From Seeker at Discovery: “The Race to See Our Supermassive Black Hole”

Discovery News

May 26, 2016
No writer credit found.

Using the power of interferometry, two astronomical projects are, for the first time, close to directly observing the black hole in the center of the Milky Way.

Sag A* NASA Chandra X-Ray Observatory 23 July 2014, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way

There’s a monster living in the center of the galaxy.

We know the supermassive black hole is there by tracking the motions of stars and gas clouds that orbit an invisible point. That point exerts an overwhelming tidal influence on all objects that get trapped in its gravitational domain and this force can be measured through stellar orbits to calculate its mass.

ESO VLT new laser

It certainly isn’t the biggest black hole in the universe, but it isn’t the smallest either, it “weighs in” at an incredible 4 million times the mass of our sun.

But this black hole behemoth, called Sagittarius A*, is over 20,000 light-years from Earth making direct observations, before now, nigh-on impossible. Despite its huge mass, the black hole is minuscule when seen from Earth; a telescope with an unprecedented angular resolution is needed.

Though we already know a lot about Sagittarius A* from indirect observations, seeing is believing and there’s an international race, using the world’s most powerful observatories and sophisticated astronomical techniques, to zoom-in on the Milky Way’s black hole. This won’t only prove it’s really there, but it will reveal a region where space-time is so warped that we will be able to make direct tests of general relativity in the strongest gravity environment known to exist in the universe.

The Event Horizon Telescope and GRAVITY

A huge global effort is currently under way to link a network of global radio telescopes to create a virtual telescope that will span the width of our planet. Using the incredible power of interferometry, astronomers can combine the light from many distant radio antennae and collect it at one point, to mimic one large radio antenna spanning the globe.

A huge global effort is currently under way to link a network of global radio telescopes to create a virtual telescope that will span the width of our planet. Using the incredible power of interferometry, astronomers can combine the light from many distant radio antennae and collect it at one point, to mimic one large radio antenna spanning the globe.

This effort is known as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) and it is hoped the project will be able to attain the angular resolution and spatial definition required to soon produce its first radio observations of the bright ring just beyond Sagittarius A*’s event horizon — the point surrounding a black hole where nothing, not even light, can escape.

Event Horizon Telescope Array

Arizona Radio Observatory/Submillimeter-wave Astronomy (ARO/SMT)

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Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment

Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA)

Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE)

Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO)

Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique (IRAM) 30m

James Clerk Maxwell Telescope interior, Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA

Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano

Submillimeter Array Hawaii SAO

Future Array/Telescopes

ESO/NRAO/NAOJ ALMA Array, Chile

Plateau de Bure interferometer

South Pole Telescope SPTPOL

However, another project has the same goal in mind, but it’s not going to observe in radio wavelengths, it’s going to stare deep into the galactic core to seek out optical and infrared light coming from Sagittarius A* and it just needs one observatory to make this goal a reality.

The GRAVITY instrument is currently undergoing commissioning at the ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory high in the Atacama Desert in Chile (at an altitude of over 2,600 meters or 8,300 ft) and it will also use the power of interferometry to resolve our supermassive black hole.

ESO GRAVITY insrument

But rather than connecting global observatories like the EHT, GRAVITY will combine the light of the four 8 meter telescopes of the VLT Interferometer (collectively known as the VLTI) to create a “virtual” telescope measuring the distance between each individual telescope.

ESO VLTI image

“By doing this you can reach the same resolution and precision that you would get from a telescope that has a size, in this case, of roughly a hundred meters, simply because these eight meter-class telescopes are separated by roughly one hundred meters,” astronomer Oliver Pfuhl, of Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany, told DNews. “If you combine the light from those you reach the same resolution as a virtual telescope of a hundred meters would have.”

Strong Gravity Environment

When GRAVITY is online it will be used to track features just outside Sagittarius A*’s event horizon.

“For about ten years, we’ve known that this black hole is actually not black. Once in awhile it flares, so we see it brightening and darkening,” he said. This flaring is matter falling into the event horizon, generating a powerful flash of energy. The nature of these flares are poorly understood, but the instrument should be able to track this flaring material as it rapidly orbits the event horizon and fades away. These flares will also act as tracers, helping us see the structure of space-time immediately surrounding a black hole for the first time.

