South Africa lead the series 1-0 (Image Source: X/@ProteasMenCSA)
What’s the story
England will take on South Africa in the second T20I of the three-match series at Old Trafford in Manchester.
The match is scheduled for Friday, September 12.
In the first match, rain played a major role as England fell short by 14 runs according to Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method while chasing a target of 69 runs in five overs.
Here are the details and stats.
Can South Africa continue their winning momentum?
Despite the rain-affected match, South Africa emerged victorious in the first T20I.
The Aiden Markram-led side will be looking to continue their winning streak and seal the series with another victory on Friday.
However, they may have to do without Keshav Maharaj who sustained a groin injury just before the last fixture.
England, who lost the ODI series, will want to get the job done and stay afloat in the series.
A look at pitch report and conditions
The Old Trafford surface is known to be high-scoring but not entirely flat. It provides good bounce and carry, allowing batters to play their shots freely.
However, bowlers who can vary their pace with slower deliveries and cutters can also find success on this pitch.
Traditionally, chasing teams have had the upper hand at this venue as its conditions remain consistent throughout the match.
A look at head-to-head record
England and South Africa have faced each other in 27 T20Is so far.
Out of these, England have won 12 matches while South Africa has emerged victorious in 14 encounters. One match ended with no result.
As per ESPNcricinfo, in 11 matches on English soil, the hosts have picked up 4 wins with the Proteas winning 6. One game was a no result.
Predicted starting XI of both sides
England probable XI: Philip Salt, Jos Buttler (wk), Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook (c), Sam Curran, Tom Banton, Will Jacks, Jamie Overton, Liam Dawson, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid. South Africa probable XI: Aiden Markram (c), Ryan Rickelton (wk), Lhuan-dre Pretorius, Dewald Brevis, Tristan Stubbs, Donovan Ferreira, Marco Jansen, Corbin Bosch, Kagiso Rabada, Kwena Maphaka, Lizaad Williams.
A look at the key stats
In 138 T20I matches, Buttler owns 3,725 runs from 127 innings at 35.81. He has 27 fifties and a ton.
Salt, who resgistered his 5th duck in the 1st T20I, averages 33.13 with 1,193 runs under his belt.
In 128 matches, England spinner Rashid has bagged 136 scalps at 24.44.
Aiden Markram is 41 runs shy of becoming the 6th-highest scorer for SA in T20Is.
Dewald Brevis owns a strike rate of 193.75 in T20Is.
Leaders of Nepal’s “Gen Z” protest movement are continuing to meet with the army to discuss appointing an interim leader to run the country as an uneasy calm descends on the country after days of deadly violence.
Nepal’s capital remains under tight security after riots forced Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to resign.
Schools are still closed, while some essential services have resumed following protests against corruption, economic stagnation, and the government’s short-lived social media ban.
An army spokesperson said talks would resume.
In a statement, Nepal’s President Ramchandra Paudel appealed to all parties involved in negotiations “to be confident that a solution to the problem is being sought as soon as possible to address the demands of the protesting citizens”.
A name emerges for interim leader
Attention has turned to who will lead an interim administration.
Protesters have rallied behind Sushila Karki, a former chief justice of the Supreme Court widely seen as independent of Nepal’s political establishment.
“The clear favourite emerging from the Gen Z protesters is Sushila Karki, Nepal’s former chief justice. I think this is an excellent choice,” said Bishal Sapkota, a Nepalese software engineer living in Australia.
“During her tenure, she demonstrated remarkable independence, making Supreme Court decisions without aligning to any major political parties and earning widespread respect from citizens, while being resented by the political establishment.”
Bishal Sapkota is among those calling or the former supreme justice to lead Nepal through its transition. (Supplied: Bishal Sapkota)
Protesters say her legal background and reputation for integrity make her the right person to oversee a transition.
“She’s well-spoken, down-to-earth, embodies Nepali values, and brings deep knowledge of Nepal’s constitution and political system — exactly what’s needed for this transitional moment,” Mr Sapkota said.
Ms Karki’s appointment could be formally made as soon as Friday following a meeting at President Ramchandra Paudel’s residence, according to a Gen Z source involved in the talks.
A director of an international NGO in Kathmandu, who asked not to be named due to the sensitive situation, also praised the young organisers as they entered negotiations.
“I think what they have done is tremendous. We haven’t seen this before — tens of thousands of people on social media debating who should be the right candidate to be the interim leader,” he said.
“The strength of the constitution is it’s inclusive. It’s federal. The power is very close to the people. We have 753 local governments.”
“It’s quite a liberal democracy in terms of what is written in the constitution but the challenge is that people are disgruntled because these 70-plus leaders never wanted to leave their seats to the younger generation.
“So you have had three senior leaders who have been holding, clinching on to the power for the last 30 years and that has promoted nepotism.”
