Daily Archives: April 4, 2022

The partnershipmeans thatcurrent and aspiringleaders can earn accredited graduate and executive degrees from IU while gaininga deeper understandingofhow exponential technologies aredramatically affectingcompanies, communities, and countries. In addition to learning about the future through a river of content from Singularity, IU students will become part of an exclusive IU cohort within the Singularity community of over 250,000 impact innovators.These innovators themselves contributecontent andinsights from countries around the world on topics such as clean energy, longevity, mobility, smart cities and more.

"Several major trends are converging that make this partnership powerful. First, hundreds of millions of students around the world deserve'anytime' access to more affordableand more relevant undergraduate and graduate programs. Second, exponential technologies continuously make possible new solutions to serious problems facing humanity and the planet," said Steve Leonard, CEO of Singularity Group. "Our partnership with IU combines the best of our respective abilities for the benefit of students around the worldas they grow into leaders of companies, communities, and countries."

Sven Schtt, CEO of IU, said: "At IU, we are passionate about learner-centric education to unlock human potential and empower people to grow. As Europe's fastest-growing university and the biggest state-accredited educational institution in Germany, we are a pioneer in leveraging technology and innovation. IU democratizes education by removing cultural, geographical and financial entry barriers with flexible and tailor-made modes of studying. And we equip our students with the tech proficiency necessary to tackle the challenges of the 21st century. We are excited to team up with Singularity to reach even more learners around the world and bring together our unique strengths for the benefit of societies around the world."

For more information, please visit https://www.singularity-university.org/.

About Singularity GroupSingularity Group is a global impact organization that looks into the future to help leaders better understand how exponential technology will shape businesses and societies in the years ahead. Through a deeper understanding of the accelerated pace of change and the role that technology plays in it,theseleaders create tremendous positive impact that improves the wellbeing of people and the health of the planet. Over the past decade, Singularity has worked with more than 75,000 leaders drawn from corporations, nonprofits, governments, investors, and academia. With 250,000 impact-minded innovators across the Singularity network, 125 chapters and partners across six continents and a strong digital presence, Singularity Group reaches millions of people each month. The organization has launched over 5,000 social impact initiatives and its alumni have started more than 200 companies. For more information, visit https://su.org/.

About IU International University of Applied SciencesWith over 85,000 students, IU International University of Applied Sciences (IU) is the largest university in Germany. The private, state-recognized educational institution brings together more than 200 Bachelor's and Master's degree programs under its roof, which are offered in German or English. Students can choose between on-campus study, dual study, distance learning and flexible combination models and thus shape their studies in a self-determined way. In addition, IU facilitates continuing education and promotes the idea of lifelong learning. The university's goal is to make education possible for as many people as possible. IU began operations in 2000 and is now represented in 28 German cities. It cooperates with over 10,000 companies and actively supports them in employee development. Its partners include hotel group Motel One, Volkswagen Financial Services and Germany's national railway company. Further information at: http://www.iu.de/en

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Singularity University and IU International University of Applied Sciences Partner to Offer Impactful and Future-Ready Education Worldwide - PR...

Champion bridge player Sharon Osberg once wrote, Playing bridge is like running a business. Its about hunting, chasing, nuance, deception, reward, danger, cooperation and, on a good day, victory.

While its little surprise chess fell to number-crunching supercomputers long ago, youd expect humans to maintain a more unassailable advantage in bridge, a game of incomplete information, cooperation, and sly communication. Over millennia, our brains have evolved to read subtle facial queues and body language. Weve assembled sprawling societies dependent on the competition and cooperation of millions. Surely such skills are beyond the reach of machines?

For now, yes. But perhaps not forever. In recent years, the most advanced AI has begun encroaching on some of our most proudly held territory; the ability to navigate an uncertain world where information is limited, the game is infinitely nuanced, and no one succeeds alone.

Last week, French startup NukkAI took another step when its NooK bridge-playing AI outplayed eight bridge world champions in a competition held in Paris.

The game was simplified, and NooK didnt exactly go head-to-head with the human playersmore on that belowbut the algorithms performance was otherwise spectacular. Notably, NooK is a kind of hybrid algorithm, combining symbolic (or rule-based) AI with todays dominant deep learning approach. Also, in contrast to its purely deep learning peers, NooK is more transparent and can explain its actions.

