Man Dies in Australia after Whale Collides with Boat

The full moon, a supermoon also known as the "Harvest Moon", rises above Macquarie Lighthouse and the Sydney Opera House in Sydney on September 29, 2023. (Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP)
The full moon, a supermoon also known as the "Harvest Moon", rises above Macquarie Lighthouse and the Sydney Opera House in Sydney on September 29, 2023. (Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP)
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Man Dies in Australia after Whale Collides with Boat

The full moon, a supermoon also known as the "Harvest Moon", rises above Macquarie Lighthouse and the Sydney Opera House in Sydney on September 29, 2023. (Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP)
The full moon, a supermoon also known as the "Harvest Moon", rises above Macquarie Lighthouse and the Sydney Opera House in Sydney on September 29, 2023. (Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP)

One man died and another was in hospital on Saturday in Australia after a whale struck and flipped their boat during a fishing expedition, authorities said.

Police said one man was pulled unconscious from Botany Bay, off the coast of Sydney, and later died, while the other was taken to hospital in a stable condition, police said.

"A whale has been involved, whoever would have thought that that would have occurred, it's terribly tragic," said New South Wales Police Minister Yasmin Catley.

According to Reuters, State Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib said it was "an absolute freak accident".

The boat "was likely to have struck or been impacted by a whale breaching, causing the boat to tilt, ejecting both men", police said in a statement. It did not identify the whale's species.

Australia's extensive coastline hosts 10 large and 20 smaller species of whales. While human deaths caused by whales in the region are rare, Australia and neighboring New Zealand are hot spots for mass whale strandings on beaches.

Eight Danes were rescued in June when their sailboat capsized in the Pacific Ocean after a collision with one or two whales.



Scientists Detect Longest Pair of Jets Streaming from Supermassive Black Hole

This undated artist’s impression illustrates how it might look when a star approaches too close to a black hole, where the star is squeezed by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. ESO/M.Kornmesser/Handout via REUTERS
This undated artist’s impression illustrates how it might look when a star approaches too close to a black hole, where the star is squeezed by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. ESO/M.Kornmesser/Handout via REUTERS
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Scientists Detect Longest Pair of Jets Streaming from Supermassive Black Hole

This undated artist’s impression illustrates how it might look when a star approaches too close to a black hole, where the star is squeezed by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. ESO/M.Kornmesser/Handout via REUTERS
This undated artist’s impression illustrates how it might look when a star approaches too close to a black hole, where the star is squeezed by the intense gravitational pull of the black hole. ESO/M.Kornmesser/Handout via REUTERS

Scientists have discovered the longest pair of jets streaming from a black hole in a distant galaxy.
The jets shooting hot plasma are the largest ever spotted – about as long as 140 Milky Way galaxies lined up end-to-end.
“This one has managed to reach a size that’s so big,” said Eileen Meyer, who studies black holes at University of Maryland, Baltimore County and who was not involved in the study.
The discovery, made using images from a European radio telescope, was reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, The Associated Press said.
Black holes eat most space debris that falls their way. Sometimes, heated-up plasma makes a narrow escape by spewing out in thin, high-energy jets.
The jets can break apart soon after their creation, jostled by space turbulence or starved in the absence of new matter. But jets from supermassive black holes can become supersized.
The latest combined jets from a faraway supermassive black hole are around 23 million light-years long. That’s about 7 million light-years longer than the previous recordholder. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles.
Study co-author Martijn Oei said researchers weren’t expecting to find long black hole jets so early in the universe’s history. The jets date back to when the universe was less than half its current age.
Studying the jets could reveal whether they had an influence on how the early universe came to be, said Oei with the California Institute of Technology.