We’re delving deep into space this weekend. First we go to another galaxy far, far away...and then we move a bit closer to home and have some fun.
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Monday Crimson Quillfeather
Tuesday ejoanna
Wednesday Pam from Calif
Thursday art ah zen
Friday FloridaSNMOM
Saturday Gwennedd
Sunday loggersbrat
First, let’s go to the faraway galaxy...named M87. Why do we want to go there? To see a black hole. And what may be behind a black hole…
The 10th of April, 2019, will go down in history as the day when the first ever picture of the black hole was released. It measures 40 billion km across - three million times the size of the Earth - and has been described by scientists as "a monster". And while humanity has been inspecting the image, showing the black hole 500 million trillion km away, the internet has been ... making jokes. But I guess that makes sense, not everyone wears a lab coat to work and can easily understand all of the complicated science behind this magnificent achievement.
The picture was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight linked telescopes. Prof Heino Falcke of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who proposed the experiment, said that the black hole was found in a galaxy called M87.
"What we see is larger than the size of our entire Solar System," he told the BBC.
The definition of the black hole.It is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Contrary to what their name might suggest, they are not empty but instead consist of a huge amount of matter packed densely into a small area, giving it an immense gravitational pull.
The region of space beyond the black hole called the event horizon, or a "point of no return." Beyond it, it's impossible to escape the gravitational effects of the black hole.
For more silly black hole memes, visit Bored Panda
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And now we move a lot closer to home:
Just beyond Neptune, deep in the Kuiper belt, is the largest unnamed object in our solar system. It’s provisional name at the moment is 2007 OR10. Not very exciting, is it? Well...we non-scientists and scientists of all stripes have a chance to really name it!!
The International Astronomical Union(IAU) guidelines stipulate that all minor planets in the Kuiper belt with similar orbits must be given names associated with mythological creation figures. Accordingly, the astronomers who located OR10 have come up with three possible names for it: “Gonggong,” a Chinese water god who, in addition to creating chaos and causing floods, is known for tilting the Earth; “Holle,” a Germanic spirit of fertility and rebirth; and “Vili,” a Norse god who, along with his brothers Odin and Vé, conquers the giant Ymir and uses the body to create the universe. You can vote for your favorite selection until May 10.
snip
In the 12 years since its discovery, scientists have been able to piece together a more precise picture of OR10. It spans about 775 miles in diameter—about half the size of Pluto—and its body is likely made up of ice and rock. Its surface is covered with large amounts of pure water ice and possibly traces of methane ice, which may give OR10 its reddish hue; as Crane explains, sunlight turns red when it hits methane ice. The water ice on OR10’s surface is believed to stem from earlier activity by cryovolcanoes, which erupt with volatile compounds like ammonia, methane and water instead of lava.
In light of these attributes, the astronomers who discovered OR10 say they tried to choose possible names with links to the color red, ice and snow, or “a theme of inside turning outside.” Gonggong, for instance, has red hair. Holle is linked to the winter solstice and evergreen plants with red berries, and Vili is associated with Ymir, who was created from drops of water that formed when ice from the realm of Niflheim met heat from the realm of Muspelheim.
www.smithsonianmag.com/...
Generally, the scientist(s) who discover the object are the ones to name it, but in this case, Meg Schwamb ( anstromomer at Gemini Observatory, Hawai’i ) and co-discoverers Mike Brown and David Rabinowitz have decided to let the whole world name this one.
Here’s where to VOTE