Category Archives: Futurism

According to researchers at the University of Illinois, a supernova 65 light-years from Earth likely caused a mass extinction event during the Late Devonian period, 359 million years ago.

The researchers found radioactive isotopes in rocks that may be able to confirm such an event, as detailed in a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

During the Late Devonian period, when most life was found in the oceans, one of the worst mass extinctions in Earths history gravely damaged its ecosystem. Yet its never been clear what caused it.

To explain the event, the team looked at rocks that contain ancient plant spores. These spores appeared to have been severely sunburnt by ultraviolet light, likely the consequence of a long-term lack of ozone in the atmosphere.

Earth-based catastrophes such as large-scale volcanism and global warming can destroy the ozone layer, too, but evidence for those is inconclusive for the time interval in question, astronomy and physics professor Brian Fields, lead author, said in a statement. Instead, we propose that one or more supernova explosions, about 65 light-years away from Earth, could have been responsible for the protracted loss of ozone.

It would have been quite the event, lighting up the skies.

To put this into perspective, one of the closest supernova threats today is from the star Betelgeuse, which is over 600 light-years away and well outside of the kill distance of 25 light-years, graduate student and study co-author Adrienne Ertel added.

The team also looked at other ozone depletion causes, including meteorite impacts, and gamma-ray bursts, but those wouldnt have caused a depletion in the longer term.

They suggest that the violent supernova flooded our planet with dangerous UV, X-, and gamma rays, irradiating the ozone layer with effects that would have lasted for up to 100,000 years, according to the researchers.

To confirm their suspicions, the team is now looking for the smoking gun two specific radioactive isotopes of plutonium, originating from the Late Devonian period, that only could have come to Earth from cosmic explosions.

The overarching message of our study is that life on Earth does not exist in isolation, Fields explains. We are citizens of a larger cosmos, and the cosmos intervenes in our lives often imperceptibly, but sometimes ferociously.

READ MORE: An Exploding Star 65 Light-Years From Earth May Have Triggered a Mass Extinction [Science Alert]

More on supernovas: Scientists Discover That Bones Are Made Out of Stars

Here is the original post:
Scientists: Exploding Star Likely Caused Mass Extinction on Earth - Futurism

With the endless torrent of COVID-19 updates, its easy to forget that there are other diseases spreading around the world.

Well, fret no more! Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and top White House coronavirus adviser, is here to remind you just how many dangerous outbreaks are happening right now.

Nipah Virus in southern India, measles in the U.S., diphtheria in Russia, and dozens more outbreaks are all pinpointed on a map that Fauci published alongside a preprint paper soon to be published in the journal Cell. Its meant to an educational resource. The paper lays out the myriad global conditions that enabled COVID-19 to bring the planet to its knees. But, as Gizmodo astutely points out, its also such a bummer.

The paper itself describes how genetic mutations can make diseases more or less dangerous and infectious over time. For instance, it points out that the common cold used to cause deadly epidemics before evolving into a far milder disease.

Thats not to say that the coronavirus will do the same, as Gizmodo notes. But it is interesting to see how past epidemics and outbreaks have shaped the current landscape of global diseases.

Read more from the original source:
Dr. Fauci Just Released a World Map of Ongoing Disease Outbreaks - Futurism

Beginning next week, 40,000 volunteers will take the coronavirus vaccine that was recently approved and lauded by the Russian government.

The vaccine, which Russia has dubbed Sputnik V, is going to be distributed in a randomized, double-blinded, and placebo-controlled clinical study, Ars Technica reports. Such large-scale experiments are a crucial part of making sure that a vaccine or any other medical treatment is both safe and effective but its also something that usually happens before that vaccine is approved amidst fanfare.

Its that reverse order that has experts around the world skeptical of Russias claims. Doctors have only tested Sputnik V in small, earlier-stage clinical trials, and the data from those experiments still arent available.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been trying to get any sort of information about those earlier studies out of the Russian government, Ars Technica reports, but to little avail. That doesnt necessarily mean that the vaccine doesnt work as well as the Russian government claims but,at the same time, theres no evidence available that it does.

And some of Russias claims are pretty bold.

I know it has proven efficient and forms a stable immunity, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced earlier this month, according to AP News. We must be grateful to those who made that first step very important for our country and the entire world.

But without cold, hard data, experts are unlikely to be swayed.

