thanks Ian & Astrum; contents like these, should be more on the internet 🤩🤟
1 month ago | 13
Really love the news letter. If anyone else wants to stay up to date with the latest news and discoveries of space I highly recommend signing up to this. You won’t regret it!
1 month ago
| 15
Wonderful newsletter Ian! I love all your sci fi movies in that list (and also Blade Runner, Alien, The 1984 Dune & Ad Astra)
1 month ago | 1
Nam mô cao đài tiên ông đại bồ tát ma ha tát thường hằng Nam mô cao đài tiên ông đại bồ tát ma ha tát thường hằng Nam mô cao đài tiên ông đại bồ tát ma ha tát thường hằng Nam mô a di đà phật hằng tâm
1 month ago | 0
I first subscribed to it about 4 weeks ago (maybe sooner? Who knows). They’ve been great so far!
1 month ago | 1
The Chronicles of Riddick ; Back to the Future , and someone mentioned Alien .
1 month ago | 0
What does “inescapable collapse” mean to a human’s physiology?
1 month ago | 0
I DIDN'T KNOW THERE WAS A NEWSLETTER!! Automatically subscribed. P.S.: If I recall correctly, the universe is around 13.7 Billion years old
1 month ago
| 4
The 21st Century has had some great sci-fi movies: Interstellar Arrival Gravity The Martian Inception
1 month ago | 0
Astrum
Hello everyone, Ian here!
For the past few months, I have been writing the weekly Astrum newsletter, rounding up all the most exciting news from space.
The feedback has been really positive, so this week I'm sharing the newsletter on the community tab so that no one misses it.
If you want the newsletter in all its glory, with links to sources, stunning images, and our bonus segments, just subscribe here:
astrumspace.kit.com/a94e725f37
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ASTRUM NEWSLETTER 4/SEP/2025
Hi there and happy Thursday.
I have spent the past week recovering from a wisdom tooth removal, which meant a lot of time in front of the TV. That turned out to be a bit of a blessing, because I got to rewatch Interstellar, in which black holes feature front and center.
It reminded me of how much I love sci-fi epics, so today I want to share a list of a few of my favorites:
Arrval, Foundation, The Martian, Dune I & II, Blade Runner 2049, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
As you can tell, I love Denis Villeneuve. Reply and let me know if any classics are missing!
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NEWS
🕳️ ANCIENT BLACK HOLE DISCOVERED
🌌 NASA ADVANCES PHOTON SENSORS
🪐 JUNO SPOTS CALLISTO FOOTPRINT
☀️ SOLAR FLARES FAR HOTTER
✨ ORIGIN OF FAST WHITE DWARFS
📡 RADIO WAVES FROM GRAVITY
ANCIENT BLACK HOLE DISCOVERED.
Cambridge scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope identified a 50 million solar mass black hole known as QSO1 dating back 13 billion years. Its sparse halo and pristine hydrogen-helium composition suggest it formed moments after the big bang, supporting the long-theorized but never confirmed primordial black hole scenario.
NASA ADVANCES PHOTON SENSORS.
NASA announced progress in single-photon CMOS sensor technology led by Rochester Institute of Technology. The sensors, vital for the upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory, aim to detect faint atmospheric biosignatures on distant exoplanets. Tests confirm radiation tolerance, low noise, and promising near-infrared prototypes to enable future life-detection missions.
JUNO SPOTS CALLISTO FOOTPRINT.
The Juno spacecraft confirmed Jupiter's Moon Callisto’s elusive auroral signature during its 22nd orbit in September 2019. The faint footprint appeared when a solar wind surge shifted Jupiter’s main oval, finally completing the set of auroras from all four Galilean moons. Though the observations were old, findings were just published September 1, 2025, by Jonas Rabia’s team.
SOLAR FLARES FAR HOTTER.
University of St Andrews researchers reported in Astrophysical Journal Letters that solar flare ions can exceed 60 million degrees, about 6.5 times hotter than electrons. Led by Dr. Alexander Russell, the study explains unusually broad spectral lines, resolving a decades-old mystery about flare heating and plasma behavior.
ORIGIN OF FAST WHITE DWARFS.
Technion researchers reported in Nature Astronomy that hypervelocity white dwarfs arise from mergers of rare hybrid helium–carbon–oxygen stars. Their simulations show one star detonates while ejecting the other at over 2000 km per second. The findings explain runaway stars like J0546 and J0927 and link them to unusual Type Ia supernovae.
RADIO WAVES FROM GRAVITY.
Chinese researchers propose neutron stars’ magnetic fields can convert very high frequency gravitational waves into detectable radio signals. The study, published September 4 in The Astrophysical Journal, outlines how telescopes like FAST and SKA could pick up transient and persistent signatures. Detecting them would probe primordial black holes and test quantum field theory.
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ASTRUM ANSWERS
"How far fetched is the scene entering a black hole in Interstellar? Could a person get that close to a black hole?"
Ian, NYC (Yes, I asked this one, sharing the answer).
The black hole in question (Gargantua) is supermassive, and so it would have weak tidal forces at its event horizon, making survival up to that point plausible.
The visuals of the warped accretion disk and the extreme time dilation near its gravity well are also grounded in Einstein’s general relativity, and this was modeled with input from physicist Kip Thorne.
All that said, once inside the event horizon physics predicts inescapable collapse, not survival in a higher-dimensional tesseract.
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STARWATCH
Keep an eye out for the full moon, coming up on September 7th!
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QUIZ
The black hole we discovered might be as old as the universe, but how old is the universe estimated to be?
Reply and let us know your answer!
All the best,
Ian, Astrum Team
1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 1,885