Kathmandu mayor gains support
Some Gen Z activists have floated Balendra Shah, the 35-year-old mayor of Kathmandu, as a potential leader.
A civil engineer, Mr Shah studied in Nepal and India before entering politics.
He has led anti-corruption drives, pursued tax cases against private schools, and pushed for stronger oversight of public education.
Yet Mr Shah himself has endorsed Ms Karki as interim leader, according to local media.
“I don’t think he wants to be interim leader — I think he wants to be a leader for the longer term in my view,” the INGO director said.
Balendra Shah is also a former rap artist and composer. (Reuters: Stringer)
Ms Karki, Nepal’s first female chief justice when appointed in 2016, remains the frontrunner for what some are calling a Neutral Interim Authority Council.
But she still has her critics.
“The Nepal army and a few others may have reservations, as she was nominated by the former prime minister who just resigned,” the INGO director explained.
“But the majority are saying she is the most credible, with a clean record, to lead the process despite divided opinion.”
For many younger protesters, consensus has not yet been reached.
A 26-year-old woman who joined the demonstrations in Kathmandu, who asked not to be named due to safety concerns, was concerned that the uncertainty would open the door to royalist influence.
“If we go beyond the constitution, we create a vacuum — and that’s where the monarchy could step in. For us, the constitution is our strongest safeguard,” she said.
Decentralised protests organised online
Unlike earlier protest waves, this movement has been loosely organised across multiple cities rather than directed by a single group.
Organisers relied on platforms such as Discord, where channels with up to 10,000 participants have been active in recent days.
“This was an organic, decentralised protest across multiple cities — not a centrally organised movement,” Bishal Sapkota explained.
“Frankly, the protesters didn’t expect the government to fall within just two days, so they were somewhat unprepared for this rapid success.”
Nepal’s parliament will also need to be repaired after it was set ablaze in the unrest.
(Reuters: Adnan Abidi)
He said attention had shifted to charting the next steps.
“They’re actively consulting with industry leaders, lawyers, and experts to determine the best path forward and restore normal governance as quickly as possible,” he said.
The 26-year-old protester said the lack of a single leader was deliberate.
“In our generation, nobody is saying ‘I’ll take this leadership position’. We genuinely want the right people to lead, not just someone hungry for power,” she said.
“Of course, part of it is fear, but part of it is that we want the process to be collective.”
Army’s crackdown under scrutiny
The upheaval has left visible scars across Kathmandu.
Parts of parliament were charred by fire, several ministers’ homes were attacked, and vehicles lay burnt out near government offices.
Mr Oli’s private residence was also set ablaze during the clashes.
The army said curfew orders would remain in place until Friday morning, warning that further unrest would be met with “strict action”.
Yet there were signs of life returning to normal.
Television images showed young volunteers sweeping debris from streets near parliament and clearing rubble from damaged buildings.
The clean-up from the riots is expected to take some time. (Reuters: Navesh Chitrakar)
But some protesters questioned the army’s handling of the crisis.
“The second day became really violent — many doctors said those on the streets seemed under the influence. Yet the army only imposed a curfew late at night,” the 26-year-old woman told the ABC.
“We are curious why they delayed stepping in. It feels like the army is deliberately dragging this process.”
The army said it would continue working with protesters through talks.
“We are trying to normalise the situation first. We are committed to protect the life and property of people,” said army spokesman Raja Ram Basnet.
Questions of outside interference linger
Alongside street clashes, fears of outside interference and online manipulation have unsettled protesters.
The 26-year-old said she and others had seen signs of infiltration.
“This was supposed to be a peaceful protest. How is it possible that in two days so many goons appeared on the streets? We believe Hindutva forces in India and pro-monarchy factions here are trying to take advantage of the situation,” she said.
She described attempts to hijack the movement online.
“A lot of Facebook pages that used to call themselves Hindu groups have suddenly renamed themselves with Gen Z titles and are pushing royalist agendas. It’s a strategy to manipulate young people who never lived under the monarchy.”
Indian media narratives have also fuelled suspicion.
“Some posters are even trying to suggest Nepalese want Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi as our prime minister. That is not what we want. We want change, but within democratic and constitutional norms,” she said.
Elections could be held within six months, according to some analysts, but protesters say much depends on the interim government.
“I want Nepal to be led by a team that is genuinely free from corruption — leaders the people can trust, aligned with Nepali values and interests, regardless of their background,” Mr Sapkota said.
In sport, sometimes there is no better way to prepare for a fierce rivalry than watching reruns or reading summaries of previous heart-stopping encounters.
And in cricket, there is no bigger rivalry than India vs Pakistan.
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The sport’s history is embellished with historic India-Pakistan clashes at every tournament and in every decade.
