The most detailed and most rapid survey of the southern sky has helped map about a million previously undiscovered galaxies. Using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio telescope, scientists from the CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, have cut the time to complete such an intense survey of space from years to less than two weeks.
In a study, published in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, the first results from the CSIRO’s Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey are reported. The agency describes the survey as like a “Google Map” of the universe, providing the most detailed atlas of the southern sky yet.
The key to the new atlas is ASKAP, which isn’t a single telescope but an array of 36 dish-shaped antennas stationed in the West Australian desert. The array listens for radio waves from deep space and can see a region of the sky about 30 times larger than other, contemporary radio arrays.
Taking over 900 images across about 300 hours, the team was able to stitch together a comprehensive map of the southern sky with a higher resolution than previous surveys. The images contain a total of 70 billion pixels and lurking in the data are 3 million galaxies — a third of which are new to science.
“We expect to find tens of millions of new galaxies in future surveys,” said David McConnell, astronomer at the CSIRO and lead author on the new study. (cnet.com)
A four-thousand-year-old funerary temple has been discovered in Egypt and inside, a trove of ancient treasures including coffins with mummies. The dig took 14 years and archeologists uncovered the temple belonging to Queen Nearit, wife of King Teti, in Saqqara, south of Cairo, Egypt.
The mission also found burial shafts, coffins with mummies, statues, stelae, toys, wooden boats and funerary masks plus a five-meter (yard) long papyrus depicting chapter 17 of the book of the dead.
During excavations, 22 burial shafts were found and inside these shafts more than 50 wooden coffins uncovered, dating back to Egypt’s New Kingdom. The coffins are decorated with many scenes depicting Egypt’s Gods that were worshiped during this period. The discovery is a cooperation between the Ministry of Antiquities at Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the Zahi Hawass Center.
“The most important discovery actually, in my opinion is the temple, the funerary temple, that belongs to this pyramid,” said Zahi Hawass, Egyptologist and former minister of antiquities.
NEW DELHI: COVID-19 can cause male infertility by harming the testicular cells which produces sperms thereby making it difficult to make the female pregnant, says a new study done by the scientists of Israel. The study, published in the journal of Fertility and Sterility, claims that the studied men had a reduction of around 50 percent on average of the number of sperm per milliliter, total volume of ejaculate, and motility of sperm.
Nobody knows yet how severe this problem is and these effects are reversible or not. Infection is accepted as a possible underlying cause of male infertility.