All posts tagged: flickering

MIT astronomers detect oldest known flickering quasar from the cosmic dawn

MIT astronomers detect oldest known flickering quasar from the cosmic dawn

Published by Jenni Sidey

A quasar from the universe’s first 850 million years has started to look less like a distant pinprick and more like a real physical system. By catching it flickering over time, astronomers have traced the structure of matter swirling around one of the earliest known supermassive black holes. What they found deepens one of cosmology’s biggest puzzles. The object, known as J0439+1634, sits at a redshift of 6.51. This means its light comes from a time just 850 million years after the Big Bang. Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe, powered by supermassive black holes pulling in gas and dust. As that material spirals inward, it heats up and radiates enormous amounts of energy. Sometimes, it outshines the galaxy around it. Many quasars have already been found from this early era, often called the cosmic dawn. What makes this one stand out is not just its age, but its variability. Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have detected a quasar flickering from the very early universe. This artist’s concept illustrates a quasar accretion …

Astronomers solve decades-old mystery of flickering binary stars

Astronomers solve decades-old mystery of flickering binary stars

Published by Jenni Sidey

Faint flickers in the night sky have puzzled astronomers for decades. These subtle changes in brightness come from violent star systems, where one star feeds on another. Now, new research from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, offers a clearer explanation for one of the most confusing signals these systems produce. The study challenges a long-standing idea about how certain brightness patterns form. By rethinking the shape of matter swirling around dead stars, scientists may have solved a mystery that has lingered for nearly 50 years. A Strange Rhythm in the Night Sky Some stars do not shine steadily. Instead, they pulse, flicker, and flare. In certain cases, that rhythm comes from a pair of stars locked in a tight orbit. The eccentricity (upper panels) and periapse angle (lower panels) versus radius of the disk for three different values of H/r and q = 0.1. (CREDIT: The Astrophysical Journal Letters) These systems, called cataclysmic variables, involve a dense white dwarf pulling material from a nearby companion star. The stolen gas spirals inward, forming a glowing …

Event Horizon Telescope captures magnetic turbulence flickering at the edge of black hole M87*

Event Horizon Telescope captures magnetic turbulence flickering at the edge of black hole M87*

Published by Jenni Sidey

For a few brief nights each year, you get a rare chance to watch a monster blink. The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration has released new, detailed views of M87*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy M87. The images do not just show a glowing ring. They also track polarized light, a clue that reveals how magnetic fields behave near the edge of the black hole. Researchers from the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics helped construct and validate the images. What they found is both steady and startling. The size of the ring stays consistent over time. Yet the polarization pattern, the “fingerprint” of magnetism, changes sharply from year to year. That shift suggests a turbulent environment close to the event horizon. It also raises a simple question that is proving hard to answer: why did the magnetic signal fade, then flip? New images from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration have revealed a dynamic environment with changing polarization patterns in the magnetic fields of supermassive black …

My Windows desktop kept flickering until I cleared this cache

My Windows desktop kept flickering until I cleared this cache

Published by skeptic

My computer developed a flickering problem that started subtly. For a split second, it goes black, the icons redraw, and the taskbar disappears briefly. This behavior wasn’t constant, and I couldn’t always predict when it would happen. Sometimes it happens if I open a folder, other times it starts when I switch windows. In fact, it may also occur when the computer is idle. I thought it was a graphical issue, but checking the display cables and reinstalling or updating the GPU drivers did not help, and there was no problem with my graphics card either. The real issue turned out to be corruption in File Explorer’s thumbnail cache, and the symptom vanished as soon as I cleared the cache. What the Explorer thumbnail cache actually does A speed optimization that quietly runs your entire desktop Afam Onyimadu / MUO Windows generates thumbnail previews (small preview images) whenever you open folders with certain file types, especially images, videos, PDFs, and shortcuts. This is an important process that guarantees File Explorer doesn’t have to reprocess those …