Highlights of China's science news

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BEIJING, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- The following are the highlights of China's science news from the past week:

HUGE STELLAR BLACK HOLE

A Chinese-led research team has discovered a surprisingly huge stellar black hole about 14,000 light-years from Earth, forcing scientists to re-examine how such black holes form.

The team, headed by Liu Jifeng of the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, spotted the black hole, which has a mass 70 times greater than the Sun. Researchers named the monster black hole LB-1.

CRETACEOUS FOSSIL

Chinese scientists have found the fossil of a new Cretaceous mammal species in northeast China's Liaoning Province, shedding new light on the evolution of the mammalian middle ear.

The peculiar jaw joint structure of the species allowed a more distinct jaw movement when chewing, which means more pressure on the species to detach the middle year from its dentary in order to increase its feeding efficiency.

SPECIAL DWARF GALAXIES

Chinese astronomers have discovered a special population of dwarf galaxies that mainly consist of baryons with radii of up to tens of thousands of light-years, where they are expected to be dominated by dark matter.

The discovery, made by researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Science, Peking University and Tsinghua University, was published in the latest issue of the science journal Nature Astronomy.

SINO-DUTCH DETECTOR

A detector jointly developed by Dutch and Chinese scientists and carried by the relay satellite of China's Chang'e-4 mission has started scientific detection.

The antennas of the low-frequency radio spectrometer on the relay satellite Queqiao, meaning a bridge of magpies, have been unfolded, and the detector is expected to help astronomers listen to the deeper reaches of the cosmos, according to the China National Space Administration.

ARTIFICIAL SPIDER SILK

Chinese scientists have developed a kind of fiber that mimics the qualities of spider silk.

Scientists from Nankai University developed a simple synthetic method to engineer artificial spider silk using hydrogel fibers made from polyacrylic acid. The material achieved mechanical properties comparable to spider silk. It has high strength, slow elasticity and good scalability. Enditem

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