Daily Archives: 15. November 2019


15.11.2019 - 21:22 [ German Foreign Policy ]

Der Pakt der weißen Eliten

Die Bundesregierung stärkt Chiles Präsident Sebastián Piñera in seinem Abwehrkampf gegen anhaltende Massenproteste den Rücken. Man teile mit Chile „grundlegende Werte“, heißt es im Auswärtigen Amt; Außenminister Heiko Maas sagt seinem chilenischen Amtskollegen zu, Deutschland stehe „auch in schwierigen Zeiten an der Seite Chiles“.

15.11.2019 - 20:48 [ New York Times ]

I’m Sorry, Is Impeachment Not Entertaining Enough for You?

I wonder whether this is where hundreds of channels, dozens of streaming services and the internet have ultimately left us. In a world where there’s news breaking on social media every one-thousandth of a second, and you can hit ‘refresh’ all day long, is it too much to expect that voters will spend hours listening to sober civil servants with complicated stories and pocket squares?

15.11.2019 - 18:07 [ Tuan Do, Astronomer at UCLA ‏/ Twitter ]

Here‘s a timelapse of images over 2.5 hr from May from @keckobservatory of the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The black hole is always variable, but this was the brightest we‘ve seen in the infrared so far. It was probably even brighter before we started observing that night!

15.11.2019 - 18:04 [ arxiv.org ]

Unprecedented variability of Sgr A* in NIR

(05.08.2019)

The electromagnetic counterpart to the Galactic center supermassive black hole, Sgr A*, has been observed in the near-infrared for over 20 years and is known to be highly variable. We report new Keck Telescope observations showing that Sgr A* reached much brighter flux levels in 2019 than ever measured at near-infrared wavelengths. In the K$^\prime$ band, Sgr A* reached flux levels of $\sim6$ mJy, twice the level of the previously observed peak flux from $>13,000$ measurements over 130 nights with the VLT and Keck Telescopes. We also observe a factor of 75 change in flux over a 2-hour time span with no obvious color changes between 1.6 $\mu$m and 2.1 $\mu$m.

15.11.2019 - 18:00 [ universetoday.com ]

Milky Way’s Black Hole Just Flared, Growing 75 Times as Bright for a Few Hours

(13.08.2019)

Even though the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is a monster, it’s still rather quiet. Called Sagittarius A*, it’s about 4.6 million times more massive than our Sun. Usually, it’s a brooding behemoth. But scientists observing Sgr. A* with the Keck Telescope just watched as its brightness bloomed to over 75 times normal for a few hours.

15.11.2019 - 17:58 [ Space.com ]

Something Weird Is Happening to the Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way

(15.08.2019)

Astronomers have been watching the black hole at the center of our galaxy for 20 years, and in May, they saw something they‘d never seen before.

15.11.2019 - 17:47 [ arxiv.org ]

The large-scale ionization cones in the Galaxy

(05.10.2019)

Our time-dependent Seyfert flare models adequately explain the observations and indicate the Seyfert flare event took place T_o = 3.5 +/- 1 Myr ago.

15.11.2019 - 17:32 [ ScienceAlert.com ]

Something in The Centre of Our Galaxy Colossally Erupted 3.5 Million Years Ago

(06.10.2019)

In 2013, astrophysicist Joss Bland-Hawthorn of the University of Sydney and the ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) and colleagues estimated that the event occurred between 1 and 3 million years ago.

Now, more observations taken using the Hubble Space Telescope – and therefore a bigger dataset – have provided even more compelling evidence for the event. And the team has been able to narrow down a timeframe for both when the event occurred, as well as its duration.

15.11.2019 - 17:29 [ arxiv.org ]

Fossil imprint of a powerful flare at the Galactic Centre along the Magellanic Stream

(21.09.2013)

Thus it is likely that the Stream emission arose from a `Seyfert flare‘ that was active 1-3 Myr ago, consistent with the cosmic ray lifetime in the Fermi bubbles. Sgr A* activity today is greatly suppressed (70-80 dB) relative to the Seyfert outburst…

15.11.2019 - 17:16 [ Forbes ]

The Milky Way‘s Supermassive Black Hole Erupted Two Million Years Ago

(25.09.2013)

The key the astronomers found was actually discovered 20 years old, in the form of a strange glow that astronomers had noticed in the Magellanic Stream. The Magellanic Stream is composed of large clouds of gas – mostly hydrogen – that stretch for light years in the wake of the Milky Way‘s two companion Galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The Stream is about 2 billion years old.

„We didn‘t understand the cause. Then suddenly we realised it must be the mark, the fossil record, of a huge outburst of energy from the centre of our Galaxy,“ remarked researcher Joss Bland-Hawthorn in a press release.

15.11.2019 - 16:19 [ Richard Panek / Washington Post ]

Everything you thought you knew about gravity is wrong

(02.08.2019)

“What are you talking about? Gravity is the force of attraction that makes things fall straight down.” But say it to a physicist, and the answer you’ll get is, “That’s right.”

I know, because those are the two answers I’ve been getting for the past few years, ever since I figured out that nobody knows what gravity is, and that just about nobody knows that nobody knows what gravity is. The exception is physicists: They know that nobody knows what gravity is, because they know that they don’t know what gravity is.

15.11.2019 - 15:49 [ European Southern Observatory (ESO) / Youtube ]

Zooming into Sagittarius A*

(07.11.2018)

ESO’s exquisitely sensitive GRAVITY instrument has added further evidence to the long-standing assumption that a supermassive black hole lurks in the centre of the Milky Way. New observations show clumps of gas swirling around at about 30% of the speed of light on a circular orbit just outside a four million solar mass black hole — the first time material has been observed orbiting close to the point of no return, and the most detailed observations yet of material orbiting this close to a black hole.