What weve seen represents a fundamentally important advance in the state of artificial intelligence systems, Stephen Muggleton, a machine learning professor at Imperial College London, told The Guardian. In other words, not too bad for a cold, calculating computer.

To play bridge, maybe the most challenging card or board game yet tackled by AI, the NukkAI team combined deep reinforcement learning with symbolic AI, an approach famously used by IBMs Deep Blue to defeat Garry Kasparov at chess in the 90s.

Deep reinforcement learning algorithms are made up of a network of interconnected artificial neurons. To learn a game, an algorithm plays itself billions of times, evaluates its performance after each round, and incrementally improves by tuning and retuning its neural connections until it finally masters play.

Symbolic AI, on the other hand, is rules-based. Software engineers hard code the rules the AI needs to know to succeed. These might be, for example, that a bishop can move diagonally any number of squares on a chess board, or that if an opponent pursues a particular strategy, then employing some counterstrategy increases the chances of winning. This approach is fine for the finite, but as the space of all possible moves rises in complex games, it becomes untenable.

Thats why the 2016 defeat of Go world champion, Lee Sedol, by DeepMinds AlphaGo was a big deal. At the time, experts hadnt expected AI to beat top Go players for a decade. AlphaGo showed the surprising power of deep learning compared to good ol fashioned AI.

But deep learning has its drawbacks. One of them is that its a black box. How the billions of nodes in a neural network achieve any given task is mysterious.

AlphaGos Move 37 against Lee Sedol was a choice no human would makeit calculated the odds a professional would have chosen that move at 1 in 10,000but it made the move anyway, and won. Still, the algorithm couldnt explain what in its training informed its confidence. This opacity is a problem when the stakes are higher than a board game. To trust self-driving cars or medical algorithms making life-and-death decisions and diagnoses, we need to understand their rationale.

One potential solution, championed by researchers like NukkAI, would mash deep learning and symbolic AI together, exploiting each ones strengths in whats called a neurosymbolic approach.

NooK, for example, learns the rules of the game first, then improves its skills by playing. The combination refines the algorithms probabilistic brain, Muggleton told The Telegraph, taking it beyond statistics.NooK, he said, uses background knowledge much in the way that we augment our own learning with information from books and previous experience. As a result, the algorithm can explain decisions: Its a white box AI.

This is why bridgea game of communication and strategy thats resisted conquest by AIis a great test for the approach. In bridge, you cant play if you dont explain, NukkAI cofounder Vronique Ventos told The Guardian.

There are bridge-playing algorithms out there, but they dont hold a candle to the best humans. In NukkAIs Paris competition a little over a week ago, the situation looks to have changed.

The NukkAI Challenge pitted NooK against eight bridge world champions.

Each champion played ten sets of ten games, while NooK played 80 sets of ten games, or 800 straight deals. Instead of playing each other, human and AI played the same hands against the same opponents, a pair of bridge bots (not built by NukkAI) called Wbridge5.

A game of bridge begins with players bidding on how many tricks, or rounds of play, they think they can win. The highest bid is called the contract, and whoever sets the contract is the declarer. The declarers partner, or the dummy, lays their hand down on the table face up, and exits the game. The declarer now plays both hands against their opponents, and tries to win enough tricks to meet their bid.

The NukkAI Challenge removed bidding to simplify play, and both the humans and NooK assumed the role of declarer in each game, with the bridge bot pair as opponents (or defenders). The difference between NooKs score and each human players score was averaged over each set. NooK beat its rivals in 67, or 83 percent, of the 80 sets played.

Its pretty desperate for the humans, French champion Thomas Bessis said. There are just times that we dont understand why the AI is playing better than usbut it is. Its very frustrating.

NooKs victory is an impressive feat, but there are caveats. Skipping the bidding process and playing only the declarer role removed challenging and nuanced parts of the game in which partners must communicate with each other and deceive their opponents. Also, its challenging for a human to stay focused for 100 straight hands, but not so a computer. Finally, NukkAI cofounder, Jean-Baptiste Fantun, said he was confident the machine would prevail over thousands of deals, but was less sanguine about its prospects over just 800. In other words, the more it plays, the better its odds of winning, so playing a lot of hands consecutively may have helped the AI nudge out the humans in this case.

