Did
you know there are over 30,000 particle accelerators in the world? The design
of particle accelerators is a creative process. Often it starts with just one
person and their concept, but they all tend to have 5 key ingredients.
1 - Particles - where do you get them, how do you make them? Accelerators might use atoms with electrons split off, called ions, or the particles inside atoms themselves: electrons or protons.
2 - Energy - you need an acceleration mechanism, some way of giving the particles a push. Typically this uses electric fields.
3 - Control - once your particles are moving, you need to control them, to move them and focus them where they’re needed. This is generally done with magnetic fields.
4 - Collision - not all particle accelerators are ‘colliders’ in the traditional sense. They don’t all collide beams together like at the LHC. But in almost every case you do need to collide your beam of accelerated particles into something - this might be a fixed target to investigate a sample, or even directly into a person’s body, such as during medical treatments.
5 - Detection - there’s normally not much point doing all of this work unless you can then detect the outcome and learn from it. You need to measure what happens to the beam of particles when they collide with their target.
“Sixteen-year-old Scotch struggles to fit in—at home she’s the perfect daughter, at school she’s provocatively sassy, and thanks to her mixed heritage, she doesn’t feel she belongs with the Caribbeans, whites, or blacks. And even more troubling, lately her skin is becoming covered in a sticky black substance that can’t be removed. While trying to cope with this creepiness, she goes out with her brother—and he disappears.
A mysterious bubble of light just swallows him up, and Scotch has no idea how to find him. Soon, the Chaos that has claimed her brother affects the city at large, until it seems like everyone is turning into crazy creatures. Scotch needs to get to the bottom of this supernatural situation ASAP before the Chaos consumes everything she’s ever known—and she knows that the black shadowy entity that’s begun trailing her every move is probably not going to help.
A blend of fantasy and Caribbean folklore, at its heart this tale is about identity and self acceptance—because only by acknowledging her imperfections can Scotch hope to save her brother.
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Nalo Hopkinson, born in Jamaica, has lived in Jamaica, Trinidad and Guyana and for the past 35 years in Canada. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, USA. She is the author of six novels, a short story collection, and a chapbook.
The observable universe has TEN TIMES more galaxies than we thought 😮 Scientists converted Hubble images into 3D renderings. Previously, we thought there were about 100 billion galaxies in our observable universe. This new research suggests there are 10 times more. (📷 :ESA)
The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics (2015)
“The Sound of Culture explores the histories of race and technology in a world made by slavery, colonialism, and industrialization. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and moving through to the twenty-first, the book argues for the dependent nature of those histories. Looking at American, British, and Caribbean literature, it distills a diverse range of subject matter: minstrelsy, Victorian science fiction, cybertheory, and artificial intelligence.
All of these facets, according to Louis Chude-Sokei, are part of a history in which music has been central to the equation that links blacks and machines. As Chude-Sokei shows, science fiction itself has roots in racial anxieties and he traces those anxieties across two centuries and a range of writers and thinkers—from Samuel Butler, Herman Melville, and Edgar Rice Burroughs to Sigmund Freud, William Gibson, and Donna Haraway, to Norbert Weiner, Sylvia Wynter, and Samuel R. Delany.”
Louis Chude-Sokei
is a professor of English at the University of Washington, Seattle. His essays have appeared widely in publications such as African American Review, Transition, and The Believer. He is the author of The Last “Darky”: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora, which was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
If Sun-Ra is the Father of Afro-futurism, than it’s mother would have to be Octavia Butler. Highly influenced by the fantastic, sci-fi and a nuanced reading of the history of Black people in America, Octavia fused elements from ancient Africa, the modern and the future state to develop a manipulated metaphorical, social critique of race, class, gender, spirituality and sexuality. As a MacArthur genius, she was the first science fiction writer awardee.
This interactive experience allows users to delve into this famous dataset, exploring the three-dimensional distribution of almost 60 000 stars from the Hipparcos Catalogue. Stars are visualised as a function of their brightness; it is also possible to show their colours, as well as names and parent constellations for the brightest stars.
Users can get a sense of where in the sky stars were located in the past – or will be in the future – based on their motions measured by Hipparcos.
A visualisation of the ‘Hertzsprung-Russell diagram’, a tool used by astronomers to study the evolution of stars, is provided as well.
What’s happening at the edge of the Sun? Although it may look like a monster is rampaging, what is pictured is actually only a monster prominence – a sheath of thin gas held above the surface by the Sun’s magnetic field. The solar event was captured just this past weekend with a small telescope, with the resulting image then inverted and false-colored. As indicated with illustrative lines, the prominence rises over 50,000 kilometers above the Sun’s surface, making even our 12,700-diameter Earth seem small by comparison. Below the monster prominence is active region 12585, while light colored filaments can be seen hovering over a flowing solar carpet of fibrils. Filaments are actually prominences seen against the disk of the Sun, while similarly, fibrils are actually spicules seen against the disk. Energetic events like this are becoming less common as the Sun evolves toward a minimum in its 11-year activity cycle.
Infrared Saturn Clouds : This false-color view from NASAs Cassini spacecraft shows clouds in Saturns northern hemisphere. The view was made using images taken by Cassinis wide-angle camera on July 20, 2016, using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to infrared light at 750, 727 and 619 nanometers.
Lando Calrissian. The former Baron Administrator of Cloud City and Rebel Alliance general is one of the only Star Wars characters who can wear a cape as well as Darth Vader.
It has to be America’s most amazing family. Meet the Bushes from South Florida overachievers who stand at the ready to serve their country. Gisla and Bobby Bush have 9 children, who are some of the brightest young minds in the US.
