A meandering trek taken by light from a remote supernova in the constellation Cetus may help researchers pin down how fast the universe expands — in another couple of decades.

About 10 billion years ago, a star exploded in a far-off galaxy named MRG-M0138. Some of the light from that explosion later encountered a gravitational lens, a cluster of galaxies whose gravity bent the light so that we see multiple images. In 2016, the supernova appeared in Earth’s sky as three distinct points of light, each marking three different paths the light took to get here.

Now, researchers predict that the supernova will appear again in the late 2030s. The time delay — the longest ever seen from a gravitationally lensed supernova — could provide a more precise estimate for the distance to the supernova’s host galaxy, the team reports September 13 in Nature Astronomy. And that, in turn, may let astronomers refine estimates of the Hubble constant, the parameter that describes how fast the universe expands.

The original three points of light appeared in images from the Hubble Space Telescope. “It was purely an accident,” says astronomer Steve Rodney of the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Three years later, when Hubble reobserved the galaxy, astronomer Gabriel Brammer at the University of Copenhagen discovered that all three points of light had vanished, indicating a supernova.
By calculating how the intervening cluster’s gravity alters the path the supernova’s light rays take, Rodney and his colleagues predict that the supernova will appear again in 2037, give or take a couple of years. Around that time, Hubble may burn up in the atmosphere, so Rodney’s team dubs the supernova “SN Requiem.”

“It’s a requiem for a dying star and a sort of elegy to the Hubble Space Telescope itself,” Rodney says. A fifth point of light, too faint to be seen, may also arrive around 2042, the team calculates.、
The predicted 21-year time delay — from 2016 to 2037 — is a record for a supernova. In contrast, the first gravitational lens ever found — twin images of a quasar spotted in 1979 — has a time delay of only 1.1 years (SN: 11/10/1979).

Not everyone agrees with Rodney’s forecast. “It is very difficult to predict what the time delay will be,” says Rudolph Schild, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who was the first to measure the double quasar’s time delay. The distribution of dark matter in the galaxy hosting the supernova and the cluster splitting the supernova’s light is so uncertain, Schild says, that the next image of SN Requiem could come outside the years Rodney’s team has specified.

In any case, when the supernova image does appear, “that would be a phenomenally precise measurement” of the time delay, says Patrick Kelly, an astronomer at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis who was not involved with the new work. That’s because the uncertainty in the time delay will be tiny compared with the tremendous length of the time delay itself.

That delay, coupled with an accurate description of how light rays weave through the galaxy cluster, could affect the debate over the Hubble constant. Numerically, the Hubble constant is the speed a distant galaxy recedes from us divided by the distance to that galaxy. For a given galaxy with a known speed, a larger estimated distance therefore leads to a lower number for the Hubble constant.

This number was once in dispute by a factor of two. Today the range is much tighter, from 67 to 73 kilometers per second per megaparsec. But that spread still leaves the universe’s age uncertain. The frequently quoted age of 13.8 billion years corresponds to a Hubble constant of 67.4. But if the Hubble constant is higher, then the universe could be about a billion years younger.

The longer it takes for SN Requiem to reappear, the farther from Earth the host galaxy is — which means a lower Hubble constant and an older universe. So if the debate over the Hubble constant persists into the 2030s, the exact date the supernova springs back to life could help resolve the dispute and nail down a fundamental cosmological parameter.

The Perseverance rover has captured its first two slices of Mars.

NASA’s latest Mars rover drilled into a flat rock nicknamed Rochette on September 1 and filled a roughly finger-sized tube with stone. The sample is the first ever destined to be sent back to Earth for further study. On September 7, the rover snagged a second sample from the same rock. Both are now stored in airtight tubes inside the rover’s body.

Getting pairs of samples from every rock it drills is “a little bit of an insurance policy,” says deputy project scientist Katie Stack Morgan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif. It means the rover can drop identical stores of samples in two different places, boosting chances that a future mission will be able to pick up at least one set.

The successful drilling is a comeback story for Perseverance. The rover’s first attempt to take a bit of Mars ended with the sample crumbling to dust, leaving an empty tube (SN: 8/19/21). Scientists think that rock was too soft to hold up to the drill.
Nevertheless, the rover persevered.