So even in bridge, there are other things to be solved, Fantun said. We still have a roadmap in front of us. That is, its too much to say bridge has fallen to AI, like chess or Go. But AI outscoring top human players in part of the game is a key milestone on Fantuns map. And while ever-bigger AI algorithms, like OpenAIs GPT-3, continue to impress, NukkAIs performance in bridge may add weight to the argument for a hybrid approach.

Next, theyll have to show NooK can play and winno disclaimers needed.

Image Credit:T A T I A N A / Unsplash

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A Hybrid AI Just Beat Eight World Champions at Bridgeand Explained How It Did It - Singularity Hub

Downey and Hall had worked together several times in the past, notably in the comedy films "Weird Science" in 1985, and "Johnny Be Good" in 1988. In 2016, Hall had most recently appeared in the Academy Award-nominated film "Foxcatcher," and had made several appearances on hit TV shows like "Psyche" and "Awkward."

"Singularity" was to be produced by both Downey and his wife Susan in a massive deal between the actor's production company and Sonar Entertainment. Details of the project were kept tightly under wraps when the show was announced, with Downey being frustratingly coy. There were no ready details about the show's premise or plot or the nature of Hall's character. It was exciting to think of Downey directing, however, as he hadn't directed a high-profile film or TV show in the past. In fact, heonce dismissed the idea entirely. Hall leading another series was also exciting for fans of "The Dead Zone," which ran from 2002 to 2007.

The only speculation one may have been able to make was about the genre of "Singularity." The title likely was taken from the physics term which is defined by Oxford Languages as "a point at which a function takes an infinite value, especially in space-time when matter is infinitely dense, as at the center of a black hole." In technology, "singularity" refers to the point wherein mechanical devices will become more advanced than human bodies, making physical biological flesh obsolete. The title alone might have one assuming "Singularity" was to be a sci-fi show. But it is only speculation, because neither Downey nor Hall confirmed that.

The only other connection to Downey and to "Singularity" that I was able to find was asingle malt, single hopped session IPA with a Kolsch yeast. But it turned out the Downey Brewing Company (based in Michigan), and their beer Singularity, have nothing at all to do with Robert Downey Jr. and his pilot "Singularity." It's merely a fun coincidence. Order some beer at the Downey Brewing website.

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Robert Downey Jr. Directed A TV Pilot We Never Got To See - /Film

If you are what you eat, Gervon Dexter would have been a Twinkie. A 313-pound one, at that.

He liked to snack away, comforted by the knowledge that the calories likely would melt away at football practice. And when youre 6-foot-6, you can carry a few more Twinkies than the average guy.

But after two seasons, Dexter knew he needed more than bulk to play defensive tackle at an NFL-prospect level. He needed to get quicker.

Enter Kelsee Gomes, the new queen of Floridas Kitchen.

David Whitley: Brenton Cox Jr. back on Florida Gators defense ready to work and with sack record in mind

More Whitley: For Billy Napier, building new culture for Florida football begins with strength coach Mark Hocke | Whitley

Listen in to latest podcast: GatorSports: For Florida Gators football there is no time to waste in spring

Her title is actually director of sports nutrition football. When Billy Napier was introduced as head coach, he said hed bring in an army to help revive the Gators program. And you know what they say about that?

An army marches on its stomach.

Napoleon supposedly coined the phrase 200 years ago, long before Nick Saban started hiring individual chefs for offense, defense and special teams. Whether its the French Imperial Army trying to take over Europe or Napiers army trying to capture the SEC, it all begins with happy bellies.

Based on early reviews, the Gators' bellies are very happy with Gomes.

Shes a rock star, strength coach Mark Hocke said.

She like oil for a car, Demarkcus Bowman tweeted, so without that oil that car aint gonna crank.

David Whitley: For Billy Napier, building new culture for Florida football begins with strength coach Mark Hocke | Whitley

Gomes was hired from North Carolina, where she was in charge of 28 sports. Shed worked as an assistant nutritionist here during Will Muschamps days, but what really attracted her back was the singularity of her mission.

