First-Ever Photo of a Supermassive Black Hole

Truly a quantum leap, astronomers have “seen the unseeable” and captured an image of a supermassive black hole—a “smoke ring framing a one-way portal to eternity,” Dennis Overbye writes for the New York Times. A planet-sized network of eight radio telescopes—called the Event Horizon Telescope—peered through interstellar dust and gas to reveal the black hole, located in a galaxy called Messier 87, which exists some …

Katsushika Hokusai’s Iconic Artwork Bound for Japanese Currency

An instantly recognizable artwork—Katsushika Hokusai’s woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa—is set to appear on Japan’s 1,000-yen banknote. Just one of several new designs announced—others including images of industrialist, Eiichi Shibusawa; educational reformist, Tsuda Umeko; and more—the Hokusai note will depict Nobel Prize-nominated bacteriologist Shibasaburo Kitasato on the other side. The new designs will be circulating by 2024. See more at CNN.

Self-Driving Protection From Asteroids

Autonomous technology has come for the final frontier. The European Space Agency’s new self-driving spacecraft could potentially protect our planet from catastrophic impacts with asteroids. The project, dubbed Hera, is in the process of getting outfitted with autonomous tech that, when installed, will enable the craft to use sensors to read nearby debris and objects to determine what (if anything) is an inbound target. The …