Capturing Black Holes

A German-built space telescope is creating the most detailed map of black holes and neutron stars across our universe, revealing more than 3 million newfound objects in less than two years.

The observatory, called eROSITA, launched in 2019 and is the first space-based X-ray telescope capable of imaging the entire sky. 

It is the main instrument aboard the Russian-German Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma mission, which sits in a region known as Lagrange point 2, one of five stable points around the sun-Earth system, where the gravitational forces of the two bodies are in balance. 

From this vantage point, eROSITA has a clear view of the universe, which it photographs with its powerful X-ray detecting instruments.

Last month, the team behind eROSITA, led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany, released the first batch of data acquired by the instrument to the wider scientific community for exploration.  READ MORE

A Few GIFs

 

What is Life

In 1943, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, famous for his equation and his cat, Erwin Schrödinger, turned his attention to a problem that was seemingly simple but defied an easy answer. As World War 2 raged, he published a book titled What is Life?

Based on a series of lectures given in Dublin, the book’s theme was to answer the question: “how can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?”

In other words: What is Life? Or, from a physicist’s point of view, how can life arise from inanimate matter.

Much of the lecture discussed the requirement for genetic material and some sort of encoding as well as how life related to thermodynamics — the laws governing energy, heat transport, and disorder.

Although their success largely depended on Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray diffraction experiments, Francis and Crick would also credit Schrödinger’s work for inspiring their research resulting in the discovery of the DNA double helix.

Schrödinger’s primary insight is that life creates order from disorder. In a universe governed by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, that all things tend to maximal disorder, living things maintain small enclaves of order within themselves. Moreover, if you look down to the atomic level, you find that the interiors of living things are extremely chaotic. Heat and molecules diffuse through rapid motion. Everything seems random. Yet the living thing persists, turning all that small scale chaos into large scale order.

Human built machines, by contrast, attempt to maintain order down to the smallest relevant levels. Microchips, for example, depend on orderly transfer of data down to nanometers. Precision machine tools, likewise, function because they have an exact specification at nearly the molecular level. The result is that human tools require careful protection and maintenance and break easily when subjected to the elements.

Life, on the other hand, has withstood the elements for billions of years precisely because it is able to build order out of chaos.  READ MORE

Bread From Around The World

 

She Loves America

 

Patriotic Wrestler Elated After Historic Gold Medal: 'I Freaking Love Living' in America...

Insulting

Attorney for Gov. Cuomo's accusers says response to report was 'insulting'...

 

Reconsidering

 

BREAKING: After Immense Criticism, Former (and likely current) President Barack Obama Scales Back Huge Birthday Bash For Himself...

Here's Whats Interesting

I am constantly looking for articles to post on this blog and I only use a couple of paragraphs, then I always link back to the original article at the bottom, so that the reader can see who deserves the credit...  some online sources allow you to do this easily while others make you jump through a few hoops and others want you to pay for a subscription in order to use their article...

I am sure that all these places understand that all I have to do is cut and paste the general idea of the article or the main headline into my brower's URL window, and I can find numerous sources for the same material which is easily used...  totally negating whatever it is that they are trying to do...

This same logic holds true for photos that cannot be copied...  I can do a general search and find the EXACT SAME PHOTO but easily copied for free...

I don't want credit for the writing or the photo, I just want to use both to draw attention to my blog...  I'm selfish I suppose...

Back Porch Thoughts

Mornings in East TN grow slowly especially once one is retired and has no early morning appointments that have been made only to secure closeby parking...  coffee is always on the docket and is always repoured into a YETI after brewing in order to reduce my return trips to the coffee pod machine.

August now ends the humid days of July which is previous years (not too long ago as I recall) took place in August not July but at this age, it really does not matter when they were as long as they are finally over.  Humidity is not good on this youthful but old body.

I look out through the screen and see that all the brown grass has returned to its normal state of green and while I am pleased with that development, it also signals the need to mow the lawn and weedeat which is not a bad task jut a boring one.

I watched the news today...  o'boy...  about a man who fell from grace and is no longer the face of his party and is no longer welcome on our viewing screens telling us how wonderful he is...  but, I wonder how much of this news is being shared with the public...  and if it is not being shared why the hell is it my concern?  It is not!!!

My back porch is not the place for lamenting...  it is the place for pondering, wondering, and understanding that life around us is brief and while some live less than others, we all die and we all should enjoy that which we have and that which was given to us without regret that we may learn from that gift.

The sun (or son) has decided not to show its face again today and we are left to enjoy the environment outside without fear of its heat or deadly rays against our skin.

The air is calm and clean and free of polution and the noise of the city (as I recall its noise) is non-existent in these here parts as they saying goes.  We are not the heartland of it all but we are still away from it all to the extent that we hardly know it is there unless we venture out too far away from what we have here.

