Wednesday, April 10, 2019

What's the whole deal about this Black Hole picture?



A little background...

What is a black hole and how are they created?
Certain conditions can occur in older stars that causes them to collapse. Naturally occurring black holes can form when stars collapse. And in case you haven't noticed or looked outside recently... stars are massive. Due to their enormous mass they have a HUGE amount of gravitational force. In the extremely rare event that a black hole has been created, all of what is left of the huge star is condensed down to a tiny single point called the singularity. The gravitational pull of the singularity inside the black hole is so strong that it pulls everything near it into itself. In fact, the pull is so strong that even light particles are drawn back into the singularity. This phenomena of the light being pulled back into the singularity is where the name "Black Hole" comes from. If you have seen the movie interstellar, well you get the basic idea of what odd things can happen around a black hole and what they look like... (almost as it turns out, lol)


So this image that is making headlines around the world is a zoomed in picture of a black hole?

Nope, not in the sense that you probably think it is. This image is not what is visible to the human eye. In fact, despite black holes being so, well, black, they can actually wreak havoc on everything around them.
Therefore, the easiest black holes to find and study would be a black hole near lots of matter or other stars. The matter nearby would be constantly ripped apart and heated to extreme temperatures by the gravitational field causing it to be extremely bright and jets of matter would be thrown into space.
So now we had an idea of what could be causing certain bright spots in the universe, but these areas were so bright and far away that there was no way to see what is in the middle of those immensely bright regions.
But the telescopes commonly in use today to study the cosmos are not the optical telescopes you are accustomed to using, they are radio telescopes.




Because many astronomical objects emit radiation more strongly at longer wavelengths than at visible-light wavelengths, radio telescopes can show us things about the universe that optical telescopes cannot. Data is collected from these telescopes and combined to make a digital image of what the telescope is “seeing”. Over the last half-century, radio astronomers have used radio telescopes to make most of the recent exciting discoveries.  

You can see from the picture below that radio telescopes offer better clarity than an optical telescope, in fact these two pictures are the same scale! You can just see more of the spiral arms of the galaxy on the radio spectrum vs visible light spectrum.


The consensus was that the only way to study a black hole would be to create a very large special radio telescope, like the hubble telescope, only much, much larger.

So, they finally made a radio telescope powerful enough to take this “picture”?

Yes and no.
Instead of creating a new large radio telescope, a group of scientists proposed that they would take several of the world’s most powerful radio telescopes, and modify them to be able to work together as one giant telescope the size of the Earth, collectively called the Event Horizon Telescope.



The telescopes contributing to this result were ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-meter telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano, the Submillimeter Array, the Submillimeter Telescope, and the South Pole Telescope. Several NASA spacecraft and ground observatories also participated in this event.

After years of getting ready and then waiting for basically good weather to happen simultaneously on the whole planet, a window was agreed upon.

Over 4 days in April 2017, the largest and most powerful telescopes spanning the globe all pointed towards their target, M87.

M87 has been long thought to contain a black hole due to a strange jet of gas that can be seen emitting from a bright lit region. (Remember our previous discussion about gravitational waves wreaking havoc on matter nearby the singularity)



Great, so they pointed it at their target and what was the result?!

Well, first of all there was no immediate result. Each individual telescope array held a piece of the puzzle. There was a TON of data that was recorded from each telescope over the four days. Thousands of Gigabytes of data from each telescope location was flown in to special supercomputers at MIT to combine and process the data.

Since this had never been done before they had to figure out a way to get all the data aligned and combined into a single image. At the same time, everyone knew that they were all working on what could possibly be one of the greatest scientific achievements of the century. Everything that they presented was going to be under the highest scrutiny of the scientific community.

To make sure that the team create a true image from the actual data, they organized four separate teams of scientists. Each team was not allowed to talk to any other team members from other teams and they worked in complete secrecy.

After several months each team had devised a way to combine the data from all the individual telescopes and submitted their algorithms and final image.
Once the last team was complete, all the images from each team were compared, and they all showed virtually the same image indicating the data was accurate and the image real.



The four teams methods were analyzed, adjusted, and combined to form a single image from each day that the suspected area of the black hole in M87 was observed.

“What the image shows is gas heated to millions of degrees by the friction of ever-stronger gravity, scientists said. And that gravity creates a funhouse effect where you see light from both behind the black hole and behind you as the light curves and circles around the black hole itself”, said astronomer Avi Loeb, director of the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard.


All the data lined up exactly with the predicted models of what a black hole would look and behave like. The 200 scientists participating worldwide agreed to keep these results secret while they went to work analyzing all the data and began writing six extremely technical papers to back up their discovery. Everything was cross researched, and several computer models of black holes were overlaid on top of the data to ensure that everything seemed accurate.