Its essential we dont cut corners in safety or efficacy, WHO senior emergency official Catherine Smallwood told AP News.

Read this article:
40,000 Russians Are About to Get That Untested COVID-19 Vaccine - Futurism

life-style, books,

H. G. Wells (1866 -1946) is more remembered today for his science fiction novels, written at the end of the 19th century - The War of The Worlds, The Island of Dr Moreau, The Invisible Man and The Time Machine - than for his other novels or non-fiction books, such as his global bestseller, The Outline of History (1920). Adam Roberts, Professor of English at Royal Holloway College in London and Sarah Cole, Dean of Humanities at Columbia University, while taking different approaches, provide strong evidence for a Wellsian reassessment. Wells was arguably the most celebrated intellectual in the English-speaking world in the decades between the First and Second World Wars, a role which has also been largely forgotten. Wells met with many world leaders, such as Roosevelt, Lenin, Stalin, and Churchill, who said that he knew Wells' works so well he could pass an examination in them. Roberts highlights the impact of "The man who invented tomorrow". Wells envisaged in 1936 the concept of "The World Brain", a precursor on microfilm of Google/Wikipedia, and foreshadowed, inter alia, the tank, the atom bomb, global warming, aerial flight, mass surveillance, germ warfare, laser beams and cosmetic surgery. George Orwell wrote in 1941 that, "thinking people who were born about the beginning of this century are in some sense Wells' own creation ... The minds of all of us, and therefore the physical world, would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed". Wells visited Australia in January, 1939, addressing the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science in Canberra's Albert Hall, against a backdrop of a heatwave and bushfires. Wells' comments in his speech, criticising Mussolini and Hitler, aroused the anger of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, a supporter of Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. Lyons responded, "The Federal Government is not to be associated with remarks which have been made by our visitor". Roberts sees Wells' non-fiction as irrevocably dated, whereas Coles, who views his 100 books of fiction and non-fiction and 6000 articles, as deliberately intertwined, writes that, "Wells felt no need to banish the pedagogic voice from his fiction". Coles sees Wells as a visionary radical, outlining the case for global unity, economies serving the "common good" and universal human rights. He was the major drafter of the Sankey Declaration, a precursor to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Wells ideas for global unity and a world state now seems less likely, with the rise of populism and the backlash against globalisation, although his attacks on autocratic leaders and dictators are still very relevant. Equally, Wells' comments on the Black Death, "a pestilence of unheard-of virulence", resonate today: "Never was there so clear a warning to mankind to seek knowledge and cease from bickering, to unite against the dark powers of nature". Wells' last book, the short Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945), was foreshadowed in his Canberra speech, when he said, "humanity . . . can't escape entire self -destruction as a species". Roberts sees parallels between Mind and his first novel, The Time Machine, revealing "a psychopathological going over and over the same ground, like Lady Macbeth endlessly washing her own hands". Roberts, an acclaimed sci-fi novelist and vice-president of the H. G. Wells Society, provides the first complete literary biography of Wells for 30 years, and the first to encompass his entire career as a writer. He adopts a chronological approach to Wells' writing to lead the reader through Wells' life in books. He is particularly insightful on the scientific romances, seeing, for example, The Island of Doctor Moreau as the first great novel of the Darwinian "revolution in thought". Coles argues that, while Wells "rejected and was rejected by modernism, Wells' influence on the twentieth century novel was greater than is often assumed ... His goals for literature were soaring, world-scaled." Both Coles and Roberts agree that Wells' lesser-known novels deserve rehabilitation, and especially praise Mr Britling Sees It Through (1916), which Maxim Gorky called "the finest, most courageous, truthful and humane book written in Europe in the course of this accursed war". Neither, however, shirk from documenting Wells' faults, especially on eugenics, sexism and, in Cole's words, "spasms of racism and callous complacency". Nonetheless, both authors make a persuasive case, through their different structural approaches, to restore Wells' reputation and ideas in a world again under threat, with the need more than ever for a belief in democracy, faith in scientific knowledge and the reaffirmation of human rights.

https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/9gmjQxX8MpSQh6J68NHMnY/97b7f47e-26a2-48c1-a398-abc837cba2f2.jpg/r0_719_3816_2875_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg

REVIEW

August 23 2020 - 12:00AM

H. G. Wells (1866 -1946) is more remembered today for his science fiction novels, written at the end of the 19th century - The War of The Worlds, The Island of Dr Moreau, The Invisible Man and The Time Machine - than for his other novels or non-fiction books, such as his global bestseller, The Outline of History (1920).

