ope...a life / serial.4
A star has been destroyed by a wandering supermassive black hole
Back in 2024, a system set up to identify objects that suddenly brighten found something unusual. Unfortunately, the automated system that was supposed to identify it couldn't figure out what it was looking at. Now, about a year later, we know it's the first tidal disruption event—meaning a star being ripped apart by a supermassive black hole—identified at visual wavelengths. It's also a rather unusual one, in that the supermassive black hole in question does not reside at the center of its galaxy. Instead, there's an even more massive object there, which is feeding on matter at the same time.
All of the observations indicated that AT2024tvd is a tidal disruption event. For example, it maintained a high temperature throughout the observations, unlike a supernova, which tends to cool down over time. There were also fewer high-energy X-rays than one would expect from a supernova. The UV spectrum also looked like previously identified tidal disruption events, with the signature of elements like carbon and nitrogen that don't require a supernova to be produced. That makes this the fourth tidal disruption event we've identified that's the product of a supermassive black hole not located at the center of the galaxy. It's also the first that was initially identified at visible wavelengths.
The year was 1999. Jesse "the mind" Ventura was running Minnesota. and Real Player was Corporate America's streaming tech of choice.
soar on the coast.
operating on the road without a permit.
where i ride.
ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the Large Hadron Collider
Near-miss collisions between high-energy lead nuclei at the LHC generate intense electromagnetic fields that can knock out protons and transform lead into fleeting quantities of gold nuclei
CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe
There's a lot of matter around, which ensures that any antimatter produced experiences a very short lifespan. Studying antimatter, therefore, has been extremely difficult. But that's changed a bit in recent years, as CERN has set up a facility that produces and traps antimatter, allowing for extensive studies of its properties, including entire anti-atoms.
Stroszek (1977) by Werner Herzog.
Bruno Stroszek (played by Bruno S.) is a West Berlin street performer. He meets Eva, a prostitute down on her luck. They decide to leave Germany and accompany Bruno's eccentric elderly neighbour Scheitz to Wisconsin to live with his American nephew Clayton.
After Bruno S. died recently, Herzog remarked "In all my films, and with all the great actors with whom I have worked, he was the best. There is no one who comes close to him. I mean in his humanity, and the depth of his performance, there is no one like him."
Jumpers:
PASS devices going off after the collapse of a tower. PASS devices are worn by firefighters, they go off when a firefighter stops moving:
Kevin Gosgrove's 911 call when the building collapses: