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Astronomers Discover 33 Pairs of Waltzing Black Holes 101

Posted by ScuttleMonkey
from the teach-them-to-foxtrot dept.
Astronomers from UC Berkeley have identified 33 pairs of waltzing black holes, closing the gap somewhat between the observed population of super-massive black hole pairs and what had been predicted by theory. "Astronomical observations have shown that 1) nearly every galaxy has a central super-massive black hole (with a mass of a million to a billion times the mass of the Sun), and 2) galaxies commonly collide and merge to form new, more massive galaxies. As a consequence of these two observations, a merger between two galaxies should bring two super-massive black holes to the new, more massive galaxy formed from the merger. The two black holes gradually in-spiral toward the center of this galaxy, engaging in a gravitational tug-of-war with the surrounding stars. The result is a black hole dance, choreographed by Newton himself. Such a dance is expected to occur in our own Milky Way Galaxy in about 3 billion years, when it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy."

Comment: Re:I especially like.. (Score 1) 230

by DoubleDownOnEleven (#30467136) Attached to: US FTC Sues Intel For Anti-Competitive Practices
Straw-man argument. Of course the compiler can affect CPU performance. The point I was trying to make is that I agree with HarrySquatter's comments above - as far as I know, Intel is not forcing people to use their compiler.
Any other practices by Intel, anti-competitive or otherwise, don't apply to this particular chain of comments.

Comment: Re:I especially like.. (Score 1) 230

by DoubleDownOnEleven (#30466784) Attached to: US FTC Sues Intel For Anti-Competitive Practices
A dominant share of the compiler market or processor market?
That's really what I was getting at, not monopoly status.
The compiler favors Intel CPUs. There are other compilers out there that don't, I imagine. gcc is pretty popular, etc.
The issue raised above was whether Intel had an obligation to not cripple their product, and EndlessNameless responded with the anti-trust act. In this case, the product is not a CPU, but a compiler. I'm asking, does the anti-trust act apply to this issue, when there are plenty of competing compiler products out there.

Comment: Re:Read what you just wrote. (Score 1) 1255

by DoubleDownOnEleven (#29723261) Attached to: FOSS Sexism Claims Met With Ire and Denial

Statistics aren't everything. [snip]

The 1.5% says to me [snip]

Did your first point just invalidate your second?

I think khasim brings up a good point. If your argument hinges on quoting a statistic and inferring all sorts of things from that, it seems fair to invalid it with another statistic.

"And they told us, what they wanted... Was a sound that could kill some-one, from a distance." -- Kate Bush

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