With the teams set to meet again in the T20 Asia Cup 2025, Al Jazeera Sport picks the three India-Pakistan Asia Cup classics you must revisit before Sunday’s encounter:
2010: Harbhajan is a last-over hero with the bat
The 2010 edition of the Asia Cup was a four-team tournament played entirely in Dambulla, Sri Lanka, where all teams played a round-robin group stage, with the top two progressing to the final.
India beat Bangladesh while Pakistan lost to Sri Lanka, making their June 19 encounter a must-win for the Shahid Afridi-led side.
Pakistan opened with a 71-run partnership between Salman Butt and Imran Farhat. A par total of 267 followed the regular fall of wickets thereafter. India’s fast-medium seamer Praveen Kumar picked up three wickets, but it was Ravindra Jadeja’s left-arm spin that kept Pakistan in check.
Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag opened the batting for India’s chase, and while Sehwag fell after an uncharacteristically slow innings, Gambhir kept going as captain MS Dhoni chipped in with a half-century.
India seemed well set before Pakistan’s spinners struck in the last third of their innings. Gambhir, Rohit Sharma, Dhoni and Jadeja fell in quick succession, leaving India reeling at 219-6 with 49 runs required off 29 balls.
Lower-order batter Suresh Raina had the responsibility to take India home alongside off-spinner Harbhajan Singh. Raina hit Ajmal for 12 off 4 before three economical overs from Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Amir.
With eight runs to defend in the final over, Amir made a near-perfect start as Raina ran a single. In a desperate attempt to get back on strike, Raina had a mix-up with Harbhajan and was run out, giving Pakistan the upper hand. India needed seven off four, with Kumar facing Amir. A double and a single brought Harbhajan back on strike for the final two balls.
Harbhajan, who had an altercation with Akhtar a few balls earlier, swung at a length delivery, clearing midwicket for a huge six. The Turbanator then turned towards Akhtar and let out a loud roar as the Indian dressing room celebrated wildly.
India were in the final and Pakistan were nearly out.
Brief scorecard
Pakistan: 267 in 49.3 overs – Salman Butt 74 (85), Kamran Akmal 51 (41); Praveen Kumar 3-53 in 10 overs. India: 271 in 49.5 overs – Gautam Gambhir 83 (97), MS Dhoni 56 (71); Saeed Ajmal 3-56 in 10 overs.
Harbhajan Singh celebrates the win over Pakistan in the Asia Cup in Dambulla [File: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Reuters]
2014: Afridi seals it with two sixes and a kiss
The round-robin format continued for the 2010 tournament in Bangladesh.
By the time India faced Pakistan, both teams had one win and one loss and needed a win to bolster their chances for a spot in the final.
Runs flowed off Rohit Sharma’s bat on a quick Mirpur outfield, and India seemed on their way to a big total despite losing Shikhar Dhawan early. Virat Kohli joined Rohit in smashing the Pakistani pacers.
While Rohit went his merry way, India were dealt a blow when Umar Gul dismissed Kohli for five. Regular wickets slowed India’s scoring rate, but they still posted 245, thanks to a late flourish by Ambati Rayudu and Jadeja.
Pakistan’s top-order, particularly Mohammad Hafeez, gave them a good start to the chase. However, it wasn’t long before India’s spin twins Ravichandran Ashwin and Amit Mishra forced a collapse worthy of Pakistani renown. Four batters were dismissed in the space of 42 runs.
Hafeez began the rebuild with Sohaib Maqsood in an 87-run partnership, but both were dismissed in consecutive overs, leaving Pakistan reeling at 203-6 off 45. Maqsood’s run out, in particular, was a gift for India after a huge mid-pitch mix-up with Shahid Afridi, just after Pakistan took the upper hand.
Afridi, the last recognised batter, was joined by Gul as Pakistan required 43 off 30 with four wickets standing. Every Afridi swing of his bat was met with trepidation as the all-rounder was known for attempting big shots irrespective of the match situation.
At first, he targeted Jadeja, hitting him for a four and a six in the 46th. The following over, from Bhuvneshwar Kumar, also brought two boundaries before Mohammad Shami kept Pakistan quiet in the 48th.
Kumar’s next over, with two wickets and just three runs, all but ended Pakistan’s hopes as Afridi watched on from the non-striker’s end.
The final over was handed to Ashwin, who had taken 2-31 in his nine overs thus far. The wily spinner gave India the perfect start by bowling Ajmal first up. Pakistani fans held their heads in disbelief while India’s celebrated wildly.
Junaid Khan was last in, and he played a perfect dab to pinch a single, bringing Afridi back on strike.
With nine needed off four, the stadium held its breath knowing Afridi could sway the match either way.
As Ashwin began his delivery stride, Afridi stepped back and swung hard at a short ball. The connection between was by no means ideal, but Afridi’s power cleared the ropes.
Afridi again gave himself room with the ball pitched closer to his body, but when has that ever stopped Afridi from playing a risky shot? Another wild swing skied the ball, but it again cleared the boundary.
Ashwin was all hands-on-head as the Indian team stood in disbelief.
Afridi was all arms lifted wide in his trademark star-man celebration as Junaid embraced him. A delighted Afridi gave Junaid a quick kiss on the cheek before the star all-rounder was mobbed by his teammates.
Brief scorecard
India: 245-8 in 50 overs – Rohit Sharma 56 (58), Ravindra Jadeja 52 (49); Saeed Ajmal 3-40 in 10 overs. Pakistan: 249-9 in 49.4 overs – Mohammad Hafeez 75 (117), Shahid Afridi 34 (18); Ravichandran Ashwin 3-44 in 9.4 overs.
Shahid Afridi celebrates his risky but rewarding run-chase against India in their Asia Cup 2014 match [File: Andrew Biraj/Reuters]
2016: Kohli trumps Amir in low-scoring thriller
The Asia Cup 2016 was the first played as a T20 and produced one-sided group games until India met Pakistan in the fourth match of the round-robin stage.
Pakistan lost Hafeez to the fourth ball of the match.
A poor umpiring decision, with Khurram Manzoor surviving a caught-behind, left India furious. However, Dhoni’s team didn’t have to wait too long for Manzoor’s departure as Afridi’s men continued to struggle on a low-scoring pitch, losing wickets in every other over.
In a total of 83, Sarfaraz Ahmed’s 25 was Pakistan’s only saving grace. Hardik Pandya led the attack with three wickets, but each of India’s bowlers chipped in, including a then-fresh-faced Jasprit Bumrah.
The chase was seemingly simple, given India’s power-packed batting. Mohammad Amir, playing his first Asia Cup since returning to the team following his cricket corruption-linked ban, had other plans.
The left-arm pacer made a near-perfect start, striking Rohit’s toes with a swinging yorker, only for it to be adjudged not out. There was no surviving the following inswinger, which struck the pads.
Kohli was next in to face the pumped-up Amir, swinging the ball to his will. A single switched strike with Ajinkya Rahane’s first ball ending up being his last, Amir swinging the ball back into the right-hander viciously to strike his pads plumb in front.
Amir’s second over, and India’s third, brought more lbw appeals as Kohli was struck on the pads by another skilful delivery that straightened, but failed to impress the umpire. Amir had his reward next ball, as Raina was the man to go, chipping an easy catch to short mid-on.
Kohli and Yuvraj Singh saw out Amir’s spell, nudging towards the target. Kohli, in particular, showed nerves of steel to see off Amir’s scintillating swing.
The Indian batting star soon reaped his reward, however, settling in to take boundaries off all the bowlers, including Amir’s last.
India’s charge was halted in the 15th when Kohli fell on 49, followed by Pandya, but the team total was 76-3. New batter Dhoni and Yuvraj took six more deliveries to finish the job.
India won by five wickets, but the match could have had a nervy finish were it not for Kohli’s brilliance.
Brief scorecard
Pakistan: 83 runs in 17.3 overs – Sarfaraz Ahmed 25 (24); Hardik Pandya 3-8 in 3.3 overs. India: 85-5 runs in 15.3 overs – Virat Kohli 49 (51); Mohammad Amir 3-18 in 4 overs.
Virat Kohli was the anchor of India’s innings in a low-scoring match against Pakistan in the T20 Asia Cup 2016 [AM Ahad/AP]
White dwarfs are the dense, hot cores left behind when Sun like stars die. Imagine squeezing the entire mass of our Sun into something the size of Earth, that’s a white dwarf and our Sun will become one in the distant future. These stellar corpses are incredibly dense, with just a teaspoon weighing as much as a large car.
Most white dwarfs slowly fade away over billions of years, but some have more dramatic fates. A new study authored by a team led bby Dr Hila Glanz from the Technion Institute in Israel focused on rare “hybrid” white dwarfs made of helium, carbon, and oxygen. The team used sophisticated computer simulations to study the merger of two of these dead stars which creates some of the most violent explosions in the universe.
A comparison between the white dwarf IK Pegasi B (centre), its companion IK Pegasi A (left) and the Sun (right). This white dwarf has a surface temperature of 35500 K (Credit : R J Hall)
When two of these hybrid white dwarfs spiral into each other, the result is a catastrophic explosion. As the two stellar corpses merge, the lighter one gets partially torn apart while the heavier one undergoes what has been called the “double detonation explosion.”
This isn’t just any explosion, it’s powerful enough to act like a slingshot, hurling the surviving remains of the lighter star into space at speeds in excess of 2,000 kilometres per second. That’s fast enough to be able to escape the gravitational pull from our entire Galaxy and venture into the vast emptiness of intergalactic space.
This discovery solves a long outstanding puzzle about hypervelocity white dwarfs like J0546 and J0927. Both these stellar remnants have been found to be racing through our Galaxy’s outer regions. All existing models were unable to explain both their incredible speeds and their exceptionally high temperature, unlike typical white dwarfs.