A distant barking reminds me of animals that must be on leashes, except for cats, and I wonder why since cats can be more vicious if and when they are backed into a corner or out-numbered...  and, that thought reminds me of politics and how our country is divided based upon points-of-view and the color of one's skin which does not seem fair since the latter is not a choice as is the former.

From my back porch, I see only the truth of what is in front of me and really am not concerned about what is around me from the standpoint of it being truth or not.  Truth is subjective unless factual and even when factual, one must still believe and/or accept those facts as real.  And, therein lies the problem...  when I decide to leave my back porch.

 

Intelligent Photo

Hoursing Values Globally

 

Nosferatu

 

Outdoors

 

China's Zhurong Mars Rover

China's Zhurong rover has quietly clocked up 1,900 feet (585 meters) of driving on Mars and has been using its science instruments to check out nearby geologic features in Utopia Planitia.

Zhurong's latest exploits have seen it analyze dunes amid the local rocky Martian terrain and visit the backshell and parachute that helped the rover land safely on the Red Planet.

A new release by the China National Space Administration on July 23, also marking the first anniversary of the launch of China's Tianwen-1 Mars mission, showed Zhurong had visited a second wind-formed sand dune.

The rover used its surface composition detectors, multi-spectral cameras and other science payloads to analyze the formation, according to the update.

Zhurong landed on Mars in May and rolled onto the surface a week later, making China just the second country after the United States to land and operate a rover on Mars. The rover's first feat was driving away from the lander, dropping a small, remote camera, and returning to pose with the lander for an epic selfie.

Later updates have included remarkable roving footage as well as sounds captured by the rover's climate station.

The solar-powered rover has since been making its way south of the landing site. The CNSA released a map showing Zhurong's travels up to July 21 and covering 66 Mars days, or sols. Both Zhurong's parent orbiter, Tianwen-1, and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have also been monitoring the journey.

ET's and Earth

Gut Bacteria

People who live to age 100 and beyond may have special gut bacteria that help ward off infections, according to a new study from Japan.

The results suggest that these bacteria, and the specific compounds they produce — known as "secondary bile acids" — could contribute to a healthy gut and, in turn, healthy aging.

Still, much more research is needed to know whether these bacteria promote exceptionally long life spans. The current findings, published Thursday (July 29) in the journal Nature, only show an association between these gut bacteria and living past 100; they don't prove that these bacteria caused people to live longer, said study senior author Dr. Kenya Honda, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo.

"Although it might suggest that these bile-acid-producing bacteria may contribute to longer life spans, we do not have any data showing the cause-and-effect relationship between them," Honda told Live Science.

The community of bacteria and other microorganisms that live in the gut, known as the gut microbiome, is known to play a role in our health and changes as we age. For example, having less diversity in the types of gut bacteria has been linked with frailty in older adults. But researchers suspected that people who reach age 100 may have special gut bacteria that contribute to good health. 

Indeed, centenarians tend to be at lower risk of chronic diseases and infections compared with older adults who don't reach this milestone.  READ MORE

Religious Flowchart

 

It's A PURGE

Maher Torches Woke Culture: ‘This Is Called A Purge. It’s A Mentality That Belongs In Stalin’s Russia.’

HBO host Bill Maher slammed woke culture and people who were complaining about cultural appropriation at the Olympics, saying that the toxic ideology was something that belonged in Stalin’s Russia.

Top lines from Maher’s segment on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” included:


BILL MAHER, HBO HOST: And finally new rule, please don’t make the Olympics into the Oscars. Oh, what’s that? They they did already? Yeah. You know, back in April when the Oscars aired, I commented in this space that the theme of that evening was, we dare you to be entertained lest your mind waver for a few hours from thinking about the sad things and bad people in the world. Well, thank God we found some of those bad people in the Olympics now and not a moment too soon. [Audience claps] No, that was sarcasm. 

The director of the opening ceremony was fired hours before the event because they found out there was a Holocaust joke at a comedy routine he did decades ago. Well, you know, context is everything. Obviously it didn’t strike people as beyond the pale at the time, young people have to stop flattering themselves that they’re Nostradamus and would have foreseen had they’d been around then everything that’s unacceptable now, and for further context, Mel Brooks wrote one of the most successful musicals of all time around the song Springtime For Hitler.

Why do we allow the people who just want to b***h to always win? Days before that firing, the opening ceremonies musical director, musical director, was also forced out because someone dug up an interview with him from 1994 where he admitted to bullying classmates as a child. As a child. Remember when your teacher used to try and scare you by saying this is going to go on your permanent record? Yeah, no longer an empty threat now.

And the creative director of the entire shebang of the whole Olympics got s**t canned because he once made a fat joke in a private conversation. This is called a purge. It’s a mentality that belongs in Stalin’s Russia. How bad does this atmosphere we are living in have to get before the people who say, ‘cancel culture is overblown,’ admit that is, in fact, an insanity that is swallowing up the world.  READ MORE

Morning Smirks

 

Afternoon Comics