“Even though some of its rocks are not, Mars is hard,” said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, in a September 10 news briefing.

Rochette is a hard rock that appears to have been less severely eroded by millennia of Martian weather (SN: 7/14/20). (Fun fact: All the rocks Perseverance drills into will get names related to national parks; the region on Mars the rover is now exploring is called Mercantour, so the name Rochette — or “Little Rock” — comes from a village in France near Mercantour National Park.)

Rover measurements of the rock’s texture and chemistry suggests that it’s made of basalt and may have been part of an ancient lava flow. That’s useful because volcanic rocks preserve their ages well, Stack Morgan says. When scientists on Earth get their hands on the sample, they’ll be able to use the concentrations of certain elements and isotopes to figure out exactly how old the rock is — something that’s never been done for a pristine Martian rock.

Rochette also contains salt minerals that probably formed when the rock interacted with water over long time periods. That could suggest groundwater moving through the Martian subsurface, maybe creating habitable environments within the rocks, Stack Morgan says.

“It really feels like this rich treasure trove of information for when we get this sample back,” Stack Morgan says.

Once a future mission brings the rocks back to Earth, scientists can search inside those salts for tiny fluid bubbles that might be trapped there. “That would give us a glimpse of Jezero crater at the time when it was wet and was able to sustain ancient Martian life,” said planetary scientist Yulia Goreva of JPL at the news briefing.

Scientists will have to be patient, though — the earliest any samples will make it back to Earth is 2031. But it’s still a historic milestone, says planetary scientist Meenakshi Wadhwa of Arizona State University in Tempe.

“These represent the beginning of Mars sample return,” said Wadhwa said at the news briefing. “I’ve dreamed of having samples back from Mars to analyze in my lab since I was a graduate student. We’ve talked about Mars sample return for decades. Now it’s starting to actually feel real.”

For the first time, astronomers have captured solid evidence of a rare double cosmic cannibalism — a star swallowing a compact object such as a black hole or neutron star. In turn, that object gobbled the star’s core, causing it to explode and leave behind only a black hole.

The first hints of the gruesome event, described in the Sept. 3 Science, came from the Very Large Array (VLA), a radio telescope consisting of 27 enormous dishes in the New Mexican desert near Socorro. During the observatory’s scans of the night sky in 2017, a burst of radio energy as bright as the brightest exploding star — or supernova — as seen from Earth appeared in a dwarf star–forming galaxy approximately 500 million light-years away.

“We thought, ‘Whoa, this is interesting,’” says Dillon Dong, an astronomer at Caltech.

He and his colleagues made follow-up observations of the galaxy using the VLA and one of the telescopes at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, which sees in the same optical light as our eyes. The Keck telescope caught a luminous outflow of material spewing in all directions at 3.2 million kilometers per hour from a central location, suggesting that an energetic explosion had occurred there in the past.
The team then found an extremely bright X-ray source in archival data from the Monitor of All Sky X-ray Image (MAXI) telescope, a Japanese instrument that sits on the International Space Station. This X-ray burst was in the same place as the radio one but had been observed back in 2014.

Piecing the data together, Dong and his colleagues think this is what happened: Long ago, a binary pair of stars were born orbiting each other; one died in a spectacular supernova and became either a neutron star or a black hole. As gravity brought the two objects closer together, the dead star actually entered the outer layers of its larger stellar sibling.

The compact object spiraled inside the still-living star for hundreds of years, eventually making its way down to and then eating its partner’s core. During this time, the larger star shed huge amounts of gas and dust, forming a shell of material around the duo.

In the living star’s center, gravitational forces and complex magnetic interactions from the dead star’s munching launched enormous jets of energy — picked up as an X-ray flash in 2014 — as well as causing the larger star to explode. Debris from the detonation smashed with colossal speed into the surrounding shell of material, generating the optical and radio light.

While theorists have previously envisioned such a scenario, dubbed a merger-triggered core collapse supernova, this appears to represent the first direct observation of this phenomenon, Dong says.