“This is the first time we’ve seen a clean pathway where the remnants of a white dwarf merger can be launched at hypervelocity” – Dr. Glanz Hila Glanz from the Technion Institute in Israel.
These explosive mergers also seem to create unusual types of supernovae that are fainter than usual. Understanding these events helps astronomers use them as “standard candles” to probe cosmic distances and the mysterious force driving the universe’s accelerated expansion. Traditional Type Ia supernovae have been used as standard candles for measuring distances across space because they usually explode with the same brightness. However, these hybrid white dwarf mergers produce a new class of underluminous supernovae that are dimmer and more peculiar than their conventional cousins.
G299, a type Ia supernova remnant (Credit : NASA/CXC/U)
As upcoming surveys like the Vera Rubin Observatory and future Gaia data releases discover more of these stellar remnants racing through space, there will be unprecedented opportunities to study both the violent processes that create them and what they reveal about stellar death and rebirth. By continuing this study it may be possible to piece together the physics of stellar explosions, trace the chemical evolution of galaxies, and even test our understanding of fundamental laws that govern our universe.
Source : New study reveals origin of the fastest white dwarfs in the galaxy
ISLAMABAD: The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) has increased re-gasified liquefied natural gas (RLNG) prices by up to 2.63 per cent for September 2025, citing higher terminal charges as the main reason for the hike.
The revised rates, notified on Thursday, apply to both Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Ltd (SNGPL) and Sui Southern Gas Company Ltd (SSGCL), impacting industrial, commercial and power sector consumers.
The government has recently lifted a ban on new domestic gas connections, which will now be supplied with this imported gas instead of local gas. Their bills will also fluctuate with monthly RLNG price adjustments.
As per the OGRA notification, for SNGPL’s network, the RLNG transmission price has been raised by 2.36 percent to $11.2365 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), while the distribution rate climbed 2.38 percent to $12.0127 per MMBtu compared with August. On SSGCL’s system, both transmission and distribution prices rose 2.63 percent to $9.8619 and $11.0105 per MMBtu, respectively.
The updated prices include all associated costs such as terminal charges, transmission losses, port handling, and Pakistan State Oil’s (PSO) importer margin. The weighted average sale prices are based on eight LNG cargoes received by PSO in September.
Under its two long-term supply deals with Qatar, PSO buys LNG at slopes of 13.37 percent and 10.2 percent of Brent crude prices. Of the eight cargoes delivered, four were procured at the higher rate and other four at the lower one, Ogra said.
The regulator added that the price adjustment was made under government policy guidelines, reflecting global LNG market movements, exchange rate trends, and the cost of local re-gasification and delivery infrastructure.RLNG plays a critical role in Pakistan’s energy mix, bridging the gap between demand and supply as indigenous gas reserves shrink.
Using a powerful combination of the Subaru Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered seven supermassive black hole-powered quasars surrounded by veils of dust that existed when the universe was less than a billion years old.
Supermassive black holes consuming vast amounts of matter and shining as bright quasars while being hidden in thick clouds of dust have long been suspected to exist at an early period in the 13.8 billion-year-old cosmos called “Cosmic Dawn,” but have proved frustratingly elusive.
This is the first detection of hidden but bright quasars in the early universe. It indicates that quasars could actually be twice as common at Cosmic Dawn as previously suspected, researchers said.
“This discovery was only possible with the unique combination of two powerful telescopes,” team leader Yoshiki Matsuoka of Ehime University in Japan said in a statement.
“The Subaru Telescope’s wide and sensitive survey allowed us to spot rare, luminous galaxies, and JWST was able to catch the faint infrared light from the hidden quasars,” Matsuoka added. “This shows how effective the approach of ‘discover with Subaru Telescope, explore with JWST’ can be.”
Quasars at Cosmic Dawn
Supermassive black holes with masses millions or billions of times that of the sun sit at the heart of all galaxies in the modern universe. Not all of these black holes are equal, however. Some, like the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), are quiet because they are not feeding on matter surrounding them.
Others are greedily consuming matter that surrounds them in a flattened, swirling cloud called an accretion disk. The immense gravity of these black holes causes tidal forces in this material that generate intense friction, heating gas and dust in the disk to temperatures as great as millions of degrees. Meanwhile, matter in the disk is channeled to the poles of the supermassive black hole by powerful magnetic fields, from where it is blasted out as near-light-speed jets.
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Both of these processes radiate vast amounts of energy across the electromagnetic spectrum that appear to astronomers from great distances as quasars.
An artist’s impression of the central engine of a quasar — the accretion disk around a supermassive black hole, and the jet of particles being blasted out at nearly the speed of light. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Joseph Olmsted (STScI))
Considering how extreme and violent quasars are, it is no surprise that these supermassive black holes are thought to have played a vital role in shaping galaxies, and thus in the evolution of the universe. Yet there is still some mystery surrounding the formation of early supermassive black holes before the universe was a billion years old.
