel car-sized robotic laboratory reached the inner edge of the Red Planet's Jezero crater back in September 2023, mission scientists were surprised by what they found. This geologic area, called the Margin Unit, stretches along the shoreline of an ancient Martian lake. so they expected to see lots of sedimentary rocks, which would have formed as layers of sand piled up on top of each other over millennia. Composed of clay and silt, sedimentary rocks on Earth are great at preserving past microbial life. And scientists were especially intrigued by strong signals of carbonate minerals detected by Mars orbiters. On Earth, carbonates frequently form in shallow oceans and lake environments capable of supporting life. But instead, the Mars rover team found igneous rocks, which can form deep underground from magma or volcanic activity. Mind you, igneous rocks are excellent record keepers, because mineral crystals within them preserve details about the precise moment they were formed. And in this case, they preserved an astonishingly complex record of water activity on early Mars. The findings reported in the journal Communications Earth and Environment suggest the rocks showed signs of having interacted with water on at least three separate occasions, with each encounter further altering their chemistry and appearance. The observations were made by the rover's SuperCam instrument located on the vehicle's mast, which is used to determine the mineralogy of geological features based on the light they reflect. See, when mission managers identify an intriguing rock, they get SuperCam to fire its laser at it. The laser has a range of roughly 6.5 meters, and the spectrum of the resulting plasma from the target rock reveals its chemistry. Perseverance has analysed more than 185 bedrock targets across the margin unit in exactly this way. The study's lead author, Candice Bedford from Purdue University, says before Perseverance arrived at the margin unit, the main hypothesis, derived from orbital observations, was that the carbonate seen from orbit was thought to have formed through interactions with the lake that existed in Jezero crater. But it now seems this location became a sort of crossroads for aqueous systems. The margin unit findings are important, because Jezero Crater sits inside one of the largest exposures of carbonate rocks on Mars. So, what's lured here reaches well beyond the crater. Perseverance has explored the margin unit across some 265 meters of elevation. At higher levels, it found rock that was coarse-grained and crystalline, hallmarks of the mineral olivine, with almost no signs that water had ever touched it. Made of magnesium and iron, the area's olivine unit formed in a body of magma deep underground, cooling slowly enough for its grains to grow large, and reaching the surface only after the ground above it was eroded away. But lower down in the unit, on the lake bed, the rocks looked transformed as the olivine grains were fractured with silica between them. Carbonate and silica minerals are important signposts in the search for ancient life. See, when water interacts with olivine on Earth, the reaction can release hydrogen, and hydrogen is a food source for some microbes. And this then leaves behind carbon silica, two minerals that lock in traces of the past presence of these microbes. Mind you, while the Perseverance team can determine the sequence of the margin unit's interactions with water, they can't determine their age. On the first occasion, water reached the rocks of the margin unit, Carbon dioxide-rich groundwater reacted with the olivine, resulting in ridges of carbonate that run through the fractures in the bedrock at low elevations. Today, these carbonate-filled fractures are still left standing. as the softer rock around them wears away. The second time the water reached the rocks may have been related to the lake that once existed in the crater. Some of the margin unit rocks also contain silica. Turning olivine into carbonate can leave silica behind and scientists see more of that silica in rocks that sit below the waterline. Then finally, there came a water event that generated mineral veins in one location in the eastern part of the margin unit, about 25 cm thick, creating minerals like calcium sulfate and fluorite. Finding fluorite is an important clue because it typically forms when hot water circulates through volcanic rocks, revealing that this area experienced a later event involving heated groundwater. Mind you, as well as vision and chemical analysis, the Perseverance rover also carries a pair of microphones, the first ever sent to the red planet. And they've given scientists their first fascinating sounds from the surface of another world. This report from NASA TV. On NASA's Perseverance Mars rover, we have not one, but two microphones. And these microphones are the very first instruments of their kind ever to go to Mars. One of the microphones is mounted on the mast and moves around as we point the cameras. The other microphone is mounted to the rover body and that stays fixed onto the port side of the rover. The two microphones that we sent were commercial off-the-shelf items. So these are things that you could just buy on the internet and we put these on our rover. It gives us a new dimension for which we can explore Mars and learn about the Martian environment. First, we can just learn about the atmosphere by understanding how sound propagates through it. But we can also listen to the sounds of rover analyses on rocks and learn about rock material properties from that. And finally, we can also listen to the sounds the rover makes to understand better the state of health of our instruments. There's a difference between Mars and Earth sounds. Sounds on Earth have very rich harmonics. You can hear multiple frequencies. It gives a really nice depth to the sound. On Mars, the atmosphere attenuates a lot of those higher frequencies, so you tend to hear the lower frequencies, and it's a much more isolated sound, a little more muted than the sounds we hear on Earth. We've put together a list of some of the sounds we've recorded on Mars to date, so let's take a listen. This