your science briefing for 02.07.2025

The biggest structure in the known universe, the grim fate of the world's fourth largest lake, the stunning galaxy that lives up to its unusual name, and more...

What’s the largest thing in the universe? Apparently, it’s a vast supercluster of galactic superclusters which astronomers decided to call Quipu — as in knotted ropes used as rudimentary recording devices in the Inca Empire, not as in the Japanese mayonnaise. How big is it? It stretches 1.3 billion light years and tips the scales at 400 quadrillion solar masses. Even more impressively, Quipu and four similar hyperclusters identified so far actually hold close to a third of all observable galaxies, and take up more than a tenth of the entire visible universe… (Universe Today)

Reduce, reuse, recycle. We all know the mantra. Unfortunately, our recycling efforts can often fall short because certain materials are just really hard to recycle no matter how much the industries that produce them pretend otherwise. But a new process is promising to drastically improve the recycling of aluminum by filtering out as many as 99.5% of aluminum ions through a specialized membrane. The hope is that by making it easy to extract almost pure metal, more aluminum products could now be recycled cheaply and efficiently… (Tech Explorist)

While the Great Lakes, created by the retreat of glaciers in North America at the end of the last ice age, form the largest interconnected body of freshwater on the planet, the world’s largest single lake is technically the Caspian Sea. (Though it’s actually an ancient landlocked saltwater sea.) The fourth biggest lake was the Aral Sea. I say was because over 60 years it was reduced to a desert contaminated with pesticides and experiments in biological warfare. And we can’t blame climate change on this. No, the culprits were Soviet attempts at agriculture that ignored science… (ScienceAlert)

A galaxy with the catalog identifier LEDA 1313424 is far better known as the Bullseye Galaxy because that’s exactly what it looks like. This is what happens if two galaxies collide with one passing right through the center of the other, and in this case, NASA astronomers found a culprit: a dwarf galaxy still just 130,000 light years away. It dove straight through Bullseye’s core and came out on the other side as the gravitational waves generated by the event created as many as nine rings of gas and dust, which gave the Bullseye Galaxy its unique look… (NASA)

In far more ignominious news, NASA’s planetary scientists are pausing their ongoing research projects under the new administration to bring them into what can only be described as ideological compliance. What does that mean? Scrubbing all news and mentions of non-white scientists and astronauts, and suspending any research into how global warming will affect the climate. Only then can the scientists resume their work and mission planning… (Space.com)