Thus, astronomers have been diligently hunting for quasars that existed during Cosmic Dawn, a period lasting from around 50 million to one billion years after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies are believed to have formed. If there were a large population of supermassive black holes at this time, scientists reason that they must have formed frequently and widely, as a result of the death of the first-generation stars, just as stellar-mass black holes form today.
However, if the number of supermassive black holes was low at Cosmic Dawn, researchers theorize that these cosmic titans formed only in special circumstances, possibly from the direct collapse of vast clouds of gas and dust.
The brightness of quasars should make these supermassive black holes pretty conspicuous even at vast distances, and indeed, the team behind the new research used the Subaru Telescope to discover over 200 quasars. There’s a hitch, however: Quasars are usually spotted by their ultraviolet emissions, but cosmic dust is a very good absorber of this type of radiation.
That means that emissions from heavily shrouded quasars may fail to reach us, which would then mean that the quasars we detect are only a fraction of the feeding supermassive black holes that existed at Cosmic Dawn.
A diagram illustrating how light from dust-shrouded quasars can reach Earth (Image credit: Yoshiki Matsuoka/NAOJ)
To potentially uncover these hidden quasars, this team turned to a survey conducted with the Hyper Suprime-Cam instrument on the Subaru Telescope (HSC-SSP), looking for very bright galaxies that show signs of high-energy emissions but lack the telltale fingerprints of quasars.
With JWST, they could examine these galaxies in infrared, which left those galaxies as visible light (but was then stretched to longer wavelengths), enabling them to peer through the ultraviolet light-absorbing dust clouds. Using its Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), JWST studied 11 of the most luminous galaxies surveyed by the Subaru Telescope between July 2023 and October 2024.
Seven of these galaxies showed clear signs of a quasar, confirming the first dust-obscured luminous quasars discovered at Cosmic Dawn.
The 11 galaxies studied by JWST, sevem of which showed the telltale signs of a dust-shrouded quasar. (Image credit: Yoshiki Matsuoka/NAOJ/NASA)
Examining the light or “spectra” from these galaxies, the team determined that the quasars are emitting energy equivalent to several trillion suns and are powered by feeding supermassive black holes with masses billions of times that of our star. These characteristics resemble those of unshrouded quasars previously detected at Cosmic Dawn.
The researchers also discovered that the dust surrounding these quasars absorbs around 99.9% of the ultraviolet light they emit and 70% of the visible light they emit. Thus, it is little wonder these cosmic titans have remained so effectively hidden.
The number of quasars over the region of space examined by the team indicate that the population of shrouded quasars is similar to that of unhidden quasars. Thus, the team calculates the population of quasars at Cosmic Dawn to be around double what was previously estimated.
The team now intends to further study these obscured quasars to determine why their environments are so different from those of unshrouded quasars. They also intend to hunt for more shrouded black holes in a wider sample of galaxies that existed in early epochs of the cosmos.
Such work has the potential to reveal the full population of supermassive black holes at Cosmic Dawn, researchers say.
The team’s research was published in the July edition of The Astrophysical Journal.
Buried in an ocean of flashy novelties announced by Apple this week, the tech giant also revealed new security technology for its latest iPhone 17 and iPhone Air devices. This new security technology was made specifically to fight against surveillance vendors and the types of vulnerabilities they rely on the most, according to Apple.
The feature is called Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE) and is designed to help stop memory corruption bugs, which are some of the most common vulnerabilities exploited by spyware developers and makers of phone forensic devices used by law enforcement.
“Known mercenary spyware chains used against iOS share a common denominator with those targeting Windows and Android: they exploit memory safety vulnerabilities, which are interchangeable, powerful, and exist throughout the industry,” Apple wrote in its blog post.
Cybersecurity experts, including people who make hacking tools and exploits for iPhones, tell TechCrunch that this new security technology could make Apple’s newest iPhones some of the most secure devices on the planet. The result is likely to make life harder for the companies that make spyware and zero-day exploits for planting spyware on a target’s phone or extracting data from them.
“The iPhone 17 is probably now the most secure computing environment on the planet that is still connected to the internet,” a security researcher, who has worked on developing and selling zero-days and other cyber capabilities to the U.S. government for years, told TechCrunch.
The researcher told TechCrunch that MIE will raise the cost and time to develop their exploits for the latest iPhones, and consequently up their prices for paying customers.
“This is a huge deal,” said the researcher, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive matters. “It’s not hack proof. But it’s the closest thing we have to hack proof. None of this will ever be 100% perfect. But it raises the stakes the most.”
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Do you develop spyware or zero-day exploits and are studying studying the potential effects of Apple’s MIE? We would love to learn how this affects you. From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.