“They’ve done some pretty good detective work using these observations,” says Adam Burrows, an astrophysicist at Princeton University who was not involved in the new study. He says the findings should help constrain the timing of a process called common envelope evolution, in which one star becomes immersed inside another. Such stages in stars’ lives are relatively short-lived in cosmic time and difficult to both observe and simulate. Most of the time, the engulfing partner dies before its core is consumed, leading to two compact objects like white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes orbiting one another.

The final stages of these systems are exactly what observatories like the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, detect when capturing spacetime’s ripples, Dong says (SN: 8/4/21). Now that astronomers know to look for these multiple lines of evidence, he expects them to find more examples of this strange phenomenon.

Two more top-10 teams in contention for the College Football Playoff lost on Saturday, creating yet more work for the selection committee. Well, sort of.

While the committee was forced to reshuffle the rankings after the losses of No. 3 Oregon (38-7 to No. 23 Utah) and No. 7 Michigan State (56-7 to No. 4 Ohio State), those outcomes actually created a more streamlined top 25 in the final weeks of the season.
The selection committee no longer has to explain why No. 6 Michigan ranked ahead of Michigan State, despite the Spartans' head-to-head victory over the Wolverines. Nor do they need to worry about where to rank Oregon, which beat Ohio State in Week 2, well before the Buckeyes' resurgence. The only actual problem created from Saturday's slate of games wasn't even a problem at all: Where to rank Alabama in relation to Ohio State.

The committee chose to push the Buckeyes ahead of the Crimson Tide in the latest rankings. That decision ultimately won't matter, considering Alabama must face No. 1 Georgia in the SEC championship game. A win there would give Nick Saban and Co. the top overall seed. A loss would eliminate the Tide from championship contention.

The committee will pay close attention to "The Game" and Bedlam in Week 13, two rivalry games that feature 10-1 opponents in Ohio State, Michigan, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. That will further clear up the playoff picture, the final rankings for which are quickly approaching.

With that, here are the top 25 teams in the latest CFP rankings:
College Football Playoff rankings 2021
Who are the top four CFP teams of fourth CFP poll of 2021?
Ranking Team Record
1 Georgia 11-0
2 Ohio State 10-1
3 Alabama 10-1
4 Cincinnati 11-0
Who are the first two teams out of fourth CFP poll of 2021?
Ranking Team Record
5 Michigan 10-1
6 Notre Dame 10-1
CFP top 25 rankings from fourth CFP poll of 2021
Rank Team Record
1 Georgia 11-0
2 Ohio State 10-1
3 Alabama 10-1
4 Cincinnati 11-0
5 Michigan 10-1
6 Notre Dame 10-1
7 Oklahoma State 10-1
8 Baylor 9-2
9 Ole Miss 9-2
10 Oklahoma 10-1
11 Oregon 9-2
12 Michigan State 9-2
13 BYU 9-2
14 Wisconsin 8-3
15 Texas A&M 8-3
16 Iowa 9-2
17 Pittsburgh 9-2
18 Wake Forest 9-2
19 Utah 8-3
20 NC State 8-3
21 San Diego State 10-1
22 UTSA 11-0
23 Clemson 8-3
24 Houston 10-1
25 Arkansas 7-4

Far too often, fighters say that they can’t afford to lose when they, in fact, can afford to lose.

A loss isn't the end for all fighters and the greatest have come back from significant losses in their career. All losses aren't the same and there's often an overreaction to how much a loss hurts the future of a fighter.
Take, for instance, Canelo Alvarez vs. Caleb Plant. Plant was never expected to win the fight. Of course, he didn’t want to lose and the spoils go to the victor but the concept of a moral victory applied. He made a good showing of himself and will certainly be back, perhaps with more eyeballs on him now than before.

There are rarely fights that neither can afford to lose because of just how devastating to their future the loss would be.

Terence Crawford vs. Shawn Porter on Nov. 20 in Las Vegas is one of those fights.

Why Terence Crawford can’t afford to lose
If Terence Crawford loses to Shawn Porter, the allure is gone. And maybe he wasn’t as good as we thought he was.

Although he was named the Fighter of the Year by ESPN and the Boxing Writers Association of America all the way back in 2014 (and again by ESPN in 2017), the current WBO welterweight champion remains in pursuit of a signature win. The critics have had every right to have their questions because as great as Crawford has looked, his resume lacks that one opponent who is respected for his accomplishments and accolades.