Its all football, though Florida has five nutritionists for other sports. Gomes could also hire two full-time assistants just for football.

The whole sports nutrition business has exploded in the past decade. Part of it is advances in science and technology, and better understanding of how a good diet leads to better performance.

And part of it is the insatiable SEC desire to seek even the slightest advantage over the next guy. Thats why Georgia has a director of nutrition, a performance chef for football and a culinary services manager for football.

For all we know, Saban really might have 14 quality-control nutritionists. Whatever the case, weve certainly come a long way from the days when a guy in an apron slung mashed potatoes onto trays at the mess hall.

Latest from practice: Quick takeaways from Florida Gators' ninth of 15 spring practices under Billy Napier

Gomes conducted a body-mass scan on each player to find their fat vs. lean mass ratios, consulted with the strength coaches, position coaches and training staffs and came up with individual meal plans.

She prefers that term instead of diet, which conjures visions of Jenny Craig and pretending your stomach isnt grumbling at 110 decibels for a slice of pizza.

Ive always had this approach that all foods fit, Gomes said.

She told players shes not here to send them into Twinkie detox. Its all about eating a well-balanced meal plan with the right combination of fiber, proteins, antioxidants and all that other stuff you can read on the labels of vitamin bottles.

I dont want them to feel guilt or shame about eating a certain type of food, Gomes said.

She does emphasize the benefits of eating certain types of food. That way, a player understands how eating a bowl of blueberries will help alleviate aching muscles after a three-hour practice.

She came in and she got it instantly, Dexter said. She didnt waste any time.

D-line: Florida Gators defensive line in development, with new players and a new leader in Sean Spencer

He told Gomes what his goals were. She had a meal plan ready the next day. Dexter said hes leaner and meaner this spring than hes been since arriving in Gainesville.

Its all Miss Kelsee, he said. I cant give no credit to myself.

Gomes doesnt do the actual cooking. She designs the menus for the football chefs to whip up, then she makes sure everybody follows their orders.

Our team really likes vegetables, Gomes said. And we have a lot of fruit guys, too.

Napier has made breakfast mandatory, so two of Gomes assistants check attendance every morning. Napiers also into visual reminders, so Gomes has put individualized signs in every locker.

They say things like, More Muscle Mass or Maintain Muscle Mass.

Its all just another component in Napiers grand plan. Every school has stepped up its nutrition game, so Florida really had no choice.

But if an army marches only as well as their stomachs feel, the Gators should eventually gopretty far.

David Whitley is The Gainesville Sun's sports columnist. Contact him at dwhitley@gannett.com. And follow him on Twitter: @DavidEWhitley

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Florida football nutritionist getting rave reviews: What's she got cooking for the Gators? - Gatorsports.com

04/04/2022 - Nataa Urban's CPH:DOX-winning film is a multi-layered exploration of collective and personal memory and responsibility with a remarkable stylistic approach

Serbian-born, Oslo-based director Nataa Urban's documentary The Eclipse, which has just won the main award at CPH:DOX, is a remarkable exploration of collective and personal memory and responsibility. Combining 16mm and manipulated Super 8 footage with an exquisite analogue, tape modulation-dominated soundtrack, the director has created a multi-layered work that resonates on several distinctive levels.

Urban hails from the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, which is populated by a dozen ethnic groups, with her own grandmother being Romanian. It has a very different atmosphere than that of Belgrade or central Serbia, with its flatlands and low hills and focus on agriculture: pets and farm animals feature prominently in the film, with a special accent on pig slaughter as a symbol of violence, one of its main themes.

As the documentary opens with images of landscapes in the soft morning light, the viewer experiences a stillness that will soon be contrasted with an exploration of painful memories. The whole film relies on this often unnerving dichotomy, but the viewing experience is surprisingly smooth, much to the credit of DoP Ivan Markovi and editor Jelena Maksimovi.

Urban left Serbia decades ago, and as she says in the voice-over, never looked back. But she came upon her father's hiking journal, and started connecting the dates and entries with key events from the 1990s. She gets her father to retrace his steps, and we watch the slender, grey-bearded man as he walks through forests, villages and hills, and listen to him reading out those old sentences.