Our goal is to measure these motions. We think that what we see as this flaring is actually gas which spirals into the black hole. This brightening and darkening is essentially the gas, when it comes too close to the black hole, the strong tidal forces make it heat up,” said Pfuhl.

“If we can study these motions which happen so close to the black hole, we have a direct probe of the space time close to the black hole. In this way we have a direct test of general relativity in one of the most extreme environments which you can find in the universe.”

While GRAVITY will be able to track these flaring events very close to the black hole, the Event Horizon Telescope will see the shadow, or silhouette, of the dark event horizon surrounded by radio wave emissions. Both projects will be able to measure different components of the region directly surrounding the event horizon, so combined observations in optical and radio wavelengths will complement one other.

It just so happens that the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the largest radio observatory on the planet — also located in the Atacama Desert — will also be added to the EHT.

“The Event Horizon Telescope will combine ALMA with telescopes around the world like Hawaii and other locations, and with that power you can look at really fine details especially in the black hole in the center of our galaxy and perhaps in some really nearby other galaxies that also have black holes in their centers,” ESO astronomer Linda Watson told DNews.

ALMA itself is an interferometer combining the collecting power of 66 radio antennae located atop Chajnantor plateau some 5,000 meters (16,400 ft) in altitude. Watson uses ALMA data to study the cold dust in interstellar space, but when added to the EHT, its radio-collecting power will help us understand the dynamics of the environment surrounding Sagittarius A*.

“ALMA’s an interferometer with 66 antennas, (the EHT) will treat ALMA as just one telescope and will combine it with other telescopes around the world to be another interferometer,” she added.

Black Hole Mysteries

Many black holes are thought to possess an accretion disk of swirling gas and dust. ALMA, when combined with the EHT, will be able to measure this disk’s structure, speed and direction of motion. Lacking direct observations, many of these characteristics have only been modeled by computer simulations or inferred from indirect observations. We’re about to enter an era when we can truly get to answer some of the biggest mysteries surrounding black hole dynamics.

“The first thing we want to see is we want to understand how accretion works close to the black hole,” said Pfuhl. “This is also true for the Event Horizon Telescope. Another thing we want to learn is does our black hole have spin? That means, does it rotate?”

Though the EHT and GRAVITY are working at different wavelengths, observing phenomena around Sagittarius A* will reveal different things about the closest supermassive black hole to Earth. By extension it is hoped that we may observe smaller black holes in our galaxy and other supermassive black holes in neighboring galaxies.

But as we patiently wait for the first direct observations of the black hole monster lurking in the center of our galaxy, an event that some scientists say will be as historic as the “Pale Blue Dot” photo of Earth as captured by Voyager 1 in 1990, it’s hard not to wonder which project will get there first.

“I think it’s a very tight race,” said Pfuhl. “Let’s see.”

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From WIRED:”Technology Aids in Fight Against Tuberculosis”

Discovery News

For the first time ever, a supercomputer will help in the fight against one of the deadliest and fastest-spreading diseases in the world: tuberculosis.

In one corner of the ring you have the IBM World Community Grid.

This platform gives anyone a chance to join the fight by donating their devices’ spare energy. This means they can use the energy from your computer, tablet or smartphone when your device is idle. The World Community Grid is one the most powerful platforms on the planet, and its newly launched Help Stop TB project is fantastic news for the medical community. In the other corner, we have tuberculosis.

What Is Tuberculosis?

Tuberculosis is a highly contagious, airborne disease that kills about 1.5 million people each year. A tuberculosis infection can begin without any symptoms and can persist for years before it becomes an active disease. If TB is detected early, then it is easily treatable. It’s important to look for symptoms and seek treatment.

Active tuberculosis is contagious and spread through the air. Sneezing, coughing or talking is all it takes to spread the disease to another person. Anyone can easily catch this disease. This is why it’s important to find a cure as soon as possible, and IBM’s technology can certainly help in a major way.

The Advantages of Technology

The World Community Grid is no stranger to medical advances. Since its creation in 2014, the World Community Grid has contributed to research for many causes like curing AIDS, cancer and world hunger.

