Many discoveries announced in 2023 are associated with records such as the heaviest animal to ever live on Earth and the oldest black hole.
The Sunniest Place on Earth
Altiplano Plateau in the Atacama Desert. (Photo: Pawel Toczynski).
The sunniest place on Earth is the Altiplano in the Atacama Desert, a barren plateau near the Andes Mountains in Chile that receives sunlight similar to that of Venus. Although it is typically cold and dry, this land, located at an altitude of 4,000 meters, receives more sunlight than places near the equator or at higher elevations, according to a study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The average solar radiation on the plateau is 308 watts/m², twice that found in Central Europe and the East Coast of the United States.
The Oldest Black Hole
Simulation of an ancient black hole. (Photo: TS2 Space).
Scientists have discovered the oldest known black hole, which formed just over 470 million years after the Big Bang. This new discovery, announced in early November, confirms the hypothesis regarding the existence of supermassive black holes that emerged from the dawn of the universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory collaborated to identify this ancient black hole through X-ray emissions. This enormous black hole is estimated to be about 13.2 billion years old, just a bit younger than the universe itself, which is approximately 13.7 billion years old.
Another astonishing factor for scientists is the size of this black hole. It is ten times larger than the black holes found in the Milky Way. It also exceeds 10 – 100% of the total mass of all the stars located within its galaxy, according to scientist Akos Bogdan, the lead researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The Heaviest Animal to Ever Live on Earth
Reconstruction of Perucetus colossus. (Photo: Alberto Gennari).
An ancient giant whale that lived 39 million years ago, larger than twice the blue whale, is recognized as the heaviest animal to have ever lived on Earth. Researchers classify this extinct marine mammal, belonging to the family Sauribasilod, as Perucetus colossus. Its estimated body mass ranges between 85,000 – 340,000 kg. P. colossus is approximately 20 meters long, according to research published on August 2 in the journal Nature. Paleontologists discovered the skeleton, which is only a partial remains of this massive marine mammal, about 30 years ago in Ica Province, southern Peru.