Shawn Porter is that opponent.

A two-time welterweight champion that has given hell to every single opponent that he’s stepped into the ring with. With Manny Pacquiao retired, an argument can be made that Porter has the most impressive resume of every fighter in the 147-pound weight class. And if it wasn’t for Canelo, Porter might have the best resume in all of boxing. Although he hasn’t won all of his big fights, he has yet to be dominated by an opponent.
He’s defeated Danny Garcia, Yordenis Ugas, Adrian Broner while losing narrow decisions to Keith Thurman, Errol Spence Jr. and Kell Brook. As a matter of fact, 11 of his last 13 opponents were world titleholders.

It doesn’t get much better than that. And a Crawford victory opens the door wide open for him to challenge Spence and the rest of the division in an attempt to become undisputed in two division. They won't be able to deny him any longer unless they are scared. It's just that simple.

With all of this being said, one would think that Crawford could afford to lose given Porter’s credentials. Well, that’s certainly not the case. He has hovered as one of the top five pound-for-pound fighters without a marquee name on his resume because he’s been that damn good inside of the squared circle.

But what he hasn’t been is tested by an opponent who has given the best 147-pounders 36 minutes of pressure.
Crawford may have graduated with high honors from his pugilism undergraduate but now he has to prove that he’s Magna Cum Laude and get his master’s degree in the sweet science.

He has an opportunity to barely pass the test like Errol Spence and still be considered as one of the best in the world or he gets mowed down by Porter’s aggressive style and find himself possibly removed from the pound for pound list. Or, he destroys Porter and is undeniably the top dog of the division and once again in the conversation as the best fighter in the world.

Of even more significance is that he’ll be a free agent. It’s no secret that Top Rank has struggled to get him a marquee fight as opponents ranging from Errol Spence Jr., Keith Thurman and the recently retired Manny Pacquiao fought for a rival promotion. There’s an expectation that Crawford will see what’s on the other side of the street if he gets past Porter. But at 34 years of age and facing constant struggles to prove he’s a marketable star, a loss would be devastating to his future.

Bob Arum has spoken in less than flattering terms about Crawford while PBC will have proven their point that Crawford is not in the league of their current stable. Where does Crawford go if he loses all of his leverage?

He cannot afford to lose on Saturday night.

Why Shawn Porter can’t afford to lose
Boxing has been kind to Shawn Porter because Porter has been kind to the sport. He’s a fighter who could care less about politics and risks. He’ll fight anybody at any time. And if you step into the ring with Porter, it will be less fun for you than it is for him. He enjoys plowing into opponents and forcing them to fight his fight. It’s rare to find a Porter fight that lacked excitement and fans have had the opportunity to enjoy Porter’s fearlessness inside of the squared circle.

But, eventually, you have to win the big one.

Porter is a two-time world champion who is 4-3 in major world title bouts. He fell just a hair short against Keith Thurman, Kell Brook and Errol Spence Jr. And while all three of those fights were a round or two away from seeing Porter victorious, the fact remains that he lost. The record books won't explain how close he was and future generations just won't care. The stats are the stats.

The expectation is that Porter will give Crawford all he can handle but fail to get the job done. Oddsmakers have installed him as a significant underdog despite his in-ring accomplishments. This is a sign that many people think that his time is up. And if he ends up proving the naysayers right, the idea that Shawn Porter is one of the best welterweights in the world is likely over.

Simply put, if he loses, he goes from contender to gatekeeper. He becomes the guy that young fighters target as a name for their resume. It’s highly unlikely that he’ll find himself in a marquee fight as the A-side and will spend the rest of his career as an opponent. Jarron "Boots" Ennis and Vergil Ortiz will look to use Porter's name as a stepping stone.

Nobody wants to be a stepping stone. But that's how Porter will be viewed if he is unable to get the job done.

It’s also possible that his hall of fame credentials hinges entirely on this fight.

A victory finds Porter back in the mix and rematches with Yordenis Ugas and Errol Spence Jr. will have to be made. There will be a reason to believe that Porter is absolutely one of the best fighters in the world and he'll certainly crash the pound for pound list with an exceptional performance.