Jiska Classen, a professor and researcher who studies iOS at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany, agreed that MIE will raise the cost of developing surveillance technologies.
Classen said this is because some of the bugs and exploits that spyware companies and researchers have that currently work will stop working once the new iPhones are out and MIE is implemented.
“I could also imagine that for a certain time window some mercenary spyware vendors don’t have working exploits for the iPhone 17,” said Classen.
“This will make their life arguably infinitely more difficult,” said Patrick Wardle, a researcher who runs a startup that makes cybersecurity products specifically for Apple devices. “Of course that is said with the caveat that it’s always a cat-and-mouse game.”
Wardle said people who are worried about getting hacked with spyware should upgrade to the new iPhones.
The experts TechCrunch spoke to said MIE will reduce the efficacy of both remote hacks, such as those launched with spyware like NSO Group’s Pegasus and Paragon’s Graphite. It will also help to protect against physical device hacks, such as those performed with phone unlocking hardware like Cellebrite or Graykey.
Taking on the “majority of exploits”
Most modern devices, including the majority of iPhones today, run software written in programming languages that are prone to memory-related bugs, often called memory overflow or corruption bugs. When triggered, a memory bug can cause the contents of memory from one app to spill into other areas of a user’s device where it shouldn’t go.
Memory-related bugs can allow malicious hackers to access and control parts of a device’s memory that they shouldn’t be permitted to. The access can be used to plant malicious code that’s capable of gaining broader access to a person’s data stored in the phone’s memory, and exfiltrating it over the phone’s internet connection.
MIE aims to defend against these kinds of broad memory attacks by vastly reducing the attack surface in which memory vulnerabilities can be exploited.
According to Halvar Flake, an expert in offensive cybersecurity, memory corruptions “are the vast majority of exploits.”
MIE is built on a technology called Memory Tagging Extension (MTE), originally developed by chipmaker Arm. In its blog post, Apple said over the past five years it worked with Arm to expand and improve the memory safety features into a product called Enhanced Memory Tagging Extension (EMTE).
MIE is Apple’s implementation of this new security technology, which takes advantage of Apple having complete control of its technology stack, from software to hardware, unlike many of its phone-making competitors.
Google offers MTE for some Android devices; the security-focused GrapheneOS, a custom version of Android, also offers MTE.
But other experts say Apple’s MIE goes a step further. Flake said the Pixel 8 and GrapheneOS are “almost comparable,” but the new iPhones will be “the most secure mainstream” devices.
MIE works by allocating each piece of a newer iPhone’s memory with a secret tag, effectively its own unique password. This means only apps with that secret tag can access the physical memory in the future. If the secret doesn’t match, the security protections kick in and block the request, the app will crash, and the event is logged.
That crash and log is particularly significant since it’s more likely for spyware and zero-days to trigger a crash, making it easier for Apple and security researchers investigating attacks to spot them.
“A wrong step would lead to a crash and a potentially recoverable artifact for a defender,” said Matthias Frielingsdorf, the vice president of research at iVerify, a company that makes an app to protect smartphones from spyware. “Attackers already had an incentive to avoid memory corruption.”
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
MIE will be on by default system wide, which means it will protect apps like Safari and iMessage, which can be entry points for spyware. But third-party apps will have to implement MIE on their own to improve protections for their users. Apple released a version of EMTE for developers to do that.
In other words, MIE is a huge step in the right direction, but it will take some time to see its impact, depending on how many developers implement it and how many people buy new iPhones.
Some attackers will inevitably still find a way.
“MIE is a good thing and it might even be a big deal. It could significantly raise the cost for attackers and even force some of them out of the market,” said Frielingsdorf. “But there are going to be plenty of bad actors that can still find success and sustain their business.”
“As long as there are buyers there will be sellers,” said Frielingsdorf.
Black holes are some of the most extreme mysterious objects in the universe. And when two black holes collide, shockwaves get sent out through the very fabric of space. This weekend, scientists are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first time they ever detected these waves. And as NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce reports, they’ve gotten so good at measuring them, they’ve just been able to test a key idea about black holes first proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: These waves are called gravitational waves. They’re like the ripples in a pond when you throw in a pebble. Max Isi is an astrophysicist at Columbia University. He says the waves move through everything – the Earth, even our own bodies – stretching and squeezing distances.
MAX ISI: At one moment it makes me taller and thinner. The next moment it makes me shorter and fatter.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This is imperceptible to us, of course. Isi says that Albert Einstein, who proposed the existence of these waves, thought they’d never be detected.
ISI: Just because it sounded ludicrous. So I’m sure that if we told him that we are detecting gravitational waves from colliding black holes every two or three days or so, it would have been mind-blowing to him.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Yet that is just what researchers have been doing in recent years, with two enormous detectors known as LIGO. One is in Washington state. The other is in Louisiana. These facilities send lasers down 2 1/2-mile tubes to detect the tiny squeeze and stretch that occurs when a gravitational wave rolls through. Their first detection was back on September 14, 2015. The waves came from two black holes that circled each other and then merged.