With about 700,000 people lending their devices’ energy to IBM, the World Community Grid is a top-10 supercomputer.

This makes the research process much more efficient. Researchers can now categorize and go through data at rapid speeds.

When it comes to medical research, the more technology the better. Scientists have been using cloud capabilities to apply tens of thousands of computer nodes to a single problem. Supercomputers offer a way to quickly scan through and recognize problems that may have taken years to uncover.

A team at Novartis was able to run through 40 years of cancer drug simulations in just eight hours. It also cost them thousands of dollars instead of the millions it would’ve cost before supercomputers. Having a supercomputer that uses the energy from the devices of 700,000 people will only help tuberculosis research.

The Fight Against Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis is coined as the world’s deadliest disease, so it’s vital that scientists find a cure as soon as possible. It received this nickname because it kills about 1.5 million people a year. IBM’s World Community Grid supercomputer will tremendously speed up the process.

Scientists will use the World Community Grid to get a complete understanding of TB’s cell wall. They’ll be able to simulate different variations of mycolic acid structures to see if they can impact the bacteria’s functions. The supercomputer lets them test many different structures instead of just a few. They hope that one of these structures will give scientists a better understanding of how to attack tuberculosis.

You Can Help

You can sign up to let IBM use your devices’ energy when you aren’t using them. Sign up today and be a part of the fight against tuberculosis.

“World Community Grid (WCG) brings people together from across the globe to create the largest non-profit computing grid benefiting humanity. It does this by pooling surplus computer processing power. We believe that innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can help make the planet smarter. Our success depends on like-minded individuals – like you.”

WCG projects run on BOINC software from UC Berkeley.

BOINC is a leader in the field(s) of Distributed Computing, Grid Computing and Citizen Cyberscience.BOINC is more properly the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

CAN ONE PERSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE? YOU BET!

“Download and install secure, free software that captures your computer’s spare power when it is on, but idle. You will then be a World Community Grid volunteer. It’s that simple!” You can download the software at either WCG or BOINC.

Please visit the project pages-
Outsmart Ebola together

Mapping Cancer Markers

Uncovering Genome Mysteries

Say No to Schistosoma

GO Fight Against Malaria

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

Computing for Clean Water

The Clean Energy Project

Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy

Help Fight Childhood Cancer

Help Conquer Cancer

Human Proteome Folding

FightAIDS@Home

World Community Grid is a social initiative of IBM Corporation
IBM Corporation

IBM – Smarter Planet

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From Discovery: “Documentary 2015 Landing On A Comet Rosetta Mission 2014 New Details”

Discovery News

Published on Nov 13, 2014

Documentary Landing On A Comet Rosetta Mission 2014 New

Watch, enjoy, learn.

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From Discovery: “Black Holes Set the Clock for Life on Earth”

Discovery News

Jan 6, 2016
Larry O’Hanlon

ESO/M. Kornmesser

There is a chance — just a chance — that if black holes rule the universe, they could have “switched on” habitable planets, such as Earth, allowing them to support complex life.

It’s an unavoidable implication of the work of astrophysicist Paul Mason, who is examining the role of the super high-energy particles from black holes and exploding stars in the advent of habitable planets.

Before life started on Earth, the planet was bathed in deadly radiation from the younger, angrier sun as well as a high tide of energetic particles — a.k.a. cosmic rays — being blasted around the galaxy and universe by exploding stars and giant black holes at the centers of galaxies. At some point the cosmic ray flux dropped enough so that life on Earth — and on any Earth-like planet anywhere in the universe — had a chance to flourish.

“It has taken the universe a while for the cosmic ray density and the frequency of bad events to decrease enough for life to handle it,” Mason told Discovery News. Mason is a professor at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces and presented his work on Wednesday at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Kissimmee, Fla.

Those bad events include supernovas — the explosive deaths of very large and short-lived stars — which were much more common in the early universe, when the rates of stars births was far higher, said Mason. Other very bad events were the storms of radiation that might have blown from the gigantic central black holes of galaxies when they gulped down matter. Such feeding frenzies — and the harsh, sterilizing radiation they released — were also more common in the past, as astronomers have learned by looking at more distant, and therefore more ancient, galaxies.

