Happy Vishu. Happy Easter.
Its always fascinating when these two days coincide, celebrating different events from different communities. Theres more than one reason to rejoice.
This year, we will also take time to remember those soldiers who died protecting the good in this world. So that we could enjoy it.
These are good days.
These are exciting times ! Scientists have presented the first-ever image of a black hole.
The data for this image was captured in 2017, but ti took the agency 2 years to transport and process the data to generate the image. A network of 8 radio telescopes in different countries , including the south pole, captured information simultaneoulsy, and the data itself was transported on hard drives. The data captured was radiowave imaging, so there was no colour. They chose a bright orange color just to look good.
The image shows the shadow of the black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, a massive galaxy in the Virgo galaxy cluster 55 million light-years away. Its mass is 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. It took a worldwide collaboration of telescopes, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), in order to find it.
This is not really a “picture” of a black hole, and the shadow does not denote the black hole’s event horizon. Instead, you’re seeing the effects of gravity on the radio waves emitted from matter surrounding the black hole in a slightly larger region around the black hole’s event horizon. Gravity warps the shape of spacetime itself, deflecting some of the light in the region and generating an eerie circular shadow.
But it’s a groundbreaking observation, and another important proof of the theory of gravity that physicists use as a guide to the universe, Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Black holes have long served as a theoretical exercise. But astronomical observations in the past 60 years have increasingly demonstrated that there are objects in the Universe whose gravitational field is so intense that it warps spacetime such that light cannot escape beyond a point of no return, called the event horizon. Thanks to a world-side collaboration, is the closest image ever taken to the event horizon itself, near-direct evidence of the black hole’s existence.
Black holes as a theory are a consequence of trying to solve the equations of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity for a spherical, non-rotating system. However, it was the work of physicist David Ritz Finkelstein in 1958 that determined what black holes would look like in space: points of no return for light. We already had lots of indirect evidence of black holes’ existence—we’ve seen gravitational waves, predicted perfectly by mass turned into energy after the utterly inconceivable collision between a pair of black holes each a few dozen times the mass of the Sun. We’ve seen jets of particles spew forth from galactic centres that are far more energetic than those that come from collisions at our highest-energy physics experiment, the Large Hadron Collider. Technically, the EHT data is indirect evidence as well, but it’s about as close to direct evidence as we’ve had thus far.
It all started with Einstein. And Hawking.
We live in strange, violent times. And nowhere is this more evident than on current news. This has lately caused me to intentionlally lose track of news from India. I wonder if India has always been like this, or is it because nowadays these kind of news gets reported more often ?
The number of domestic violences reported has spiked. From incidents of stalking, to confirmed cases of assault, leading to murder. Dissed lovers used to splash acid as revenge, now they set their ex-partners on fire. Out in the daylight. Rising counts of sexual violence against minors. More rapes and murders being reported, specially from inner villages. Crime is rising, and democracy is decaying.
What is leading to these spikes in pre-meditated crimes ? Apart from a false sense of superioty by the preprator, it is lack of crime control. Lack of an efficient justice system. And lack of fear. The law in the country is so slow and backward, it takes decades for a court case to come ot conclusion. And the increasing bribery in the government does not help either.
One can only hope, foolishly, that humanity will come to its senses sooner, than later.
Woke up too early today. Or thats what I thought. The clock shows 6:30 am.
But the phone says its only 5:30 am.
DST is off !
Great, so we now have one extra hour in the day.
Wondering what to do with it .
Maybe I can go back to sleep.
Today I read about the recent earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia. It was caused by the eruption on the younger volcano Anak Krakatau. Also, the country was hit by another tsunami just three month’s prior.
Which got me thinking, why does this country get so many quakes,and tsunamis ? And..how large is this country ? Never thought about it geographically. So I looked around.
Indonesia is one heck of a country, split across five different larger islands, but comprising of upto 18,000 islands ! Managing one landmass is difficult enough, but here they have a political and geographical nightmare to manage, with so many different ethinicities and cultures ! All in the largest sesimically active regions on this planet.
This is what I found on the USGS site.
The answer to this question is not as straightforward as it may seem. In order to most accurately answer it, we will rephrase the question four different ways:
That is a lot of earthquakes, and a miracle that these places still exist and are able to govern themselves all the while standing on plates floating on molten lava.
And this is Indonesia ! The area marked in red. Imagine governing this landmass, when there are average 4 earthquakes per year in the country.