Gabriela Gonzalez is a gravitational wave researcher with Louisiana State University. She says they initially expected LIGO would sense a bunch of extreme cosmic events other than black hole collisions.
GABRIELA GONZALEZ: But since then, it’s almost the only thing we have seen.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Hundreds of pairs of colliding black holes have been registered by the LIGO detectors. Katerina Chatziioannou is a physicist at Caltech. She says earlier this year, they logged the strongest signal to date – two black holes, each about 30 times the mass of the sun, merging together about 1.3 billion light-years from Earth.
KATERINA CHATZIIOANNOU: It looks very similar to the black holes that created the first signal 10 years ago.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: What’s different now is that over the years, LIGO’s equipment has been upgraded and improved.
CHATZIIOANNOU: Because the detectors are so much better today, we can record the signal so much more clearly.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That let them test some major theories about black holes, like a famous prediction that Stephen Hawking made in 1971 about the area of a black hole.
CHATZIIOANNOU: Which says that the event horizon of a black hole – the region beyond which nothing can escape from the black hole – only grows with time.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This is exactly what they saw when they analyzed this particular burst of gravitational waves. Max Isi says, to him, it’s really striking.
ISI: All of these ideas that people had thought up in the ’70s, thinking it was just idle speculation, now they are manifested in actual way that we see these things happening.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Gravitational wave researchers have plans for the next 10 years. They want bigger and more powerful detectors, assuming they can get the money to build them. Funding for the existing detectors is currently under threat, with the Trump administration proposing steep cuts for 2026.
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Researchers have spent 10 years improving the massive detectors they use to catch shockwaves from colliding black holes. Now the science is precise enough to test one of Stephen Hawking’s key ideas.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Black holes are some of the most extreme mysterious objects in the universe. And when two black holes collide, shockwaves get sent out through the very fabric of space. This weekend, scientists are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first time they ever detected these waves. And as NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce reports, they’ve gotten so good at measuring them, they’ve just been able to test a key idea about black holes first proposed by physicist Stephen Hawking.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: These waves are called gravitational waves. They’re like the ripples in a pond when you throw in a pebble. Max Isi is an astrophysicist at Columbia University. He says the waves move through everything – the Earth, even our own bodies – stretching and squeezing distances.
MAX ISI: At one moment it makes me taller and thinner. The next moment it makes me shorter and fatter.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This is imperceptible to us, of course. Isi says that Albert Einstein, who proposed the existence of these waves, thought they’d never be detected.
ISI: Just because it sounded ludicrous. So I’m sure that if we told him that we are detecting gravitational waves from colliding black holes every two or three days or so, it would have been mind-blowing to him.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Yet that is just what researchers have been doing in recent years, with two enormous detectors known as LIGO. One is in Washington state. The other is in Louisiana. These facilities send lasers down 2 1/2-mile tubes to detect the tiny squeeze and stretch that occurs when a gravitational wave rolls through. Their first detection was back on September 14, 2015. The waves came from two black holes that circled each other and then merged.
Gabriela Gonzalez is a gravitational wave researcher with Louisiana State University. She says they initially expected LIGO would sense a bunch of extreme cosmic events other than black hole collisions.
GABRIELA GONZALEZ: But since then, it’s almost the only thing we have seen.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Hundreds of pairs of colliding black holes have been registered by the LIGO detectors. Katerina Chatziioannou is a physicist at Caltech. She says earlier this year, they logged the strongest signal to date – two black holes, each about 30 times the mass of the sun, merging together about 1.3 billion light-years from Earth.
KATERINA CHATZIIOANNOU: It looks very similar to the black holes that created the first signal 10 years ago.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: What’s different now is that over the years, LIGO’s equipment has been upgraded and improved.
CHATZIIOANNOU: Because the detectors are so much better today, we can record the signal so much more clearly.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That let them test some major theories about black holes, like a famous prediction that Stephen Hawking made in 1971 about the area of a black hole.
CHATZIIOANNOU: Which says that the event horizon of a black hole – the region beyond which nothing can escape from the black hole – only grows with time.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This is exactly what they saw when they analyzed this particular burst of gravitational waves. Max Isi says, to him, it’s really striking.
ISI: All of these ideas that people had thought up in the ’70s, thinking it was just idle speculation, now they are manifested in actual way that we see these things happening.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Gravitational wave researchers have plans for the next 10 years. They want bigger and more powerful detectors, assuming they can get the money to build them. Funding for the existing detectors is currently under threat, with the Trump administration proposing steep cuts for 2026.
Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
G299, a type Ia supernova remnant (Credit : NASA/CXC/U)