Compounding the early universe’s problem with life is the fact that everything was much closer together. The small young universe was packed thick with sterilizing cosmic rays. It took billions of years for the expanding universe to pull things apart and help thin that deadly soup.

It implies that the expansion of the universe is important for life,” Mason said, regarding this cosmic ray perspective on the universe.

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From Discovery: “Iceland Volcanoes Could Help Power the UK”

Discovery News

Dec 22, 2015
Patrick J. Kiger

An geothermal power station in Iceland, which produces the most electricity in the world per person. Hansueli Krapf, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

For decades, this has been one of the most tantalizing — but elusive — renewable energy ideas around. Lightly-populated Iceland could tap into geothermal energy from its volcanoes, and its ample wind and hydro-power potential as well, and then transmit electricity along a proposed submarine cable to Great Britain, which has a lot more consumers to use it.

The $6.6 billion project would give Iceland an lucrative market for its energy and help the U.K. wean itself from dependence upon fossil fuels. Seeing the mutual advantages, the two governments agreed to explore the idea as part of a memorandum of understanding on energy issues that they signed in 2012. Three years later, the project is at last showing tentative signs of moving forward.

In late October, after British Prime Minister David Cameron visited Iceland and met with his counterpart, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, British officials told the media that a new UK-Iceland Energy Task Force had been created to examine the power project’s feasibility and report back in six months, the U.K.’s Independent newspaper reported.

Recent press reports put the proposed submarine line’s length at close to 750 miles, which would make it the longest underwater power line on the planet, according to Offshore Support Journal.

Iceland Review Online reports that the project would take seven to 10 years to complete. Recent advances in power cable technology, such as the use of cross-linked polyethylene plastic to replace paper as an insulation material — have made cables easier and less expensive to manufacture, and improved their performance.

In some ways, Iceland already is a model of renewal energy, according to a 2012 Bank of Iceland report. The nation gets 78 percent of its electricity from hydro-power and another 27 percent from geothermal, with just 0.01. percent of its electrical capacity coming from fuel-run generation. The island nation produces by far the most electricity in the world per person — 53.9 megawatt hours per Icelander.

But despite its green energy, Iceland paradoxically has the one of the biggest per-capita carbon footprints in Europe, in large part because three-quarters of its electricity goes to run aluminum smelters that burn carbon electrodes, giving off huge amounts of C02, as environmental journalist Cheryl Katz reported in a 2013 article for Yale University’s Environment 360 website.

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From Discovery: “Turbulent Magnetic ‘Perfect Storm’ Triggers Hypernovas”

Discovery News

Nov 30, 2015
Ian O’Neill

Screenshot of the turbulent conditions inside a core-collapse Type II supernova simulation carried out by the Blue Waters supercomputer. Robert R. Sisneros (NCSA) and Philipp Mösta

Cray Blue Waters supercomputer

Although intense magnetic fields have long been assumed as the driving force behind the most powerful supernovas, astrophysicists have now created a computer model that simulates a dying stars’ magnetic guts before generating a cosmic monster.

From the computer model, Supernova Plasma Energy

When massive stars die, they explode. But sometimes these stars really, really explode, becoming the most powerful explosions in the observable universe.

When a massive star runs out of hydrogen fuel, the intense gravity inside its core will start to fuse progressively more massive elements together. On cosmic timescales, this process happens fast, but as the star starts to try to fuse iron, the process comes to an abrupt stop. Fusion in the core is extinguished, and gravity wants to crush the core into oblivion.

Over a period of one second, the star’s core will dramatically implode, from around 1,000 miles to 10 miles across, initiating the mother of all shock waves that, ultimately, rip the star to shreds. This is the short story: star runs out of fuel, implodes, shockwaves, massive explosion. All that’s left is a rapidly expanding cloud of super-heated gas and a tiny neutron star rapidly spinning where the star’s core used to live.

This model is all well and good for explaining how massive stars die, but occasionally astronomers see stellar explosions in the farthest-most reaches of the cosmos popping off with way more energy than can be explained by conventional supernova models. These explosions are known as gamma-ray bursts and it is believed they are the product of a very special breed of supernova — the HYPERnova.

