Glow

There's a big, wide, wonderful, breathtaking Universe out there, beyond the bubble of life on Earth – although not much of it is visible to most of us, here on this pale blue dot. We look up; we may see stars, and galaxies, and the disk of the Milky Way, as specks and smears of light.  To see deeper, and clearer, requires the use of tools, and people able to use them – like the amazing astrophotographers now shortlisted for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in the…

This illustration shows the accretion disk, corona (pale, conical swirls above the disk), and supermassive black hole of active galaxy 1ES 1927+654 before its recent flare-up. Credit: NASA/Sonoma State University, Aurore SimonnetSomething weird is going on in the galaxy known as 1ES 1927+654: In late 2017, and for reasons that scientists couldn’t explain, the supermassive black hole sitting at the heart of this galaxy underwent a massive identity crisis. Over a span of months, the already-bright object, which is so…

A bendable organic LED with a natural mica backing releases a strong, candlelight-like glow. Credit: Andy Chen and Ambrose ChenGiving off a soft comfortable glow, candles set the ambiance for a special dinner or just a peaceful evening at home. However, some lighting alternatives, such as electronic candles, give off unwanted blue wavelength light that interferes with the body’s circadian rhythm. Now, researchers reporting in the journal ACS Applied Electronic Materials have fabricated an improved flexible organic LED…

Every time you take a step, space itself glows with a soft warmth.Called the Fulling–Davies–Unruh effect (or sometimes just Unruh effect if you're pushed for time), this eerie glow of radiation emerging from the vacuum is akin to the mysterious Hawking radiation that's thought to surround black holes.  Only in this case, it's the product of acceleration rather than gravity.Can't feel it? There's a good reason for that. You'd need to move at an impossible speed to sense even the weakest of Unruh rays.For now, the effect…