If You’re Not Amazed By The Stars On A Clear Night Then We Won’t Work.

:’(

The IAU reclassifies Pluto as a dwarf planet. (2006)

Chemistry: Burning up alcohol

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“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I’ve found it!), but ‘That’s funny…’”

— Isaac Asimov | Author - I, Robot | Professor - Biochemistry

M43 - Part of the same star-forming complex as the Great Orion Nebula (M42)

Omega Centauri.

Credit: Maicon Germiniani

Productivity culture will deceive you (especially if you are particularly high-functioning or a former Gifted Kid) into thinking that any use of your time that can’t be monetized or leveraged for your personal advancement is worthless, and I’m here to tell you that’s the devil talking. Do shit because you like it.

Andromeda’s actual size if it was brighter

via reddit

Liquid oxygen is magnetic

Liquid oxygen sticks between the poles of a strong magnet until it boils away into its gas state. This is because it has unpaired electrons, which make each oxygen molecule a tiny magnet with a dipole. Normally, when oxygen is in a flask or in the air, these microscopic magnets point in all directions, cancelling out and meaning that there’s no net magnetic field. When it pours over the permanent magnet, the magnetic molecules all slightly align, creating an induced magnetic field, which reacts with the permanent magnet, making the oxygen stick to the poles. This is called paramagnetism. Click here to watch the video.

A Mesmerizing Model of Monster Black Holes

Just about every galaxy the size of our Milky Way (or bigger) has a supermassive black hole at its center. These objects are ginormous — hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of the Sun! Now, we know galaxies merge from time to time, so it follows that some of their black holes should combine too. But we haven’t seen a collision like that yet, and we don’t know exactly what it would look like. 

A new simulation created on the Blue Waters supercomputer — which can do 13 quadrillion calculations per second, 3 million times faster than the average laptop — is helping scientists understand what kind of light would be produced by the gas around these systems as they spiral toward a merger.

The new simulation shows most of the light produced around these two black holes is UV or X-ray light. We can’t see those wavelengths with our own eyes, but many telescopes can. Models like this could tell the scientists what to look for. 

You may have spotted the blank circular region between the two black holes. No, that’s not a third black hole. It’s a spot that wasn’t modeled in this version of the simulation. Future models will include the glowing gas passing between the black holes in that region, but the researchers need more processing power. The current version already required 46 days!

The supermassive black holes have some pretty nifty effects on the light created by the gas in the system. If you view the simulation from the side, you can see that their gravity bends light like a lens. When the black holes are lined up, you even get a double lens!

But what would the view be like from between two black holes? In the 360-degree video above, the system’s gas has been removed and the Gaia star catalog has been added to the background. If you watch the video in the YouTube app on your phone, you can moved the screen around to explore this extreme vista. Learn more about the new simulation here. 

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