Tech News Update

The deeper that astronomers peer into the universe, the weirder and more extreme it seems. New instruments and techniques have recently uncovered a whole new set of cosmic superlatives: objects whose size, age, or behavior go beyond anything seen before. Here is a sampling of the latest record holders.

Fastest Fugitive: This artist’s rendering shows star HE 0437-5439, which is hurtling away from the Milky Way at 1.6 million miles per hour.

 Brightest Object
As bright as 10 million galaxies, a long-duration gamma ray burst named GRB 080319B was visible to the naked eye this past March even though it was a staggering 7.5 billion light-years away.

 Heaviest Invisible Item

There’s a new record holder for largest black hole—OJ287 is about 18 billion times the mass of the sun. 

 Most Surprising Explosion
Caltech and Penn State astronomers have found an explosive burst of gamma rays that seem to come from nowhere. Gamma rays usually follow the death of a massive star but these bursts were 88,000 light-years from the nearest galaxy. 

Largest Copycat
Using a technique called microlensing, astronomers learned a solar system 5,000 light-years away that contains smaller versions of our Jupiter and Saturn. This finding suggests that the Milky Way may have many analogs of our solar system. 

Most Rebellious
Most galaxies rotate in the opposite direction that their “arms” are pointing but pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope show that spiral galaxy NGC 4622 is spinning clockwise—the same direction as its arms.

Coolest Quasi-Star  

Astronomers in France and Canada have learned the coldest brown dwarf star to date. It’s 350 degrees Celsius and will only get colder over the course of its lifetime. 

Most Confusing Galaxy
Although dark matter is believed to be necessary for galaxy formation, Galaxy NGC 4736 has astronomers scratching their heads: There is small to no dark matter around.

 Most X-ray Emissions
Chinese astronomers have learned two quasars that are discharging energy and matter along their polar axes instead of across their equators, as is usually the case, and emitting a higher than expected number of X-rays in the process.

 Largest Thing Barreling Our Way
Smith’s cloud is expected to collide with the Milky Way in 20 to 40 million years resulting in one spectacular light show—the cloud is 28,000,000 light-years long.

Brightest Comet (in Over a Century)
Comet 17P/Holmes released a cloud of dust and gas that expanded to nearly twice the diameter of the sun.

Tiniest Void
Using the quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) method, astronomers learned the smallest black hole to date (with a mere mass of 3.8 suns) nestled in the Milky Way binary system XTE J1650-500. 

Largest Galactic Oil Reserve
Hundreds of lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan each hold more than all the oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, based on new findings from the Cassini radar team.

Largest Overachiever
At 100 billion times the brightness of the sun, Supernova 2005ap is 300 times brighter than the average supernova. Don’t worry, it’s 4.7 billion light-years away.

Deadliest Blast
In the binary galaxy 3C321, an enormous black hole pummels a neighboring galaxy with a high-energy jet (illustrated here) brimming with X-rays and gamma rays. If any Earth-like planets lie nearby, their atmospheres will probably be ruined by the blast.

Farthest Galaxy
This 13-billion-year-ancient galaxy (circled in this image from Hubble) formed 700 million years after the Huge Bang, but its light is just now reaching us. As a result, we can see the bright, star-forming days of its youth.

Most Hellish Planet
Charcoal-black world HD 149026b (illustrated here) absorbs most of the radiation it gets from its very nearby star, pushing temperatures to 3700 degrees Fahrenheit, above the boiling point of lead.

Oldest Neighbors

They may not look a day over a billion, but asteroids 234 Barbara, 387 Aquitania, and 980 Anacostia (much like the asteroids drawn below) have mineral signatures putting them back 4.55 billion years.

 Largest Pileup
Massive galaxies like ours usually form when smaller galaxies collide. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope captured a collision of four galaxies within a cluster called CL0958+4702. The result of this merger will be 10 times the size of the Milky Way.