Three of the oldest had graduated from college while they were still teenagers.
Gabrielle Bush graduated from college with a Bachelor’s Degree in health administration at 18. At 19 she received her Master’s Degree in public administration.
Grace Bush graduated from high school and college in the same week at 16. At 18 she earned her Master’s Degree in public administration.
Gisla Bush was only 18 when she graduated from college with a Bachelor’s Degree in urban design.
Other children are home-schooled as the rest of the family. All of them play musical instruments.
Their mom was asked about the secret source:
I bet you haven’t heard about this family that raise prodigy kids. The media always keep silent about successful Black people.
Pre-Order the Kickstarter phenomenon BLACK on @comixology!
Written by: Kwanza Osajyefo Art by: Tim Smith III Pencils: Jamal Igle Inks: Jamal Igle Colored by: Sarah Stern Cover by: Khary Randolph Lettered by: Dave Sharpe Edited by: Sarah Litt Price: $3.99
IT’S HERE! The comic that blazed through Kickstarter during Black History Month 2016. In a world that already hates and fears them – what if only Black people had superpowers. After miraculously surviving being gunned down by police, a young man learns that he is part of the biggest lie in history. Now he must decide whether it’s safer to keep it a secret or if the truth will set him free.
Women and writers of color win big at Hugo Awards and the Puppies are even sadder.
The winners of the Hugo Awards were announced at a gala ceremony in Kansas City, Mo., on Saturday, marking a good night for women and authors of color, and a very bad one for the “Puppies.”
Continued…By Los Angeles Times
A new form of diffuse galaxy has been discovered inside the Coma Cluster. This place is made 99.99% of dark matter, totally invisible as it doesn’t interact with light.
The galaxy is known as Dragonfly 44 and was discovered by astronomers Pieter van Dokkum and his colleagues.
The way star systems orbit around the center of a galaxy is inexplicable with “normal” physics. To account for the velocity variations and patterns we need to add a new ingredient to the gravitational pot: dark matter.
Dragonfly 44 in particular has so few stars that were the dark matter to be taken away, the galaxy would fly apart the same way you’d go flying if the cord holding the swing to a swing set were severed.
Russian SETI researchers are pursuing a promising signal
It may not be aliens, but something weird was picked up by Russian radio astronomers, who are now digging for answers.
It could be nothing. In the kinds of circles that search for
transmissions from alien civilizations, it always is. But nonetheless,
Russian researchers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
(SETI) have something intriguing they’re pursuing.
Let’s heavily caveat this. SETI efforts worldwide have had plenty of
promising signals. None of them have been confirmed to come from
extraterrestrial civilizations. Several have turned out to be from
terrestrial sources, and early on, two high profile “What ifs?” lead to
the discovery of pulsars and quasars rather than alien megastructures or
technologically advanced societies.
Still, there’s enough substance to this message that researchers
working from the RATAN-600 observatory in Russia are investigating what
might have caused it. They’ve pinpointed a likely star, HD 164595, which
is located in the Hercules constellation. It’s known to have one
planet, a Neptune-sized world in a 40 day orbit. Given that HD 164595 is
a Sun-type star, that planet would be too hot for life, but there may
be other undiscovered planets in the solar system.
The signal was first detected in May 2015 at the 2.7 cm band, which
is around 11 Ghz in the super-high frequency band. That places whatever
the signal was in the microwave band. As Lee Berger at Ars Technica
points out, there’s no known astrophysical source at these wavelengths.
There’s some chatter that if (BIG if) this is of non-natural origin, it
could be slightly to moderately more advanced than our own. “… if it
came from an isotropic beacon, it would be of a power possible only for a
Kardashev Type II civilization,” Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams
writes. “If it were a narrow beam signal focused on our Solar System,
it would be of a power available to a Kardashev Type I civilization.”
Image:
This 2013 photo shows the RATAN-600 observatory, where a recent microwave transmission has SETI researchers excited.
Wikimedia Commons / ратан 600
“Black Kirby, is an amalgam of pop culture aesthetics, ancestral beliefs and straight up comic fun. Celebrating and contrasting Jewish and African American contributions to society through sequential story telling and world building.
With a commercial and fine art approach, we are remixing, sampling and recreating art and ideas through the stylistic approach of artist Jack Kirby.
and artist Stacey Robinson, the show is meant to inspire thought, spark conversation and celebrate life through African and African American cultural motifs and ideas.”
Illustrations by Mattahan (Paul Davey) from Manchaster, Jamaica. The name Mattahan is from the patois pronunciation of Matterhorn, a popular cigarette brand in Jamaica. Mattahan is a painter who uses digital tools to create these surreal depictions of people who inspire him. The paintings are inspired by moments in his own life.
What happens when a star gets too close to a black hole?
Recent observations by a trio of orbiting X-ray telescopes of an event dubbed
ASASSN-14li,
in a distant galactic center,
gives one star’s terrifying story.
When a star wanders too close to a black hole, intense tidal forces rip
the star apart. In these events, called “tidal disruptions,” some of the
stellar debris is flung outward at high speed while the rest falls
toward the black hole. This causes a distinct X-ray flare that can last
for a few years.
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Swift Gamma-ray Burst
Explorer, and ESA/NASA’s XMM-Newton collected different pieces of this
astronomical puzzle in ASASSN-14li. The event occurred near a
supermassive black hole estimated to weigh a few million times the mass
of the sun in the center of a galaxy that lies about 290
million light-years away. read more here
Illustration Credit:
NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center,
CI Lab
The discovery of Proxima b means that potentially habitable exoplanets are right in our backyard.
So let’s take a look at some of the most promising real estate in the galaxy.
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