is the sound of wind on Mars. For the first time, we can hear the wind blowing across the surface of Mars to go along with all of the images that we've acquired of dust devils and dust storms over the many years of exploration on the surface. This is the sound of the rover driving on Mars. This sound might be a little bit weird because it doesn't sound like a regular driving sound, but that's because the rover's wheels are made of metal. So this metal is rolling over rocks and sand and it makes this really clanky, squeaky sound. Next we have the SuperCam laser zapping rocks. We've taken a lot of pictures of rocks that have been zapped by the SuperCam, the little marks in the rocks, and for the first time we can hear these laser shots. When it zaps a rock, it actually makes a sound. We can listen to that sound and learn something about the properties of the rock that we're analyzing. This is one of my absolute favorite sounds. This is the sound of a helicopter flying on Mars. We used this sound to actually understand the propagation of sound in general through the Martian atmosphere. And it turns out that we were totally wrong with our models. The Martian atmosphere can propagate sound a lot further than we thought it could. We've all seen these beautiful images that we get from Mars, but having sound to be able to add to those images, it makes me feel like I'm almost right there on the surface. And in that report from NASA TV, we heard from Nina Lanza from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Justin Mackey from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. This is Space Time. Still to come, SpaceX's Starship about to launch on its first orbital flight, and later in the science report, the latest observations of Antarctic's ozone hole. All that and more still to come on Space Time. Or barring any last-minute hiccups, the final countdown is now underway for today's first orbital test flight of SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy. The world's largest and most powerful rocket, one to take six orbits during its mission, aiming for an altitude of around 275 kilometers. The flight will use Super Heavy Block 3 Version 3 Booster 21 and Block 3 Version 3 Starship 41. Today's flight follows a mostly successful Test Flight 13, with Starship surviving its splashdown in the Indian Ocean off the western Australian coast. In fact, that same craft, Ship 40, is now being transported by the heavy lift semi-submersible ship Forte back to Starbase, Texas, and should arrive there next week. For this mission, the 124-meter-tall spacecraft will use new hardware and software in order to address ice-clogging and related issues experienced during Test Flight 13. New heat shield upgrades and experiments are also planned for the flight. As part of the mission, two of the heat shield tiles fitted to the Starship's hull will be ones that were recovered from the last test flight. This will be the first time SpaceX has reused heat shield tiles. After launching from SpaceX's Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, Starship will deploy 26 fully operational Starlink Version 3 satellites, three of which have been equipped with cameras to image Starship 41's heat shield. Now, there's no launch pad tower catch planned for this mission, with Booster 21 targeting a soft splashdown in the Gulf, or Ship 41 will aim for a splashdown in the South Pacific Ocean off the coast of Chile 10 hours after liftoff. But interestingly, the latest notice to airmen or NOTAM that I've received warns of an unusually large spacecraft re-entry and splashdown zone, covering an area almost the size of Mongolia. SpaceX says that all Starship flights so far have been intentionally flown on passive suborbital trajectories in order to maximize public safety. It also allows mission managers to monitor the spacecraft in full daylight at all times. Now, by going to low-Earth orbit, the next phase of developing Starship to be fully and rapidly reusable can begin. This mission's a key step in the company's efforts to get Starship Super Heavy ready for regular commercial space operations. SpaceX boss Elon Musk envisages Starship as a fully reusable colonial transport vehicle capable of carrying payloads of up to 150 tonnes into low-Earth orbit, 27 tonnes into geostationary transfer orbits, eventually on missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. However, before all that can happen, Starship will need to successfully demonstrate several milestones. And for NASA, these will include refueling in space and successfully docking with a manned Orion spacecraft. That's planned for Artemis Flight 3 next year. Once it's certified, the Starship Super Heavy will replace SpaceX's existing Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles as well as Dragon capsules on all SpaceX missions. This is Space Time. And time now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with a science report. A new study claims the type of sleep you're getting is influencing your risk of disease. The findings reported in the journal PLOS Medicine used accelerometer data from nearly 100,000 people over a week in order to calculate how long participants slept as well as how much deep and REM sleep they were getting. The authors also monitored their subjects' health over a period of some nine years. They found better sleep was linked to a lower risk of disease, with between 6 and 8 hours being the optimal sleep length. Higher REM sleep was linked to a lower risk of 83 diseases across heart, brain, metabolic and psychiatric conditions, while greater deep sleep was linked to a lower risk of 7 conditions, including type 2 diabetes and major depression. A new study has identified over 1,200 genetic variants associated with personality traits that may also influence your health, wealth, work, and even your love life. The findings, reported in the journal Nature, combine data from 46 studies around the world examining the so-called Big Five personality characteristics openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The findings show that genetic variants linked to personality traits are also associated with a broad