Brightest Known Object in Space Identified [Full News Memo]

Donald J. Trump Fined $355M, Some Federal Student Loans Canceled, Russian Anti-Satellite Weapon Development, Putin Challenger Alexei Navalny Dies in Prison.

An artist's rendering of the quasar that set the record for the universe's brightest object / ESO / M. Kornmesser

Newsbites

Donald J. Trump Fined $355M: Trump, his two sons, and his companies were ordered to pay $355M in damages after a ruling from Judge Arthur Engoron. The ruling stated Trump and his associates made fraudulent business transactions misleading lenders on their finances, and barred him “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years.” In response to the news, Trump wrote, “This ‘decision’ is a complete and total sham.” His legal team asked for a 30 day delay of payment but the judge denied the request. 

More: New York Attorney General Letitia James said her department will seize Trump’s properties if he does not pay the fine. Just days after the ruling, Trump launched his “Never Surrender” gold sneakers. 

Some Federal Student Loans Canceled: President Biden will cancel federal student loans for up to 153,000 Americans. On X, Biden posted, “Starting today, the first round of folks who are enrolled in our SAVE student loan repayment plan who have paid their loans for 10 years and borrowed $12,000 or less will have their debt canceled.” The Supreme Court ruled against Biden’s initial plan to forgive all student debt, but this particular repayment plan hasn’t received as much legal scrutiny. The first batch of relief is estimated to cost taxpayers roughly $1.2B. 

More: Republican Senator Bill Cassidy responded, saying, “Biden’s newest student loan scheme only shifts the burden from those who chose to take out loans to those who decided not to go to college, paid their way or already responsibly paid off their loans.”

Google’s Gemini AI (formerly known as Bard) made headlines this week for the images it generated when users asked it to create pictures of people such as the U.S. Founding Fathers and the Pope. Social media posts of the images went viral, which appeared to have a common theme: they represented figures with non-white skin color and shied away from showing men. For example, an image of the Pope returned a woman of Indian descent and a man of African descent. Another image generated to depict German Soldiers from 1943 included an Asian woman and a Black man.

More: On Wednesday, Google tweeted its service was “missing the mark” by “offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation.” On Thursday, Google paused Gemini’s image generation until an update is released.

Putin Challenger Alexei Navalny Dies in Prison: The most outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin died in his prison cell on Friday, February 16. The cause of his death is unclear, although Russian guards say he collapsed and lost consciousness after going on a walk in the prison center. Navalny was placed in prison in 2021 for charges of extremism. President Biden addressed the situation saying, “Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.” The 47 year-old Russian activist ran for president in 2018 and lost the election, but rallied a large following in Russia and around the world. He organized anti-government protests and released investigations into Putin’s wealth and government corruption.

More: Nalvany’s mother claims the Kremlin sought to do a secret funeral and bury him without notifying the family (video).

Ed Clark, the head of Boeing’s 737 Max aircraft program, was fired on Wednesday. The program has been under heavy scrutiny following the Alaskan Airlines door malfunction and reports of a sloppy manufacturing process of the door bolts. Clark took over the program in 2021, shortly after two 737 crashes that killed 350 people. Boeing is trying to calm the public following multiple disastrous moments in the past decade. CEO Stan Deal released a statement after firing Ed Clark saying: “enhanced focus on ensuring that every airplane we deliver meets or exceeds all quality and safety requirements. Our customers demand, and deserve, nothing less.”

Gambling institutions had a record year in 2023, with U.S. commercial gaming revenue reaching $66.5B, up 10% from 2022 and setting a new record for the 3rd consecutive year. The figure does not include revenue from tribal gaming, which is expected to generate an additional $44B. The biggest areas of growth were sports betting - up 45% from 2022 - and iGaming (any form of online betting) - a 23% increase.

More: Sports betting is expected to continue growing as it becomes legal in more states - currently, 38 states and Washington D.C. have legalized it (map).

Super Bowl Parade Shooting: Two men have been charged with second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon in connection with the shooting in Kansas City on February 14. The attack left one 43-year-old mother dead and more than 20 others injured, including 11 children. According to the press release and charging documents from the Jackson County Prosecutor’s office, a verbal altercation broke out among some members of the crowd, which ended in gunfire being exchanged by Dominic Miller and Lyndell Mays. The two individuals did not know each other prior to the parade. Bail has been set at $1M each.

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Brightest Known Object in Space Identified

Scientists at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced this week that they have identified the brightest and fastest-growing object ever observed in space.

Christian Wolf, an astronomer and the lead author of the study published in Nature Astronomy, said, 

“We have discovered the fastest-growing black hole known to date. It has a mass of 17 billion Suns, and eats just over a Sun per day. This makes it the most luminous object in the known Universe.”

• For perspective, the Milky Way’s black hole has the mass of about 4 million Suns.

The object - J0529-4351 - is called a quasar (Kway--zaar). In simple terms, a quasar is a supermassive black hole, often found at the center of distant galaxies. A black hole is a huge concentration of mass packed tightly together that creates a curvature in spacetime. It pulls matter toward itself in such a violent way that the matter forms an accretion disk (visual) and breaks apart as it falls toward the black hole, releasing tremendous amounts of energy and light.

J0529-4351’s luminosity is estimated to be 500 trillion times greater than the Sun’s. However, the quasar is so distant from the Earth that it took more than 12 billion years for its light to reach us.

Hiding in plain sight
J0529-4351 was actually first identified in surveys of the sky in 1980. At the time, however, the analysis of the data (using large machine learning models) mistook it for a star because it appeared to be too bright and close to the Earth to be a quasar.

It wasn’t until recently that researchers were able to identify just how bright and fast-growing the quasar is using the Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile.