A Picture of a Black Hole Is Revealed for the First Time. Images of the darkest entities in the cosmos have finally been captured by astronomers. It is the first intimate look inside a violent phenomenon that has mystified astronomers for more than half a century. Events—planned for Washington, Brussels, Santiago, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo—astronomers is giving humanity its first look at the black hole that sits at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. We’ll also see a vastly larger one at the heart of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy, nearly 54 million light years from Earth. With that, astrophysics will have opened one more tiny crack in the wall of secrets that is the universe.
After picking up faint signals from the earliest hydrogen gas ever detected, astronomers have found evidence of the very first stars in the Universe, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. The findings have also unexpectedly revealed potentially groundbreaking evidence regarding the nature and possible existence of the most mysterious substance in the universe–dark matter.
Architects created ambitious spaces with an eye toward the sensory in a series of museums, memorials and public places such as the the Museum at the Gateway Arch, St. Louis seen above. If there are themes connecting the best architecture of 2018, one of them is certainly the eagerness of architects to give shape to complex and varied experiences, the more sensory the better. This is architecture that offers a sequence of events revealed gradually with constantly shifting perspectives, as opposed to classic modernism’s tightly controlled image of architecture as geometric tableau.
New Zealand Picks Up the Pieces After the Worst Massacre in Its History. New Zealand’s low-slung second city was cloaked in mourning, shops shuttered and residents zombified, struggling to comprehend the mass shooting that claimed 50 lives — the worst massacre in the history of this nation of five million. Police continued to sweep for evidence outside the Al Noor mosque, where a lone gunman killed 41 people, live-streaming his barbarous crimes in ghastly detail. Seven more people were gunned down at a mosque on the other side of the city in the suburban Linwood neighborhood. One more died in hospital, where another 48 wounded are still receiving care, two in a critical condition. Children are among them.