Adam Roberts, Professor of English at Royal Holloway College in London and Sarah Cole, Dean of Humanities at Columbia University, while taking different approaches, provide strong evidence for a Wellsian reassessment.

Rethinking H.G. Wells. Picture: Getty Images

Wells was arguably the most celebrated intellectual in the English-speaking world in the decades between the First and Second World Wars, a role which has also been largely forgotten. Wells met with many world leaders, such as Roosevelt, Lenin, Stalin, and Churchill, who said that he knew Wells' works so well he could pass an examination in them.

Roberts highlights the impact of "The man who invented tomorrow". Wells envisaged in 1936 the concept of "The World Brain", a precursor on microfilm of Google/Wikipedia, and foreshadowed, inter alia, the tank, the atom bomb, global warming, aerial flight, mass surveillance, germ warfare, laser beams and cosmetic surgery.

George Orwell wrote in 1941 that, "thinking people who were born about the beginning of this century are in some sense Wells' own creation ... The minds of all of us, and therefore the physical world, would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed".

Wells visited Australia in January, 1939, addressing the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science in Canberra's Albert Hall, against a backdrop of a heatwave and bushfires. Wells' comments in his speech, criticising Mussolini and Hitler, aroused the anger of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, a supporter of Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. Lyons responded, "The Federal Government is not to be associated with remarks which have been made by our visitor".

Roberts sees Wells' non-fiction as irrevocably dated, whereas Coles, who views his 100 books of fiction and non-fiction and 6000 articles, as deliberately intertwined, writes that, "Wells felt no need to banish the pedagogic voice from his fiction".

Coles sees Wells as a visionary radical, outlining the case for global unity, economies serving the "common good" and universal human rights. He was the major drafter of the Sankey Declaration, a precursor to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Wells ideas for global unity and a world state now seems less likely, with the rise of populism and the backlash against globalisation, although his attacks on autocratic leaders and dictators are still very relevant.

Equally, Wells' comments on the Black Death, "a pestilence of unheard-of virulence", resonate today: "Never was there so clear a warning to mankind to seek knowledge and cease from bickering, to unite against the dark powers of nature".

Wells' last book, the short Mind at the End of Its Tether (1945), was foreshadowed in his Canberra speech, when he said, "humanity . . . can't escape entire self -destruction as a species". Roberts sees parallels between Mind and his first novel, The Time Machine, revealing "a psychopathological going over and over the same ground, like Lady Macbeth endlessly washing her own hands".

Roberts, an acclaimed sci-fi novelist and vice-president of the H. G. Wells Society, provides the first complete literary biography of Wells for 30 years, and the first to encompass his entire career as a writer. He adopts a chronological approach to Wells' writing to lead the reader through Wells' life in books. He is particularly insightful on the scientific romances, seeing, for example, The Island of Doctor Moreau as the first great novel of the Darwinian "revolution in thought".

Coles argues that, while Wells "rejected and was rejected by modernism, Wells' influence on the twentieth century novel was greater than is often assumed ... His goals for literature were soaring, world-scaled."

Both Coles and Roberts agree that Wells' lesser-known novels deserve rehabilitation, and especially praise Mr Britling Sees It Through (1916), which Maxim Gorky called "the finest, most courageous, truthful and humane book written in Europe in the course of this accursed war".

Neither, however, shirk from documenting Wells' faults, especially on eugenics, sexism and, in Cole's words, "spasms of racism and callous complacency".

Nonetheless, both authors make a persuasive case, through their different structural approaches, to restore Wells' reputation and ideas in a world again under threat, with the need more than ever for a belief in democracy, faith in scientific knowledge and the reaffirmation of human rights.