Besides sounding like the next Marvel Comics movie baddie, a hypernova is the epitome of magnetic intensity. As a massive star’s core begins to collapse, it doesn’t only experience a rapid increase in density; the spin of the star is conserved, and, like an ice-skater who retracts her arms while spinning on the spot, the core of the collapsing star will rapidly “spin up” as it shrinks. Along with all this spinning violence, turbulent flows in the superheated plasma spike and the magnetic field of the star becomes extremely concentrated.

Artist’s impression of a hypernova, generating 2 gamma-ray jets. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Until now, these effects of core collapse supernovas were pretty well understood — though firmly based in theory, observations of supernovae appear to provide observational evidence of this theory. But the mechanisms behind hypernovae (and gamma-ray bursts) haven’t been fully appreciated, until now.

In a simulation using one of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet, an international team of researchers have created a model of a hypernova’s core, during collapse, over a fraction of a second as it erupts. And what they found could be the Holy Grail behind gamma-ray bursts.

The reason why gamma-ray bursts are so energetic is that it is believed that when a massive star collapses and goes supernova, something happens in the core that blasts matter and energy in opposite directions in two highly concentrated (or collimated) jets from the erupting supernova’s magnetic poles. Because these jets are so intense, should one of the beams from the hypernova be pointing at Earth, the signal gives the impression it was generated by a much more powerful explosion than a typical supernova can muster.

“We were looking for the basic mechanism, the core engine, behind how a collapsing star could lead to the formation of jets,” said computational scientist Erik Schnetter, of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, who designed the model to simulate the cores of dying stars.

One way to imagine why these jets are so powerful would be to take a stick of dynamite and place it on the ground with a cannonball balanced on top. When the dynamite explodes, it makes a loud bang and might leave a small smoking crater in the ground, but the cannonball probably won’t move very far — it will likely jump a foot in the air and roll into the small crater. But place that same stuck of dynamite in a metal tube, block one end and roll the cannonball into the open end, as the dynamite explodes, all the energy is focused out of the open end, ejecting the ball hundreds of meters into the air.

Like our dynamite analogy, most of the hypernova’s energy is concentrated through the two jets — contained inside magnetic “tubes”. So when we see the jet pointing at us, it appears many times brighter (and more powerful) than the sum of its parts if the supernova ejected all of its energy omnidirectionally. This is a gamma-ray burst.

How these jets are formed, however, has largely been a mystery. But the simulation carried out over 2 weeks on the Blue Waters supercomputer, based at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has revealed an extreme dynamo, driven by turbulence, may be at the center of it all.

“A dynamo is a way of taking the small-scale magnetic structures inside a massive star and converting them into larger and larger magnetic structures needed to produce hypernovae and long gamma-ray bursts,” said postdoctoral fellow Philipp Mösta, of the University of California, Berkeley, and first author of a study published in the journal Nature. “That kicks off the process.

“People had believed this process could work out. Now we actually show it.”

By reconstructing the fine-scale structure inside a dying star’s core as it collapses, the researchers have, for the first time, shown that a mechanism called “magnetorotational instability” may be what triggers the intense magnetic conditions inside the core of a hypernova to generate the powerful jets.

Different layers of stars are known to rotate at different speeds — indeed, our sun is known to have differential rotation. As a massive star’s core collapses, this differential rotation triggers intense instabilities, creating turbulence that channels the magnetic fields into powerful flux tubes. This rapid alignment accelerates the stellar plasma, which, in turn, revs up the magnetic field a quadrillion (that’s a 1 with 15 zeros) times. This feedback loop will fuel the rapid release of material out of the magnetic poles, triggering a hypernova and gamma-ray burst.

According to Mösta, this situation is akin to how powerful hurricanes form in the Earth’s atmosphere; small scale turbulent weather phenomena coalesce to form large-scale cyclones. Hypernova could therefore be imagined as the “perfect storm,” where small-scale turbulence in a collapsing core drives powerful magnetic fields that, if the conditions are right, produce intense jets of exploding matter.

“What we have done are the first global extremely high-resolution simulations of this that actually show that you create this large global field from a purely turbulent one,” Mösta said. “The simulations also demonstrate a mechanism to form magnetars, neutron stars with an extremely strong magnetic field, which may be driving a particular class of very bright supernovae.”