Simultaneous world-wide press conferences were scheduled for April 10, 2019 and the first ever image of a black hole was shown to the world!











Friday, August 28, 2015

How to change and customize call reject messages on the samsung galaxy note 5

How to change and customize call reject messages on the samsung galaxy note 5

Tap the Call App.

Click More in the upper right hand corner of the screen.

Select Settings from the drop down menu.

Click Call Blocking.

Select Call-reject messages.

Here you can add or reject the default call rejection messages.

Enjoy and please share!

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Comcast Voice - Entire East Coast Down

I was just informed by Comcast tech support that all voice services for Comcast voice are down for the entire east coast.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Limewire Ordered to shutdown by NY Court


U.S. district judge Kimba Wood in New York issued an injunction Tuesday, ordering LimeWire to disable the "searching, downloading, uploading, file trading, and/or file distribution functionality" of the Limewire peer-to-peer music sharing service. LimeWire has been fighting the RIAA in court for years now, and this injunction effectively annihilates LimeWire from the planet just like Napster, Grokster, Kazaa and other peer-to-peer file-sharing services that have been silenced by the record industry. But Limewire's parent company has not given up just yet, see the below statement from Lime Company's CEO that hints at a new upcoming product that will comply with copyright laws.







LimeWire Today, and What’s in Store for the Future


As of today, we are required to stop distribution and support of LimeWire’s P2P file-sharing service as a result of a court-ordered injunction.


Naturally, we’re disappointed with this turn of events. We are extremely proud of our pioneering history and have, for years, worked hard to bridge the gap between technology and content rights holders. However, at this time, we have no option but to cease further distribution and support of our software.


It’s a sad occasion for our team, and for you – the hundreds of millions of people who have used LimeWire to discover new things.


While we have enabled open sharing and discovery for the past decade, LimeWire is mostly the product of the people who used it. You made LimeWire. Thank you for letting us be part of that. Your support and enthusiasm has fueled everything that we do.


During this challenging time, we are excited about the future. The injunction applies only to the LimeWire product. Our company remains open for business.


We remain deeply committed to working with the music industry and making the act of loving music more fulfilling for everyone – including artists, songwriters, publishers, labels, and of course music fans.


Our team of technologists and music enthusiasts is creating a completely new music service that puts you back at the center of your digital music experience.


We’ll be sharing more details about our new service and look forward to bringing it to you in the future.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Sony Unveils Worlds first HDTV powered by Google TV

Today Sony announced that they were developing the worlds first HDTV powered by Google TV. Read more about Google TV here. The feature set is quite rich with the ability to search your TV for all of the content on your TV, the ability to run apps and the web, video on demand, and many other cool and ground-breaking features, such as using your phone as a remote control.







More information below taken directly from the Press Release
"It is built on the Android platform, runs the Google Chrome browser and includes a powerful Intel® Atom® processor offering the ability to quickly search across Internet and television content for easy access to entertainment and information.
The models also feature Dual View, allowing users to watch television while tweeting about what they're watching, checking their fantasy football scores, or finding related content on the web.
They also deliver a truly personalized entertainment experience with the ability to bookmark content for easy access and add applications from the Android™ Market (coming in early 2011). The models feature Sony's premium streaming service "Video On Demand powered by Qriocity™" as well as pre-installed apps including CNBC, Napster, NBA, Netflix, Pandora®, Twitter, and YouTube™.
The intuitive hand-held RF QWERTY keypad remote incorporating an optical mouse makes it easy to navigate content, type in search terms, and control the TV's user interface. Additionally, select mobile devices such as an Android phone, can control the TV with an app that will be available for download from the Android Market later this fall.
Built-in Wi-Fi makes it easy to connect to home broadband networks to access web content. Additionally, Sony Internet TV is ready for the future and is fully upgradable through system updates.
Sony Internet TV easily connects to select HD DVR devices from Dish Network to include previously recorded content in the search results and control DVR functionality from the set's user interface.
Sony Internet TV Line
Featuring four LCD HDTVs with Google TV built-in, the Sony Internet TV line includes the 24-inch class NSX-24GT1 ($599.99), the 32-inch class NSX-32GT1 ($799.99), the 40-inch NSX-40GT1 ($999.99), and the 46-inch NSX-46GT1 ($1,399.99).


Sony Internet TV Blu-ray Disc Player
The Sony Internet TV Blu-ray Disc™ player with Google TV built-in, NSZ-GT1 ($399.99), also allows users to enjoy all of the powerful features of Google TV on their existing HDTV.




Sony Internet TV and the Sony Internet TV Blu-ray Disc Player are currently on pre-sale at SonyStyle online store and BestBuy. They will be available for purchase at Sony Style on October 16 and at Best Buy shortly after."