Seeing the Unseeable: The black hole at the centre of Messier 87

In April of 2017, an international network of telescopes turned its attention to a galaxy some 55 million light years away from home. At the core of Messier 87 lies a black hole 6.5 billion times more massive than our Sun—the first to ever be photographed, and “the strongest evidence that we have to date” that these bodies exist.

“We have seen what we thought was unseeable,” the director of the Event Horizon Telescope Project, Shep Doeleman, told reporters at a press conference in Washington. The image is blurry but unmistakable. Photons burn orange around a black centre, apparently curving under intense gravity. “What you’re seeing here is the last photon orbit. What you’re seeing is evidence of an event horizon.”

It’s the result of over a decade of work, and more than a hundred years of theories, models, and observations. As put by the director of the National Science Foundation, France Córdova, before the long-awaited announcement, “We have been studying black holes for so long that sometimes it is easy to forget that none of us have ever actually seen one.”

A Particle Full of Charm

Almost two-hundred metres beneath the France-Switzerland border, physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have observed a new particle. A charming particle. They’ve been on the look-out for him for some time, and now they’ve got him— Xicc++.

The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but this guy is more than meets the eye. He’s heavy. He’s charming. He’s a subatomic particle, and he’s a real catch. CERN’s particle smasher— based near Geneva, Switzerland— spotted the fellow during the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment, or the LHCb experiment for short.

Xicc++ is the elusive brother of the proton, neutron, and of a number of other composite subatomic particles. These particles are all a part of the same family, because they’re all made up of three quarks. What are quarks, you ask? Well, let’s dive in.

Read the full article on Herpothesis 

 

Science Camp: Gravitational Waves

Week One: Follow the Happy Scientists

It’s September 14, 2015 in Hannover, Germany — 11AM to be exact — and a man named Marco Drago has just noticed something. Marco is a member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, and he’s just observed a gravitational wave (hurrah!).

But why are the scientific community FREAKING OUT about these things six months after the initial observation? Well, like all good scientists, they had to check — and recheck, and RECHECK, and RECHECK, until LIGO confirmed the discovery. They were sure.

Director of the National Science Foundation said, “Einstein would be beaming, wouldn’t he?” (Science Mag)

I find that my motto in life has become: follow the happy scientists, they’re sure to lead you somewhere good. This is the most buzzed I’ve seen the scientific community since the Higgs Boson. It’s magic.

So here I am — let’s learn about gravitational waves (INSERT CATCHY THEME SONG)!!!