The first date is 24 November 1990. While Dad was visiting the village of erevi, a narrative title informs us that the Golubinka pit in Croatia was opened, revealing the remains of 600 Serbian victims killed by the Ustae in the Second World War. The TV footage shows Orthodox priests saying prayers over skulls and bones, which came to be heavily used in the Serbian propaganda of the 1990s.

Similarly, Urban counterpoints the beginning of the war in Croatia and the bloody siege of Vukovar, the first democratic protests in Serbia, the siege of Sarajevo, Srebrenica, and the NATO bombing of Serbia, with her father's diary entries that seem to come from another world. Yet despite his self-imposed isolation from these events, the war is gradually closing in on him as well.The story of the family climbing Caucasus in 1995, when Sarajevo was still under siege, or a their photo on the mountain top of Magli in Bosnia with a Yugoslav flag in 1991, when the war in Croatia was raging, are jarringly ambivalent.

Interviews with the director's family and friends make a trajectory from happy memories of the pre-war days to those of the strikingly sad and brutal events of the 1990s. To reflect those times, Urban filmed on Super 8, which was then processed to get the texture of a particular era. This simulated archive footage has a profound effect when coupled with Svenn Jakobsen's atmospheric sound design and the haunting score by Bill Gould and Jared Blum which appropriately nods to William Basinski's "Disintegration Loops," one of music's most potent explorations of memory.

Underlining the nature of memory makes Urban's confrontational approach to the issue of collective responsibility non-judgmental. When she reminds her mother of the times that she prefers to forget, she is not pointing a finger, rather, she is asking her to look deep inside herself. The solar eclipse in the title is similarly a symbolic framing device which reflects this same duality, which is in fact a singularity: it is possible to simultaneously love a person - or a country - and hold them responsible.

The Eclipse was produced by Norway's Medieoperatrene and the UK's Taskovski Films has the international rights.

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Review: The Eclipse - Cineuropa

Image via Ubisoft/@kirill_vision

This week has seen surprise showings in all four regions as the league portion of Stage 1 began in Europe and North America. During these games, we saw some remarkable plays and standout flops, so lets take a look at some of the numbers that drove this weeks results.

A few playdays into the season, theres been a number of standout players across all four regions.

The biggest surprise of the 2022 season so far has been the performance of w7m esports which currently sits on top of the BR6 table. In two weeks they've already scored more points than stage three. This success can be attributed largely to their two new rookies, Gabriel "volpz" Fernandes and Joo "Jv92" Vitor, with the former player being the third-highest rated player in BR6 so far.

Volpz, who turned 18 last August, spent last year on Team Singularity with whom he finished the Challenger League in sixth place. Now in the BR6, he got six kills to just one death in w7ms 7-0 victory over MIBR, got 10 kills to five deaths in his 7-3 debut against FaZe, and was instrumental in their 8-7 win over FURIA. He secured a 1.54 rating compared to his nearest teammate on 0.84 during the FURIA win. His lone weak game came during yesterdays 7-3 victory over Liquid where he sat on a 0.88 rating.

While they still have notable games against NiP and 00 Nation yet to go, w7m now looks set to qualify for the Six Major on the back of their rookies, a remarkable accomplishment for an organization whos best prior result in the BR6 was seventh place during the 2020 season.

Also of note in Latin America is Black Dragons sole pickup during the transfer window, Felipe "nade" S. Despite having extremely limited prior experience he currently sits as the best player in BR6 after four games with a rating of 1.39, 0.01 ahead of the back-to-back player of the year, Luccas Paluh Molina.

He notched a 1.52 rating in Black Dragons 7-4 victory over FaZe Clan, 1.27 against INTZ, 1.34 against MIBR, and a 1.40 rating against Liquid in which his closest teammate was at 0.74.

Onto in North America, Oxygens Ethan "Nuers" James achieved a 1.54 SiegeGG Rating in his very first professional game against the newly crowned world champions, TSM FTX. He then dropped down to a 0.91 rating against Astralis, however, he kept an even kill, death ratio.

Jameson "KoolAid" Lancaster, meanwhile, secured a 1.26 rating across his two games, just 0.01 over Nuers. This came from a 1.42 rating during Parabellums victory over Soniqs and 1.13 rating during their 5-7 loss to beastcoast. KoolAid was also the teams main planter and primarily played Castle on defense.