Go here to see the original:
Two books reassess the work and forward thinking of HG Wells, one of the 20th century's great futurists - The Canberra Times

(Newser) A mass extinction celebration that struck Earth 359 million a long time in the past nonetheless has experts scratching their heads. Was it volcano eruptions? Meteorites? Gamma-ray bursts? A new paper appears to be like at a different doable perpetrator: exploding stars. Researchers at the University of Illinois argue that proof hidden in rocks coincides with the influence of at minimum one particular supernova 65 mild-decades from Earth in the Late Devonian period, Futurism reviews. Analyzing ancient plant spores in rocks, they found indications of serious ultraviolet mild sunburnjust what you would hope from long-term ozone depletion in the atmosphere. Big-scale volcanism and worldwide warming can demolish the ozone layer, also, but evidence for people is inconclusive for the time interval in dilemma, lead writer Brian Fields claims in a statement.

Now his team is trying to get what Fields phone calls the smoking guns of a nearby supernova: the radioactive isotopes samarium-146 and plutonium-244 in fossils and rocks deposited in the course of the extinction. Neither of these isotopes occurs in a natural way on Earth today, and the only way they can get in this article is via cosmic explosions, suggests co-writer Zhenghai Liu. Interesting aspect be aware: The staff considers several blasts a risk because huge stars usually exist in clusters and can detonate if activated by a supernova in the team, Forbes notes. But Fields sees a more substantial information in all this: Lifestyle on Earth does not exist in isolation, he suggests. We are citizens of a larger sized cosmos, and the cosmos intervenes in our livesoften imperceptibly, but often ferociously. (Read through much more mass extinction stories.)

var FBAPI = '119343999649'

window.fbAsyncInit = purpose() FB.init( appId: FBAPI, standing: accurate, cookie: genuine, xfbml: accurate, oauth: accurate, authResponse: legitimate, variation: 'v2.5' )

FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', perform (response) AnalyticsCustomEvent('Facebook', 'Like', 'P') )

// Load the SDK asynchronously (function (d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0] if (d.getElementById(id)) return js = d.createElement(s) js.id = id js.src = "https://hook up.fb.internet/en_US/sdk.js" fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs) (doc, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'))

Devoted music ninja. Zombie practitioner. Pop culture aficionado. Webaholic. Communicator. Internet nerd. Certified alcohol maven. Tv buff.

Read more:
Experts Obtain New Trigger of Mass Extinction Party - Aviation Analysis Wing

Right now schools are makingand, in some cases, already implementing tough decisions about where learning should take place this fall. Elected officials are making decisions contrary to recommended guidelines that can leave school leaders in an impossible situation of shouldering accountability for health and safety while lacking the control to do so. Yet educators are still doing their best to prioritize students psychological and developmental needs in this vacuum of resources, guidance and personnel.

All of this effort may get schools to the starting line in the short-term, but schools need to be thinking about the long-term, too. Wetwo psychologists at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligencespoke to educational leaders and one futurist about what is needed to make this new reality work for educators and students in the long run.

Schools will never return to business as usual, predicts futurist Andrea Saveri. A futurist analyzes quantitative and qualitative data from current trends in order to predict the alternative scenarios that could play out in conditions of uncertainty, and Saveris work focuses on education mapping specifically.

The U.S. education system was designed 100 years ago to support the Industrial Revolution, Saveri explains. A shock like the pandemic shows just how rigid the institution really is. The future will only be more VUCAvolatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguousbecause of pressures like globalization, greater connectivity and climate change. How schools reorganize now, in response to the pandemic, may only be a dry run for what will be increasingly needed in the future.

Saveris analysis places emotional, interpersonal and cultural competencies at the center of adapting to a rapidly-changing post-industrial world. Uncertain conditions demand creativity and innovation. People will need to be emotionally intelligent and interpersonally skilled in order to collaborate across diverse perspectives to find solutions, as well as to manage the overwhelming feelings of grief, despair and anxiety that a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world can trigger.

One school that has already adopted this mindset is the New York City Lab School for Collaborative Studies, a public high school led by principal Brooke Jackson. The Lab School laid groundwork years ago by training staff in RULER, a schoolwide approach to social-emotional learning from our Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence; Courageous Conversations, a model for training and coaching organizations on racial equity; restorative circles for community development and conflict resolution and more.

These approaches teach adults and children how to use their emotions wisely and how to support inclusive, positive relationships to strengthen and grow their communities, which in turn support them. We can have hard conversations in a way that is caretaking and doesnt create more anxiety, depression and isolation for kids, Jackson says.