Although digging into the guts of the most powerful explosions in the universe is cool in itself, this research may also go to some way of understanding how some of the heaviest elements in our universe formed.

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From Discovery: “California Once Had a 2,000-Year-Long Dry Spell”

Discovery News

Oct 2, 2015
Patrick J. Kiger

Above, the Jerusalem Fire burns at the Lake and Napa County lines after jumping north of the highway Tuesday afternoon. Will El Nino Trigger An Extreme Wildfire Season?

California’s current lengthy drought is really punishing the state’s residents, who’ve been compelled by government restrictions to reduce their water use by nearly a third in a desperate effort to conserve the dwindling amount of H2O left in the state’s reservoirs.

But as a recently-published study in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews reveals, the state once experienced a much longer dry spell — a series of mega-droughts as bad as the one today, strung together over a 2,000-year-period.

California Drought by the Numbers

Fortunately, though, they occurred at a time — 25,500 to 27,500 years ago — when there weren’t any Californians around yet to complain about not being able to water their lawns.

Paleoecologists Linda Heusser and Jonathan Nichols, of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, did a high-resolution analysis of pollen levels in a sediment core drilled from the bottom of Lake Elsinore, which is to the east of the Santa Ana Mountains near Los Angeles. That method provides the first detailed continuous record of ecological changes in coastal southern California from 32,000 to 9,000 years ago, with shifts measurable on a scale of decades rather than centuries.

Pollen records are unique in that we can capture the vegetation distribution,” Heusser said in a press release. “There are no other records of vegetation that extend through this time. The best we had been able to do before for this time frame was stalagmites inferring precipitation in a cave in New Mexico.”

NEWS: What If California Runs Out of Water?

The pollen count at various levels of the sediment showed that pine trees and juniper, which dominated the region’s ecosystem until about 27,500 years ago, were replaced by dryland herbs, shrubs and chaparral for about 2,000 years. Then, the pine trees and junipers began to return.

The researchers also found that changes in the pollen record also correlate with analysis of sediment cores from the Pacific Ocean just off Santa Barbara, which show that that the ocean was warmer during the periods that droughts occurred. That suggests that ocean conditions may have been the driver of the mega droughts.

See the full article here .

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From Seeker via Discovery: “Documenting The World’s Last Nomadic Tribes”

Discovery News

Seeker

9.13.15
Taylor Kubota

Download mp4 video here.

Native nomadic tribes are disappearing across the world. See how some photographers are trying to preserve their endangered legacies.

The Tuareg (Twareg or Touareg; endonym Imuhagh) are group of largely matrilineal semi-nomadic, pastoralist people of Berber extraction residing in the Saharan interior of North-Western Africa. The Tuaregs who are mostly Sunni Muslims descended from the Berber (“Amazigh branch”) ancestors who lived in North Africa many years ago. Migdalovitz (1989) aver that “Garamante is believed to be the origin of Tuaregs and it was the predominant tribe in the south west of Libya some time before 1000 BC.”

We talk a lot about endangered species and disappearing environments but parts of life that are more difficult to categorize can be threatened with extinction as well. Language, customs, and traditional practices are often passed down from generation to generation but some fall by the wayside. Just because a cultural tradition is going away doesn’t mean it’s valueless. This is part of the sentiment of UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.

The List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding holds 314 elements from countries all around the world. You may have heard of some of the list items -such as Chinese shadow puppetry, French horseback riding, and Colombian Marimba music – but you are unlikely to be familiar with everything on this list. For example, Jultagi (Korean tightrope walking), the Ifa divination system from Nigeria, and the silent circle dance of the Dalmatian hinterland of Croatia are just a few “intangibles” that may hold some mystery for the majority of us.

With all the impact humans have on the natural world, it may feel misguided to focus on preserving pieces of human culture. Particularly considering these are often simply the victims of progress and modernization. But, as we all know and have each probably said ourselves, it’s vital that we learn from our history, so that we can attempt to avoid past mistakes. Attempts to preserve culture can help us in this, through the maintenance and study of oral history, unique craftsmanship, and traditional wisdoms. Studying cultural heritage can also provide us with colorful, diverse, rich experiences that can be difficult to find in the modern era.