range of other outcomes, including mental and physical health, educational attainment, career trajectories, longevity, and social relationships. We have a bit of environmental good news today, with the World Meteorological Organization reporting that the Antarctic ozone hole has now reached one of its smallest sizes since the early 1990s. 1990s. The size of the ozone hole fluctuates each year. The new data found 2025 was the second consecutive year that the depth and extent of the ozone hole dropped well under the 1990 to 2010 average. The organization says based on this new data, full recovery of the hole might be possible in several decades, thanks to global efforts to phase out the use of ozone-depleting chemicals since the damage was discovered back in the 1980s. The hole is caused by the release of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. These release chlorine atoms which break down stratospheric ozone molecules. The ozone is important because it helps shield the planet's surface from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. Scientists have discovered a new species of cat, the first in over a century. Limpardus tulkeo, commonly known as the tulkeo tiger cat, has been formally identified in Bolivia. The small native wildcat has been described in the journal Current Biology. Although new to science, the tiger cat has been known to local communities for generations. The tulkeo is slender, featuring a light brown coat patterned with irregularly shaped leopard-like rosettes and distinctive rounded ears. At just 46 centimetres in length and 1.4 kilograms in weight, it's smaller than your average domestic house cat. It lives in Bolivia's lush mountainous Yungas Cloud Forest, an ecosystem on the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains defined by high humidity and dense mist. A new study claims people who believe they've seen ghosts are probably simply hardwired to experience such sightings. Psychology professor Melissa Maffo from Wake Forest University says the way an individual's brain interprets environmental stimuli probably has a lot to do with how they perceive the world around them and the likelihood of them believing something is due to paranormal activity. The skeptic's Tim Mendham says around one in five Americans say they've seen a ghost and some three quarters of Americans believe in some form of paranormal activity. Not just ghosts, but psychic abilities, precognitive dreams... mediums, and anything else that conventional explanations can't account for. One in five Americans say they've seen a ghost, not just that they believe a ghost, but they've actually seen one. There's an article by a psychologist who reckons there's reasons why certain people might see a ghost. The interesting thing is he says the human brain might be creating an experience of the supernatural by misinterpreting the external world, which is not a particularly new idea. I mean, that's what Skeptics have been saying for a long time. Some of the various reasons are environmental stimuli, things around you that can make you think there's something happening. Could be a noise, could be something out of the corner of your eye. Swamp gas. Swamp gas? Yeah, well, what happens in the home? You're not going to get a lot of swamp gas. Only on taco nights. Misinterpretation is just going to... But yeah, environmental stimuli... So neurological mix-ups, so something in your brain, and this is sort of a weird thing that he sort of talks about various temporoparietal junction issues that trigger a sensation of disembodiment. Shadow figures, like you think you see in that particular condition in your brain, might be sort of causing this. Others saying personality traits, and this is where I think sometimes this particular study gets a bit inane. He says there's a growing body of research. that suggests people with certain personality traits are more likely to believe in the paranormal. Well, knock me out of it with a feather. Some people believe more in paranormal than others people do. Yep, and the personality trait could be, I believe, in the paranormal. That's nothing particularly exciting. He does refer to some sort of conditions which are not personality traits, they're mental conditions related to schizophrenia, but not quite as bad. Make you believe in the paranormal. More likely to experience disembodiment and spontaneous sensory perceptions, that sort of thing. But if one in five people people in America believe they've seen a ghost, that's to be pretty common, some of these conditions for them to do so. I would suggest that in most cases it's environmental. I would not suggest that people are mentally deficient. They might be a problem with critical thinking, but there's nothing particularly new about that. I would say there are things that happen in the world that you see briefly, very briefly, that convince you that something's happening or a weird shape in a window or a sound that you hear. I think everyone could be predisposed to seeing ghosts. Some people are just skeptical, but it doesn't mean they don't see the stimuli. It just means they can try and assess them in a more scientific manner. Yeah, the stimuli's there. It's just a question of how you interpret it and whether or. Not That's right. I've got nothing wrong with people thinking they see something strange. Little blobs in your camera lens, bits of dust, look intriguing, but they don't look like people, of course. And then your other shapes out of the corner of your eye, what appears to be a human shape, pareidolia, which makes you think you see identifiable shapes which aren't really there. I don't think it's necessarily a hardwired to believe. Certainly there are people who tend to believe, but I think it's more to do with critical thinking, the excitement of the unknown. It's just how you assess it and analyse it which is the big difference. That's the sceptic's timendum, and this is Space Time. And that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Bytes.com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider and from Spacetime with StuartGarry.com. 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