In response to COVID-19, the students at the Lab School have been organized into intimate, amphibious squads that can function either in person or at a distance. The squads are autonomous and choose the focus of their interdisciplinary projects together. Courses are taught by two teachers, allowing learning to continue if one develops health issues or leaves. Teachers serve as case managers for students, communicating with families, administrators and guidance counselors. Every morning begins with an in-person or distanced check-in, with mental health the top priority.

Jacksons high school students will have virtual spaces for student-led affinity clubs, and students will have opportunities to be teaching assistants, helping younger students with learning challenges and deepening their own relationships to favorite teachers or subjects. Their school day, also shorter, will end with an enrichment band where students can choose a deep dive into topics like the 2020 election or a creative writing project about life under COVID-19without homework or tests.

Teachers relationships with one another are also critical, Jackson says. Every Friday, Lab School educators hold a Zoom space for sharing and processing. Im going to try to hang on to my teachers, Jackson says. We might not have a computer lab or new furniture, but I know everyone will chip in to help problem-solve. We are brothers and sisters, and the waters too heavy for any one educator.

Dawn DeCosta, principal of Thurgood Marshall Academy Lower School in Harlem, has always prioritized emotional and social skills but is leading her fall planning with new, developmentally appropriate opportunities.

DeCostas elementary school students will be able to have question-and-answer sessions with their teachers about living with the new safety guidelines. Theyll also spend the first month getting to know each other by creating visual projects on identity, culture and family. The school day, whether in-person or virtual, will be shorter, structured by predictable routines, and interspersed with brain breaks for meditation, gratitude practices, checking in with feelings or community kindness projects.

But DeCosta adds, Our teachers responded to distance learning in inspired ways, but teachers, alone, cannot do everything thats being asked of them. Schools need real help from their communities.

DeCostas holistic view is consistent with 40 years of research in developmental science, which shows that an individual does not shoulder wellbeing alone. The systems in which an individual is embedded are also responsible. When the people in environments outside of families and schools support childrens needs, children do better.

DeCosta details the kinds of support shed like to see from the wider community, for distance and in-person learning:

The map of each schools needs and resources will be different, but emotional wellbeing and community support must be consistent priorities throughout.

The Lab School and Thurgood Marshall Academy are models for how schools can rise to meet the challenges of these trying times. They also hold the promise of the systemic transformation needed to benefit our childrens futures.

Read the rest here:
Schools Will Never Return to Business as Usual. Heres How They Can Make the Most of Our New Reality. - EdSurge

Big in Japan

The Japanese government is pouring money into the development of flying cars with aims of commercializing the futuristic mode of transportation as soon as 2023, the Japan Times reports.

A number of flying car concepts are being developed throughout the globe, with the likes of Airbus, Boeing and Uber leading the charge.

The dream of covering smaller distances in vehicles capable of vertical take off and landing (VTOL) is very much alive and thats especially true in Japan.

Japans SkyDrive, one of the countrys newest flying car startups, recently revealed the SD-XX, a sleek two-person eVTOL aircraft, about the size of a car, with a range of several tens of kilometers at 100 kmh (62 mph).

The company is hoping to complete its first flight test this summer, according to the Japan Times.

Were considering launching an air taxi service in big cities, either Osaka or Tokyo, with initial flights over the sea as it would be too risky to fly over many people all of a sudden, SkyDrive CEO Tomohiro Fukuzawa, a former engineer at Toyota, told the newspaper.

He also noted that development has been accelerating rapidly with the rise in the number of personnel in the venture.

The startup is planning to start with round trips around various resorts, including Universal Studios Japan. The initial model will fly basically on auto pilot, but its not 100 percent autonomous because a pilot would need to maneuver it in case of an emergency, for example, Fukuzawa said.

The goal of the startup is to sell at least 100 vehicles by 2028, each for the cost of an expensive car, according to the CEO.

READ MORE: Eyes on the skies: SkyDrive plans to launch flying cars in three years [Japan Times]

More on flying cars: This Flying Car Looks Like the DeLorean From Back to the Future

Visit link:
Flying Cars Are Actually, Finally Becoming a Reality in Japan - Futurism

California-based tech company Hyperion has unveiled the Hyperion XP-1, a hydrogen fuel cell-powered hypercar with an advertised 1,000 mile range and a top speed of 221 mph. It can launch from 0 to 60 mph in just 2.2 seconds.

