ScienceDaily: Strange Science News

Our universe is a chaotic sea of ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. Astronomers think waves from orbiting pairs of supermassive black holes in distant galaxies are light-years long and have been trying to observe them for decades, and now they're one step.

An international team of astronomers has spotted the most distant astronomical object ever: a galaxy. Shining only ~300 million years after the Big Bang, it may be home to the oldest stars in the universe, or a supermassive black hole.

A powerful radio-wave laser, called a 'megamaser', has been observed by the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa. The record-breaking find is the most distant megamaser of its kind ever detected, at about five billion light years from Earth. The light from the megamaser has traveled 58 thousand billion billion (58 followed by 21 zeros) kilometers to Earth.

Cellphone 'selfies' distort facial features, an effect that may be driving an uptick in requests for plastic surgery, researchers show in a new study. The findings highlight an unexpected consequence of social media and the need for plastic surgeons to discuss this phenomenon with their patients.