Here we go loop-de-loo,
here we go loop-de-lie,
here we go loop-de-loo,
all on a Saturday night.
Was thinking about 33 1/3 LP records and old turntables.When we were kids, we used to put things on the turntable and see how fast the revolutions had to be for the object to spin off into space. We used small blocks because the flat base offered more stability.
At 33 1/3 rpm, the square object would stay fairly stable. At 45 rpm, we'd see some wobble. At 78 rpm, the wobble increased and eventually the block would fly off. I don't know physics from my elbows. But it was fun to do that.
I was thinking about these things as we watched satellite and radar images of the hurricanes these past couple weeks. Katrina whacked Louisiana at 30 degrees latitude. Ophelia became force 1 at 33 degrees latitude.
Then, this Black Hole news article showed up late last night. So, of course - I'm wondering and thinking if it's a good thing that the Earth is round, remembering what happened to the marbles we placed on that old LP turntable. They flew off at slower speeds. And seemed to hold their own place at higher rpms. Like I said - physics isn't a strongpoint in my girl brain cellular memories. Then, since my ability for logic is sort of like a black hole - I wondered to myself:
What If the Earth *IS* actually a black hole. And I was thinking of all the people left homeless after their worlds were darkened by the Storm. My family was homeless for 8 months. It's not an experience one easily forgets.
Just some weird thoughts for the day. :o)
Hubble spies homeless black hole
Wed Sep 14, 1:10 PM ET WASHINGTON
(Reuters) -
A supermassive black hole appears to be homeless in the cosmos without a galaxy to nestle in, Hubble Space Telescope scientists reported on Wednesday.
Most monster black holes lurk at the heart of massive galaxies, slurping up matter from the galactic center with a pull so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape.
[See? It *DOES* sound like the Earth] :o)
But a team of European astronomers reported in the journal Nature that a particular black hole some 5 billion light-years away has no evidence of a host galaxy. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year.
The black hole was detected when the scientists went hunting for quasars -- extremely bright, small, distant objects that are strongly associated with black holes. Astronomers believe a quasar is produced by cosmic gas as it is drawn toward the edge of a supermassive black hole.
Most quasars and black holes are in the middle of supermassive galaxies and in their survey of 20 relatively nearby quasars, the scientists found 19 followed this expected pattern. But one showed no signs of having a galactic home.
The astronomers, using the Hubble telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile, reported that this rogue black hole may be the result of a rare collision between a seemingly normal spiral galaxy and an exotic object harboring a very massive black hole.
[is that the Completely Official name?? the "Very Large Telescope" ... and is it my current state of libido - or does that paragraph Seem Very Erotic??] lol
One problem in quasar-hunting is that they are so bright, they outshine most galaxies that surround them, just as the headlights from an oncoming vehicle can make the vehicle hard to see. So even if a surrounding galaxy is present, it can be difficult to detect.
The European astronomers used the two telescopes to overcome this problem by comparing the quasars they were watching with a reference star. This let them differentiate the light from the quasar from the light from any possible underlying galaxy.
Further information is available online at http://www.spacetelescope.org.
1 comment:
i'm still buying and playing new records, and we have turntables set up in our apartment.
it might surprise you that the majority of dj's still buy new records and play them if you head out to the clubs. i would estimate that over 95% of the smaller and major clubs that feature dj's (in a non-trendy, bullshit environment) are still booking some of the biggest names in non-commercial music, and these guys (and a few girls) are still only playing vinyl records.
just check out chemical records (it's where i'm buying most of my records, right now) for a taste of something very different from what tv and radio has to offer.
as i tend to loathe pop or any other commercial music, most of what i play has or never will be on tv. if a track has a music video attached, then i'm almost certainly never going to want it. generally speaking, music is meant to be listened to, not seen.....
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