Those are without a doubt some impressive specs but its main purpose isnt to take on Tesla in a head-to-head. Its to generate interest for hydrogen power, according to the company.

There are enough car companies, CEO Angelo Kafantaris told Car and Driver. Were an energy company thats building this car to tell a story.

Instead of relying on extremely heavy lithium ion battery packs, the XP-1 generates power from large tanks of hydrogen driving two powerful electric motors. Lower curb weight, more power and longer range.

Apart from the way it is currently generated about 95 percent of all hydrogen is produce from steam reforming of natural gas hydrogen is also extremely environmentally friendly to use as a fuel source. The byproducts are literally just water and not greenhouse gases.

Luckily, there are many ways to generate hydrogen as a fuel source. You can make hydrogen from excess grid solar power, Kafantaris claimed. Creating hydrogen is greener than making batteries.

Unfortunately, refueling hydrogen cars in 2020 is extremely difficult to do. In 2018, there were only 39 publicly available hydrogen stations for fueling fuel cell vehicles in the United States.

Hyperion wants to change that. The company claims it has plans to build out its own hydrogen-fueling station network similar to Teslas Supercharger network.

The XP-1 will be expensive. Production will start in 2022 and only 300 of them will ever be made.

READ MORE: The Hyperion XP-1 hypercar wants to give hydrogen a halo effect [Ars Technica]

More on hydrogen cars: A Brief History of Elon Musks Festering Feud With Rival Automaker Nikola

Go here to see the original:
This Beast of a Hydrogen-Powered Hypercar Has a 1,000 Mile Range - Futurism

Scientists think theyve identified a weak point in SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. And just like shooting torpedoes down the Death Stars exhaust shaft, they think they can exploit this critical weakness to make new treatments.

It all comes down to a tiny region right next to the viruss spike proteins, which latch onto new host cells, according to research published last week in the journal ACS Nano. Explaining the weakness requires a little bit of a primer on biochemistry, so bear with us, but the Northwestern University scientists suggest targeting this weak point could render the virus inert.

Here goes: It can be difficult to conceptualize, but the microscopic interactions among molecules, proteins, and cells interact really boil down to electrostatics. Opposite charges attract and like charges repel each other, just like on a magnet. Well, this tiny region on the coronavirus, located just 10 nanometers from the part of the spike protein that gloms onto a victims cells, has a positive charge.

Because the receptors on our cells that the virus targets have a negative charge, the two are pulled together by this electrostatic force and create a tight bond that ultimately allows the virus to infect the cell. This weak-spot region had been hiding in plain sight: 10 nanometers is impossibly small to humans but a fairly large clearing when it comes to electrostatic interactions, so other researchers may have assumed it was just too far away to matter.

The scientists behind the discovery tested their work by blocking the region with a negatively-charged molecule, which then prevents the coronavirus from being able to target a host cell. But unfortunately, turning that molecule into an actual treatment will be time-consuming and tricky work.

Continued here:
Scientists Think They Found the Coronavirus' Weak Spot - Futurism

NYOOM

Scientists just identified the fastest-moving star in our galaxy, and its booking it.

The star S62 whips around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, at an extremely tight orbit. At its closest approach, it can travel faster than eight percent the speed of light, according to research published in The Astrophysical Journal. Thats fast enough to make visible the relativistic phenomena of time dilation and length contraction, turning the star into an interesting sandbox for curious physicists.

When two objects like S62 and scientists stationed on Earth move at different speeds, they measure the passage of time differently. Scientists watching S62 will see it take a longer amount of time tor each its destination than a passenger on the actual star would.

This phenomenon, called time dilation, is at the core of special relativity. It happens at every speed, but really only becomes visible when you approach the speed of light. At eight percent lightspeed, the time dilation effect for S62 just barely becomes noticeable, making it a great tool for studying special relativity in action.

S62s bizarre, spirograph-shaped orbit will take it close to Sagittarius A* again in just about two years, according to the research.

When it happens, scientists will be ready: Not only to watch some bizarre physics in action, but to use it to unravel more of the mysteries surrounding black holes than ever before.

READ MORE: Fastest star ever seen is moving at 8% the speed of light [Universe Today]

More on relativity: Thanks to Time Dilation, Earths Core is 2.5 Years Younger Than its Surface

Excerpt from:
This Star Is Moving So Fast it Visibly Warps Spacetime - Futurism