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From Discovery: “Black Holes Slug it Out in Quasar Deathmatch”

Discovery News

Aug 28, 2015
Ian O’Neill

This artistic illustration is of a binary black hole found in the center of the nearest quasar host galaxy to Earth, Markarian 231 NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

How to measure the spin of a black hole: This chart illustrates the basic model for determining the spin rates of black holes. The three artist’s concepts represent the different types of spin: retrograde rotation, where the disk of matter falling onto the hole, called an accretion disk, moves in the opposite direction of the black hole; no spin; and prograde rotation, where the disk spins in the same direction as the black hole. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Two models of black hole spin: Scientists measure the spin rates of supermassive black holes by spreading the X-ray light into different colors. The light comes from accretion disks that swirl around black holes, as shown in both of the artist’s concepts. They use X-ray space telescopes to study these colors, and, in particular, look for a “fingerprint” of iron — the peak shown in both graphs, or spectra — to see how sharp it is. Prior to observations with NASA’s Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, and the European Space Agency’s XMM- Newton telescope, there were two competing models to explain why this peak might not appear to be sharp. The “rotation” model shown at top held that the iron feature was being spread out by distorting effects caused by the immense gravity of the black hole. If this model were correct, then the amount of distortion seen in the iron feature should reveal the spin rate of the black hole. The alternate model held that obscuring clouds lying near the black hole were making the iron line appear artificially distorted. If this model were correct, the data could not be used to measure black hole spin. NASA/JPL-Caltech

This chart depicts the electromagnetic spectrum, highlighting the X-ray portion. NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton telescope complement each other by seeing different colors of X-ray light. XMM-Newton sees X-rays with energies between 0.1 and 10 kiloelectron volts (keV), the “red” part of the spectrum, while NuSTAR sees the highest-energy, or “bluest,” X- ray light, with energies between 3 and 70 keV. NASA/JPL-Caltech

This image taken by the ultraviolet-light monitoring camera on the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) XMM-Newton telescope shows the beautiful spiral arms of the galaxy NGC1365. Copious high-energy X-ray emission is emitted by the host galaxy, and by many background sources. The large regions observed by previous satellites contain so much of this background emission that the radiation from the central black hole is mixed and diluted into it. NuSTAR, NASA’s newest X-ray observatory, is able to isolate the emission from the black hole, allowing a far more precise analysis of its properties.

What XMM-Newton saw: The solid lines show two theoretical models that explain the low-energy X-ray emission seen from the galaxy NGC 1365 by the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton. The red line explains the emission using a model where clouds of dust and gas partially block the X-ray light, and the green line represents a model in which the emission is reflected off the inner edge of the accretion disk, very close to the black hole. The blue circles show the measurements from XMM-Newton, which are explained equally well by both models. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CfA/INAF

Two X-ray observatories are better than one: NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has helped to show, for the first time, that the spin rates of black holes can be measured conclusively. It did this, together with the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton, by ruling out the possibility that obscuring clouds were partially blocking X-ray right coming from black holes. The solid lines show two theoretical models that explain low-energy X-ray emission seen previously from the spiral galaxy NGC 1365 by XMM-Newton. The red line explains the emission using a model where clouds of dust and gas partially block the X-ray light, and the green line represents a model in which the emission is reflected off the inner edge of the accretion disk, very close to the black hole. The blue circles show the latest measurements from XMM-Newton, and the yellow circles show the data from NuSTAR. While both models fit the XMM-Newton data equally well, only the disk reflection model fits the NuSTAR data. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/CfA/INAF

In a galaxy, 600 million light-years away, a black hole deathmatch is ripping up spacetime, exposing some fascinating dynamics at the heart of a powerful quasar.

The quasar, which lives in the core of the galaxy Markarian 231 (Mrk 231), is the closest quasar to Earth and after studying years of data from the Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers have realized that this particular quasar is driven by 2 black holes trapped in an orbital spiral of death.

NASA/ESA Hubble

This discovery could be critical to the study of quasars, the super-bright emissions blasting from galaxies in the distant universe. But the fact we have a quasar that’s comparatively close to our galactic neighborhood, Mrk 231 is a great laboratory to gain an insight to these enigmatic objects.

