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Black hole at heart of Milky Way about to have a snack
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A newly discovered object is heading for the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy. It should arrive sometime in 2013. When it does it should afford scientists a unique opportunity to view such an event.
Linky
Save a life. Adopt a greyhound.
![[Image: JUkLw58.gif]](https://i.imgur.com/JUkLw58.gif)
Point of pedantic clarification: this truly fascinating event will have aready happened some 30,000 years ago and we are only beginning to see the light etc from it round about now. I'm continually amazed that our science (or "crapola", apparently) has advanced in such a relatively short time to the level where we are able to detect and witness such a once-in-a-lifetime event.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
 (December 28, 2011 at 11:03 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Point of pedantic clarification: this truly fascinating event will have aready happened some 30,000 years ago and we are only beginning to see the light etc from it round about now. I'm continually amazed that our science (or "crapola", apparently) has advanced in such a relatively short time to the level where we are able to detect and witness such a once-in-a-lifetime event. That's not even the most amazing thing. We can't even see the center of the milky way galaxy because visual light can't penetrate through all the dust clouds and nebulae between here and there. We can only watch it because we have cameras that can not only see a point that tiny in the night sky, but also in light (x-rays and infrared) that can penetrate the dust and gases in between. All to see a star get sucked up by an object that can never be observed directly. That's pretty damn amazing.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925 Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
That's true. I'm now going to claim that by light I meant the far infrared radiation that we receive from the event and hopefully lead you away from my silly error of forgetting about the dust clouds. I actually did physically kick myself for making a mistake on the same kind of level as pushing a door marked 'pull'.
The most amazing part of the article for me is that this object is the size of a small planet, yet we can detect it from this unimaginable distance, measure its velocity and watch its inevitable fate. You can't do that with a bible.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
Astrophysics is amazing. Thanks for the article!
Brevity is the soul of wit.
this is why I have such a love for astronomy/astrophysics. It never cease to amaze me.
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