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PARIS: Astronomers have stumbled upon a supermassive black hole in an unexpected corner of the Universe, implying these galactic monsters are much more common than once thought, a study said Wednesday. The giant, with an estimated mass 17 billion times that of our Sun, was discovered in a relative desert, astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in the journal Nature. “While finding a gigantic black hole in a massive galaxy in a crowded area of the Universe is to be expected — like running across a skyscraper in Manhattan — it seemed less likely they could be found in the Universe’s small towns,” said a university statement. Big, star-rich galaxies where supermassive black holes had previously been found, are very rare. Smaller ones like the NGC 1600 galaxy housing the newly-discovered whopper, are much more common, but were not previously thought to be appropriate hosts. “So the question now is: ‘Is this the tip of an iceberg?'” said study co-author Chung-Pei Ma. “Maybe there are a lot more monster black holes out there that don’t live in a skyscraper in Manhattan, but in a tall building somewhere in the Midwestern plains.” A supermassive black hole can have a mass of about a million Suns up to billions. Smaller, “ordinary” black holes range between tens to hundreds of Sun masses. Black holes are very dense regions in spacetime with a gravitational force so strong that even light cannot escape it — making them invisible. Formed when massive stars implode at the end of their lives, black holes normally lurk dormant and undetected at the centres of galaxies. They can sometimes be detected by their gravitational effect on the orbits of stars around them, and occasionally by their spectacular feeding frenzies — guzzling gas and dust, sometimes entire stars, and spitting out jets of debris. Much less is known about the origins of the supermassive variety. The largest supermassive black hole spotted to date tipped the scales at about 21 billion solar masses, said the study authors. –AFP

world next month, leaving Hawaii when weather permits, a spokeswoman told AFP on Thursday. “The first possible departure from Hawaii to reach the US West coast is on April 15th,” she said, adding that location of the first stop on the US mainland has yet to be determined. The experimental aircraft was grounded in July, when its solar-powered batteries suffered problems halfway through its 21,700-mile (35,000-kilometer) trip. The French crew took several months to repair the damage from high tropical temperatures during the flight’s final Pacific stage, a record journey of 5 days and 5 nights between Nagoya, Japan and Hawaii. The plane conducted its first successful test flight following repairs in late February. The next leg, estimated to take four days, may end in Los Angeles, San Francisco or Phoenix, Arizona, the spokeswoman said. “The destinations in US mainland have not been confirmed yet and will be dependent on weather conditions,” she said. “We know from experience that crossing the United States is challenging in terms of weather.” The goal is to reach New York’s JFK Airport before crossing the Atlantic, she added. Solar Impulse 2 left Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates in March last year and has since traveled nearly 11,200 miles (18,000 kilometers). Its wings are covered with more than 17,000 photovoltaic cells that charge the batteries when the sun is shining during the day. Pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg are taking alternating turns flying each stage because the aircraft can fit only one at a time. Dubbed the “paper plane,” Solar Impulse 2 has a wingspan of 79 yards (72 meters), larger than a Boeing 747’s, and a weight of 2.3 tonnes, approximately that of a van. It flies at a maximum altitude of 28,327 feet (8,634 meters) and must withstand high temperature fluctuations, with the pilots using oxygen tanks to breathe inside the tiny cockpit. The project aims to demonstrate the possibilities of renewable solar energy. –AFP

Microsoft Corp joined Amazon.com Inc and Intel Corp in tweaking the way it reports results, a move that will help the software giant show off its growing cloud and mobile businesses. Since taking over as chief in early 2014, Satya Nadella has led Microsoft s efforts to focus on software and cloud services as demand for its Windows operating system slows. The company, which is in the process of restructuring its phone business and streamlining operations, has been pumping the resulting savings into its cloud business and Windows 10. “This reporting structure aligns the company s goals with the way they will report it to the Street,” FBR & Co analyst Daniel Ives said. “The best change is the ability to track the Windows 10 transition and cloud adoption around Office 365 which are front and centre for investors.” Microsoft said on Monday it will report revenue and operating income based on three businesses – Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing starting this quarter. It previously reported under six segments, which were lumped together under two broad categories – Devices & Consumer and Commercial. Microsoft will separately report consumer and commercial numbers for its Office business, a company executive said on a conference call on Tuesday. It doesn t expect to change the way it gives guidance. Amazon, a strong contender in the cloud computing market, broke out financial details of its surging Amazon Web Services business for the first time in April. Intel announced the new Client Computing Group earlier this year, which would cover chips for desktops, smartphones and other mobile devices. Last year the company said it would disclose numbers for its budding Internet of Things business, which deals with connecting devices to the Internet. Microsoft shares closed little changed at $43.44 on the Nasdaq on Tuesday. They have slipped 7 percent this year, compared with a 10 percent fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average index .DJI.

A team of scientists at UK’s Cranfield University, University of Salford and University of Liverpool have developed a novel device that harvests energy from your knees while walking and converts it into electricity! The energy can then be used to power various devices such as heart rate monitors and GPS systems. The circular cup-shaped device fits on the outside of the knee. It has an outer ring with 72 metal strings that vibrate as the person walks. These vibrations are then converted into electricity. A cost-effective version of the device that will cost about $15 is now being developed under the leadership of Cranfield University’s Dr Michele Pozzi. The industrial designer Kyle Toole had developed another device a few years ago that produced energy not from the bending of the knee but from the energy harvested when the heel hits the ground. He used the principle that if magnetic fields are changed, an electric current can be created (Faraday’s Law). The device, called Etive, employs repelling magnets and can charge a 2000mAh lithium-ion battery in about five hours.

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The e-Nable community is just a year old and has gone from initially 70 members to over 1300 members which are growing rapidly. The community started off with designing one wrist-based design which has since been expanded to five wrist-based designs and elbow actuated devices, and also a myo arm for those who do not have an arm at all.