Over in Europe, it was the recent Challenger League victors and Six Invitational attendees, Fatih "Solotov" Trker and Josh "Yuzus" Pritchard, from MNM Gaming who attracted the most attention. They averaged ratings of 1.35 and 1.31 respectively.

Despite MNM losing both of their games 4-7 against G2 Esports and HEROIC, these two players performing significantly better than the rest of the MNM roster. Regionally, their closest counterparts have been Ben "CTZN" McMillan from G2 who has averaged a rating of 1.32, and HEROICs Jake "Sloth" Brown whos at 1.65, both of which theyve already played.

Finally, APAC North and South have had one rookie of note each, Juwan "Mephi" Park from T1 and Kyro from Wildcard.

Starting with Mephi, the player joined T1 to replace the teams stand-in coach after turning 18 years old just last October. Since then, despite having no competitive experience at any tier, hes helped T1 to currently reach third place in the APAC North standings following three wins in a row over SANDBOX, CYCLOPS, and Fnatic.

Kyro joined Wildcard Gaming after a year in various national-tier tournaments. He currently leads the team by rating after five games which include two wins over Knights and FURY. His best performance so far came against Elevate in which a 1.6 rating and 2.0 kill death ratio werent enough to stop a 4-7 defeat.

While both of these players' respective ratings arent as high as the other rookies, they both sit within the top five players by rating in their division as they lead their team closer to an APAC Playoff appearance after fighting off relegation in January.

While Europe, North America, and Brazil all have an attack win rate between 47% and 50%, both APAC North and South sit well below, at 40.09% and 39.71% respectively.

For comparison, during Stage 3, APAC had a combined attack win rate of 48.38%. Furthermore, even if you exclude the three new maps as well as Coastline, the drop is still from 47.52% to 40.43%.

Fairing the worst is Fnatic with a win rate of just 19.35% with six wins in 31 rounds while FURY and Renatus in APAC South are tied on 22.22%, both with six wins in 27 rounds. Fnatic is particularly odd as they sit with a very high 73.08% defensive win rate which has kept their APAC League hopes alive for this stage. This shows they can perform, but are stumbling on attack.

If you exclude these three teams from the total count the regions win rate does rise to 44.64%, however, this is still much lower than seen in the three other regions.

While it took some time for teams to take a liking to Osa, the newest operator added to the competitive Rainbow Six Siege, Thorn, has had more success. Already shes become the go-to defensive operator for Astralis David "iconic" Ifidon, FURIAs Thiago "Handyy" Ferreira, and T1s Wonil "iLeven" Cha, peaking with a 13% pick rate in APAC North.

While its still too early to make any concrete conclusions about the operator's competitive viability, it is very clear that she fits into a roaming roam. This is as iconic and handyy previously played Melusi and Jager over the last two stages while iLeven played Mozzie and Alibi, all of which fit into this role type.

Looking into her success rate, Thorn was brought five times by Iconic on Skyscraper, winning all five attempts with 11 kills to three deaths. T1 meanwhile brought her 11 times, winning eight of them, with four of five wins on Oregon, one out of three on Villa, and two out of two wins on Skyscraper. Finally, handyy brought Thorn 10 times winning six of them, half of which came on Skyscraper.

This is a really good success rate for the new operator so early on, meaning by the time we reach Stage 2 she may become a much more common sight.

While Theme Parks removal from the competitive map pool at the beginning of year six led to some vocal complaints by professional players, its reintroduction at this stage has not led to teams picking it back up.

So far across all five main leagues it has been played just twice -- TALON vs DWG during playday three of APAC North and Oxygen vs TSM during playday one of the NAL -- out of 80 matches so far this stage.

In comparison, the two other new maps to the pool, Border, and Skyscraper, have both been played in all five leagues with Border being the joint-most played in the BR6 while Skyscraper is the joint-most played in APAC North.

Somewhat interestingly, Kafe has just a single extra pick than Theme Park with just three plays despite it being the most played map at the 2022 Six Invitational.

While it is unclear why teams around the world are choosing to avoid the map for now, teams should be familiar with how the map works as it has been unchanged since it was last in the pool. This means its likely that well see it a lot more at the Six Major as it would take less preparation for teams to learn the map andwould be a good surprise pick in best of threes.