15.11.2019 - 15:31 [ Carnegie Science / Youtube ]

Hypervelocity star

(12.11.2019)

The artist impression of the ejection mechanism by the supermassive black hole. Credit: James Josephides (Swinburne Astronomy Productions)

15.11.2019 - 15:21 [ Carnegie Science ]

Runaway star was ejected from the “heart of darkness”

“My favorite part of this discovery is thinking about where this star came from and where it‘s going,” said Ji. “It was born in one of the craziest places in the universe, near a supermassive black hole with lots of other nearby star friends; but it‘s going to leave our galaxy and die all alone, out in the middle of nowhere. Quite a fall from grace.”

15.11.2019 - 15:06 [ CBS News ]

Supermassive black hole throws star out of Milky Way galaxy at speed of 3.7 million mph

Five million years ago, when humanity‘s ancestors were just learning to walk upright, a star was ejected from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, at a staggering 3.7 million mph. This month, a group of researchers spotted the superfast star traveling relatively close to Earth.

15.11.2019 - 15:00 [ businessinsider.fr ]

A NASA scientist‘s incredible animation shows how dinosaurs roamed the Earth on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy

Our sun orbits the galaxy‘s center, so many dinosaurs roamed the Earth while the planet was on the other side of the Milky Way.

Our solar system‘s orbit keeps us just the right distance from the galaxy‘s chaotic center for life to exist.

15.11.2019 - 12:27 [ Dr. Jessie Christiansen ‏/ Twitter ]

I have always been interested in galactic archaeology, but I don‘t think this is what they meant. Did you know that dinosaurs lived on the other side of the Galaxy?

15.11.2019 - 11:02 [ Washington Post ]

Here‘s a look at some amazing space images from 2019

Nov. 11, 2019 | This still image from video shows Mercury as it passes between Earth and the sun. The solar system’s smallest and innermost planet resembles a tiny black dot during the transit, which began at 7:35 apictures.m. EST. Mercury’s last transit was in 2016.

15.11.2019 - 08:08 [ Haaretz ]

A Racist Unity Government

Moreover, the two main inciters, Netanyahu and Lieberman, are exploiting both the tense security situation and their polished racist rhetoric to put enormous pressure on Gantz to enter a unity government based on the president’s proposal. Gantz, who until now has demonstrated impressive steadfastness, must not cave into this pressure. Soon, the dense smoke of the rockets will dissipate, and Israel will once again be overshadowed instead by the picture of the serial criminal suspect Netanyahu, the man who is unfit to be prime minister.

15.11.2019 - 08:02 [ Haaretz ]

Arab Israeli Leader Ayman Odeh Makes It Into Time‘s List of ‚100 Rising Stars‘

“Ordinarily, it’s difficult for a non-Jewish politician to break through in Israeli politics,” Time wrote. “Arab Israelis may account for every fifth resident of the country, but in its parliament, the Knesset, they are routinely relegated to a corner. All of which makes Ayman Odeh, the head of Israel’s Arab parliamentarians, all the more extraordinary. As the contest for leadership of the self-declared Jewish state teetered between right-wing and centrist factions, Odeh emerged not only as a possible kingmaker but also as a stirring new voice for equality and inclusion.”

15.11.2019 - 06:27 [ WELT Politik / Twitter ]

Diese Aussage im Amri-Ausschuss ist ein Donnerhall für die Bundesregierung

15.11.2019 - 06:02 [ North Atlantic Treaty Organization ]

NATO Secretary General participates in meeting of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg participated in a meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in Washington, D.C. on Thursday (14 November 2019).

Chaired by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the meeting was convened to address the Coalition‘s next steps following the death of ISIS leader al-Baghdadi, as well as recent developments in northeast Syria.

15.11.2019 - 05:50 [ i24news.tv ]

IDF kills Islamic Jihad rocket commander, family of 8 in overnight Gaza strike

A senior commander with the Gaza-based terror organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) was killed overnight Thursday in an IDF strike, leaving dead eight members of the same family.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military said that Rasmi Abu Malhous, apparently the head of Islamic Jihad‘s rocket unit, was killed in a targeted attack on his home in Deir al-Balah, located the central Gaza Strip.

15.11.2019 - 05:40 [ Bloomberg ]

Giuliani Faces U.S. Probe on Campaign Finance, Lobbying Breaches

The probe of Giuliani, which one official said could also include possible charges on violating laws against bribing foreign officials or conspiracy, presents a serious threat to Trump’s presidency from a man that former national security adviser John Bolton has called a “hand grenade.”

15.11.2019 - 03:52 [ The Grayzone ]

Top Bolivian coup plotters trained by US military’s School of the Americas, served as attachés in FBI police programs

Commanders of Bolivia’s military and police helped plot the coup and guaranteed its success. They were previously educated for insurrection in the US government’s notorious School of the Americas and FBI training programs.

15.11.2019 - 01:06 [ Stars and Stripes ]

US transfers patrol boats to Ukraine as military aid takes center stage during impeachment hearings

The U.S. has transferred two Island-class patrol boats to Ukraine and plans to send three more to help boost the country’s navy, which is heavily outgunned by Russian forces.

15.11.2019 - 00:00 [ Press TV ]

UN to test impact of mosquito sterilization on disease spread

TDR has partnered with the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Food and Agriculture Organization to develop a pilot program for countries interested in using SIT on mosquitoes to test the impact on disease transmission.