When studying the ultraviolet emissions blasting from the quasar’s accretion disk — a disk of superheated gases surrounding the central region — a deeply fascinating discovery was made. The quasar appears to be hollowed out, resembling a ring doughnut, and using dynamical models the researchers quickly realized that there must be two supermassive black holes, one more massive than the other, carving out the center.

As they orbit one another inside the quasar’s core, the smaller black hole carves out a region at the inner edge, also creating its own, smaller accretion disk. Calculations show that the pair complete one orbit every 1.2 years. The larger black hole is approximately 150 million times the mass of our sun and its smaller partner is 4 million times the mass of our sun.

“We are extremely excited about this finding because it not only shows the existence of a close binary black hole in Mrk 231, but also paves a new way to systematically search binary black holes via the nature of their ultraviolet light emission,” said Youjun Lu, of the National Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

As the two black holes whip around one another, energy is lost through the emission of gravitational waves. And this means that they are slowly spiraling into one another, set to collide and merge in a few hundred thousand years.

The fact there are 2 supermassive black holes occupying the quasar speaks to Mrk 231′s violent past.

Known as a “starburst” galaxy, it is a powerhouse of star formation, birthing stars 100 times the rate of our Milky Way. The tidal disruption of a smaller galaxy merging with Mrk 231 is also highlighted by long tails of young, blue stars. The galaxy is also asymmetrical in shape, showing that the billions of stars are still in the process of settling. It’s likely that the smaller black hole in the galactic core was the central black hole occupying the smaller, merging galaxy.

“The structure of our universe, such as those giant galaxies and clusters of galaxies, grows by merging smaller systems into larger ones, and binary black holes are natural consequences of these mergers of galaxies,” added co-investigator Xinyu Dai of the University of Oklahoma.

The tidal upheaval has also generated huge quantities of in-falling gas, fueling the powerful black hole “engine” and bright quasar.

This research is published in the Astrophysical Journal and can be found on the arXiv preprint service.

See the full article here.

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From Discovery: “Life 2.0? Synthetic DNA Added to Genetic Code”

Discovery News

Aug 25, 2015
Glenn McDonald

Thinkstock

Well, there’s no way this could go wrong.

According to recent announcements, a small biotech startup in California has successfully added new synthetic components to the genetic alphabet of DNA, potentially creating entirely new kinds of life on Earth.

You’d need a Ph.D. or three to really get into it, but here goes: DNA, the organic molecule that carries genetic information for life, is made from a limited chemical “alphabet.” DNA can be thought of as a molecular code containing exactly four nitrogen-containing nucleobases — cytosine (C), guanine (G), adenine (A), or thymine (T). All known living organisms on the planet, from bacteria to biologists, are based on combinations of this four-letter molecular code: C-G-A-T.

That’s how it’s been for several billion years, but last year the biotech company Synthorx announced development of a synthetic pair of nucleobases — abbreviated X-Y — to create a new and expanded genetic code.

From the company website: “Adding two new synthetic bases, termed X and Y, to the genetic alphabet, we now have an expanded vocabulary to improve the discovery and development of new therapeutics, diagnostics and vaccines as well as create innovative products and processes, including using semi-synthetic organisms….”

The additions to the four letter DNA code effectively raises the number of possible amino acids an organism could use to build proteins from 20 to 172. That opens up entire new vistas of possibilities, including a completely new class of semi-synthetic life forms using a six-letter DNA code instead of a four-letter code.

Synthorx’s most recent announcement concerns the successful production of proteins containing the new synthetic base pair, building on the research published last year: “Since the publication, Synthorx has developed and validated a protein expression system, employing its synthetic DNA technology to incorporate novel amino acids to create new full-length and functional proteins.”

According to third-party reports, Synthorx has even started creating new organisms with the technology, including a type of E. coli bacteria “never before seen on the face of the Earth.”

The company insists that multiple safeguards are built into the technology, and that organisms created with the synthetic elements can only be produced in the lab. That, of course, is the premise of roughly one million science fiction horror stories, but what can you do? Well, you can read more about it here.

See the full article here.

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