Our universe is so rad!

[knee tunes]

I see the ISS go over quite frequently. It’s really something. Gives you the feels.


In other news

Hi dime

That tweet is hysterical.

I too enjoy a good ISS flyover .

[blueviper]

Tonight my wife, daughter and I went outside and watched the ISS flyover. It was awesome. Can’t wait for Artemis to ramp up and we start heading back to the moon.

[surfndestroy]

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/weather/topst ... d=msedgntp

Astronomers capture 'Death by Spaghettification' as black hole shreds a star

A team of astronomers captured a distant Sun-like star shredded by a supermassive black hole in a 'death by spaghettification'.

At the core of nearly every galaxy lies a monster. Some lurk in silence, such as Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way. Then there are others, like the one hosted by a distant galaxy named 2MASXJ04463790-1013349, 215 million light years away in the constellation of Eridanus. This cosmic devourer just lit up the universe as it messily consumed some unfortunate star, and a team of astronomers here on Earth managed to catch nearly the entire event.

"The idea of a black hole 'sucking in' a nearby star sounds like science fiction. But this is exactly what happens in a tidal disruption event," Matt Nicholl, the University of Birmingham lecturer who led the study of tidal disruption event AT2019qiz, said in a European Southern Observatory (ESO) press release.

"The observations showed that the star had roughly the same mass as our own Sun, and that it lost about half of that to the monster black hole, which is over a million times more massive," Nicholl explained.

Black holes are some of the most extreme objects in our universe. Even the smallest of them pack the mass of several Suns down into just a tiny point in space (known as a singularity). Their gravitational pull is so intense that, up close to them, not even light — the fastest thing in the universe — can escape. Supermassive black holes, which are thought to exist at the core of every large galaxy, contain the mass of at least millions of stars. As a result, their gravity is even more intense. Anything that wanders too close is pulled apart by the extreme forces.

"When an unlucky star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole in the centre of a galaxy, the extreme gravitational pull of the black hole shreds the star into thin streams of material," Thomas Wevers, who currently works as an astronomer with the European Southern Observatory Santiago, Chile, said in an ESO press release. This is because the strength of a black hole's gravitational pull increases dramatically over very short distances.

In his book, A Brief History of Time, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking described this with the example of an astronaut free-falling, feet-first, towards a black hole's event horizon. As they got closer and the gravitational pull increased, the astronaut's feet would always experience a stronger force than their head. This would cause their body to stretch and get thinner, and the effect would become more pronounced the closer the astronaut was to the event horizon. Hawking called this process 'spaghettification'.

The same thing can happen to any object that gets too close to a black hole, especially a supermassive one.

Over six months in 2019, multiple telescopes gathered the light emitted during AT2019qiz, over various wavelengths, as the event brightened and then faded away. To date, this is the closest tidal disruption event around a supermassive black hole that astronomers have found.

"Several sky surveys discovered emission from the new tidal disruption event very quickly after the star was ripped apart," Weaver said. "We immediately pointed a suite of ground-based and space telescopes in that direction to see how the light was produced."

Also, by catching it so early in the process, the team was able to study the event before it became obscured by the 'mess' a supermassive black hole typically makes during such a stellar meal.

"When a black hole devours a star, it can launch a powerful blast of material outwards that obstructs our view," Samantha Oates, a co-author of the study from the University of Birmingham, said in a university news release. "This happens because the energy released as the black hole eats up stellar material propels the star's debris outwards."

"Because we caught it early, we could actually see the curtain of dust and debris being drawn up as the black hole launched a powerful outflow of material with velocities up to 10,000 km/s," co-author Kate Alexander, NASA Einstein Fellow at Northwestern University, said in the ESO press release. "This unique 'peek behind the curtain' provided the first opportunity to pinpoint the origin of the obscuring material and follow in real time how it engulfs the black hole."

Due to the unprecedented detail they captured during this record-close tidal disruption event, the research team wrote that this "will make AT2019qiz a Rosetta stone for interpreting future TDE observations." Their research paper already compares their observations to previously captured TDEs, noting their similarities and differences. With new surveys in the works and new telescopes being built (such as the ESO's Extremely Large Telescope), more of these events will undoubtedly be captured. With what they have learned here, and what future events will reveal, this will shed more light on the mysteries surrounding supermassive black holes.

[knee tunes]

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/hubble ... adrillion/

I wasn't sure where to post this. I want to post that Trump wants to figure out how to tap this asteroid pronto

[BurtReynolds]

[dimejinky99]

That’s honestly your best contribution to RM ever.

Low bar. But that was a quality contribution thank you.

[BurtReynolds]

Have you seen my goat thread?

[Norah]

Don't forget the bird videos.

[dimejinky99]

We’re doomed.

[dimejinky99]

Long ass read. Just read the tldr thread

[blueviper]

Space launches never get old.

Godspeed, Resilience!

[B]

Wasn't this a story or a parable that people told me when I was in school?

[elliseamos]

Wasn't this a story or a parable that people told me when I was in school?

One of Aesop's Fables

[dimejinky99]

Wasn't this a story or a parable that people told me when I was in school?

You moved my post about Ahsoka from the Mandalorian thread.
We’re about to see Ahsoka in the Mandalorian.

What the ever living fuck has a magpie and some pebbles got to do with anything in this thread?

You’re on drugs. Admit it.

[knee tunes]

https://www.foxnews.com/science/jupiter ... -years.amp

wild

This is going to be SOMETHING.


On Dec 21 this year, you will be able to see both jupiter and saturn in the same telescope view and their moons. Holy fu ck. They have not been this close since 1226.

[BurtReynolds]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12 ... ped/?amp=1

[knee tunes]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/nsf-had-a-drone-watching-as-arecibos-cables-snapped/?amp=1

So rad

[Orpheus]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/nsf-had-a-drone-watching-as-arecibos-cables-snapped/?amp=1

GGGOOLLDDEENNNEEYYEEE, I'VE FOUND YOUR WEAKNESSSSS

[Rangi Guy]

[knee tunes]

https://www.foxnews.com/science/jupiter ... -years.amp

wild

This is going to be SOMETHING.


On Dec 21 this year, you will be able to see both jupiter and saturn in the same telescope view and their moons. Holy fu ck. They have not been this close since 1226.

Chance of skycover is 80% for me when this will be happening

And if it's not, my teenager will have to crab-walk the telescope down the porch and into the yard and plant it in a foot of snow which is fine . for me