Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- What happened when Voyager 2 reached interstellar space.

- Interesting article on the strange partnership between Keto evangelist Dom D'Agostino (Joe Rogan podcast favorite) and Patrick Arnold (the chemist who created "the clear" for BALCO)

- The shape of the universe - is it flat (like a sheet of paper) or curved in upon itself (like a sphere).

- A US Military video from 1943 explaining how to behave in a British pub (starring Burgess Meredith)

- Oldest known surviving Marine from Iwo Jima passes aged 103. (Hat tip Borepatch)

Black Holes

This week the Event Horizon Telescope was able, for the first time, to show the world an actual image of a black hole. The black hole is located at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 which is 55 million light years from Earth. The supermassive black hole photographed has 6.5 billion times more mass than our Sun.

This was an excellent article on what this historic photograph really means and puts into perspective the difficulty involved in the accomplishment.

This article give you an appreciation of the epic scale of the black hole in relation to our own solar system.

Truly a monumental accomplishment and historic day.

As an aside, it think it would have been much more poetical and cooler if science had settled on the term "dark abyss" instead of "black hole".

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- A Letter to Jamie Dimon (and anyone else still struggling to understand cryptocurrencies). Long read but worth it if you want to understand Bitcoin.

- Was true in 1931 and still true today

- The day astrophysics changed forever. Neutron-star collision shakes space-time and lights up the sky. Very cool.

- The Clinton and Obama legacies will not be treated well by either close examination or history. Politics (on both sides) continues to sicken me.

- Obama's college transcripts to finally be released - by Wikileaks!?!? Politics continues to sicken me but yet I still can't look away.

- The Yellowstone super volcano continues to scare the shit out of me. Maybe even enough to buy Bitcoin to hedge my post-apocalyptic bet.

- Heh heh - best to end today on a lighter note.

Linky Links

Stuff I found interesting or amusing and thought I'd share.

- Yeah I think I'm going to eliminate Vermont maple syrup from my diet after seeing this.

- I love Arnold

- This is hilarious!

- Very cool! I'm sure we will hear much more about this new star as we get closer to 2022.

- It was only a matter of time. For the first time streaming eclipses disc sales in 2016.

- How to live a creative life

Hubble's Blue Bubble

I'm fascinated with things like Hubble's Blue Bubble. Just awesome!

Gravitational Waves

Albert Einstein proved correct once again!

The discovery from the MIT point of view. Link includes fantastic video that explains both the discovery and how the LIGO project came to be.

Gravitational waves explained (via a cartoon).

Someone familiar with the players at Cal Tech gives some background on their history of the project.