Kafe meanwhile has been so played out so much in recent seasons that, similar to Oregon before its rework, teams have likely stopped playing it due to its repetitive nature.

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Stats of the Week: Debuts impress in all regions as nade, volpz, and Solotov give top performances - SiegeGG

In 2019, my colleagues and I discovered spooky glowing rings in the sky using CSIROs ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia. The rings were unlike anything seen before, and we had no idea what they were.

We dubbed them odd radio circles, or ORCs. They continue to puzzle us, but new data from South Africas MeerKAT telescope are helping us solve the mystery.

We can now see each ORC is centered on a galaxy too faint to be detected earlier. The circles are most likely enormous explosions of hot gas, about a million light years across, emanating from the central galaxy.

Our paper showing these results has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

We now have beautiful images of one of these rings taken with South Africas MeerKAT radio telescope, which shows the ORC in stunning detail. MeerKAT sees a small blob of radio emission in the center of the ring, which is coincident with a distant galaxy. We are now fairly certain this galaxy generated the ORC.

We see these central galaxies in other ORCs too, all at vast distances from Earth. We now think that these rings surround distant galaxies about a billion light years away, which means the rings are enormousaround a million light years across.

From modeling the faint cloudy radio emission that MeerKAT detects within the rings, it seems the rings are the edges of a spherical shell surrounding the galaxy, like a blast wave from a giant explosion in the galaxy. They look like rings instead of orbs only because the sphere appears brighter at the edges where there is more material along the line of sight, much like a soap bubble.

MeerKAT has also mapped the polarization of the radio waves, which tells us about the magnetic field in the ring. Our polarization image shows a magnetic field running along the edge of the sphere.

This suggests that an explosion in the central galaxy caused a hot blast to collide with the tenuous gas outside the galaxy. The resulting shock wave then energized electrons in the gas, making them spiral around the magnetic field, generating radio waves.

Lines around the edge of the ORC show the direction of the magnetic field. A circular magnetic field like this indicates it has been compressed by a shock wave from the central galaxy. Created by Larry Rudnick from MeerKAT data.

One big surprise from the MeerKAT result is that within the ring we see several curved filaments of radio emission. We still dont know what these are.

But we do know that the sphere is so huge that it has swallowed up other galaxies as it blasted out from the central galaxy. Perhaps the filaments are trails of gas ripped off the galaxies by the passing shock wave?

The big question, of course, is what caused the explosion. We are exploring two possibilities.

One is that they were caused by the merging of two supermassive black holes. Such a merger event releases an enormous amount of energy, enough to generate the ORC.

Another possibility is that the central galaxy went through a starburst event, in which millions of stars were suddenly born from the gas in the galaxy. Such a starburst causes hot gas to blast out from the galaxy, causing a spherical shock wave.

Both black hole mergers and starburst events are rare, which accounts for why ORCs are so rare (only five have so far been reported).

The puzzle of ORCs is not solved yet, and we still have much to learn about these mysterious rings in the sky. So far, we have only detected them with radio telescopeswe see nothing from the rings at optical, infrared, or X-ray wavelengths.

To find out more, we need a tool even more sensitive than MeerKAT and ASKAP. Fortunately, the global astronomical community is building just such an observatorythe Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an international effort with telescopes in South Africa and Australia.

ASKAP and MeerKAT were built to test the sites and technology for the SKA. Quite apart from their role as precursors for the SKA, both telescopes have been hugely successful in their own right, making major discoveries in their first years of operation.

Their success in discovering and studying ORCs therefore bodes well for the SKA.

The two telescopes are also beautifully complementaryASKAP is superb at surveying large areas of sky and finding new objects, while MeerKAT is unrivalled for zooming in on those objects and studying them with higher sensitivity and resolution.

The SKA promises to surpass both. No doubt the SKA will find many more ORCs, and will also be able to probe them to find out what they are telling us about the lifecycle of galaxies.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Jayanne English, using data from MeerKAT and the Dark Energy Survey

Originally posted here:

'Odd Radio Circles' That Baffled Astronomers Are Likely Explosions From Distant Galaxies - Singularity Hub