But it all goes up in a cloud of smoke if he loses.

As you can see, the pendulum swing for both fighters is extreme. Neither can afford to lose because their respective futures rely so heavily on what happens inside of those 12 rounds. The stakes are high on both sides and that's more than enough reason to watch what could be an incredible fight with the respective futures of both Crawford and Porter hanging in the balance.

Sidney Crosby has played in just two of the Penguins' first 14 games this season. And even if he isn't lighting up the stat sheet, he certainly made his presence known on Sunday.

In the Penguins' 6-1 loss to the Capitals, Crosby struggled mightily. He recorded one shot on goal in just under 17 minutes of ice time, and let his frustration boil over in the third period.
After taking his lone shot on goal less than three minutes into the third period with Washington's Martin Fehervary playing defense, the two skated behind the net where Crosby threw the young defenseman face-first into the boards.
Crosby wasn't penalized on that play but did get sent to the box for cross-checking Evgeny Kuznetzov around seven minutes later. Tom Wilson scored on the ensuing power play to make it 6-1.
After the game, the 22-year-old Fehervary didn't seem to pay much mind to Crosby's actions and didn't really have much to say on the matter.

"Yeah, I don't know. I don't even know what should I talk about it," he told reporters. "I don't care. We'll see next game."
Crosby has zero points, five shot attempts and has a plus/minus of -4 to kick start his 2021-22 campaign. The star center — who has already been named to Canada's Olympic squad — missed the first seven games of the season while recovering from offseason surgery on his left wrist. He returned Oct. 30 vs. the Devils before having to enter COVID-19 protocols on Nov. 3. Sunday's game was his first time slotting in.

The Penguins and Capitals have had some notorious and infamous battles in recent years and will next face off on Dec. 10 in Washington.

Twenty-five years later, this much is clear: “Space Jam” was not our jam.

But since its debut on Nov. 15, 1996, the iconic movie to kids of the ’90s (looking at you, Ken Griffey III) has found its way into Sporting News’ world.
Back in the day? Not so much.

In fact, the first and only mention of the movie in ’96 was in The Sporting News’ annual 100 Most Powerful (cover headline: “Mouse madness: Disney’s growing sports kingdom,” so at least, y’know, some things aged reasonably well).

Ranked No. 17 on the TSN 100 — sandwiched between a pair of commissioners, No. 16 Paul Tagliabue and No. 18 Gary Bettman, David Falk, agent for a certain Tune squad team captain, was described in capsule form:

“Michael Jordan’s $30 million, one-year deal was only a part of the $400 million in player contracts Falk’s (agency F.A.M.E.) negotiated last summer. Falk also was executive producer of ‘Space Jam.’”
Next time “Space Jam” popped up in TSN’s pages was almost a year after its premiere, in the Sept. 1, 1997 issue in, of course, a baseball story.

The headline: How to survive a pennant race.

Nobody can live baseball 24 hours a day … Players, coaches and managers strongly advise leaving the game at the park. Those with young children have an advantage: They go home to a first job. Ken Griffey Jr. watches movies with his son, Trey. "We watch 'Space Jam,'" Griffey says. "My son asks me, 'Daddy, how come you can't disappear into the ground like Michael Jordan?’”

Now, in fairness to TSN, other sports flicks got scant mention if at all — even, for God’s sake, when The Sporting News its own self got a mention (shoutout to Susan Sarandon and “Bull Durham”!).

Also, in fairness, we eventually came around and the original “Space Jam” dotted Sporting News, to readers’ good fortune.

So on the 25th anniversary of The Sporting News ignoring “Space Jam,” here are five times SN didn’t:

1. Michael Jordan trash-talked extras on the set of 'Space Jam’
2. This 'Space Jam' honest trailer is here to destroy your childhood memories
3. Michael Jordan got ready for the Bulls' '95-96 season on the set of 'Space Jam'
4. Bill Murray wants some credit for setting up Michael Jordan's game-winning shot in 'Space Jam'
5. DeAndre Jordan, Blake Griffin read 'Space Jam' (VIDEO