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Journal Journal: Primal Magic

I wrote this half finished story while being tortured by my government.

https://www.ontarioadministrativesegregation.ca/home.html

CHAPTER 1

User Journal

Journal Journal: Primal Magic

I wrote this half finished story while being tortured by my government.

https://www.ontarioadministrativesegregation.ca/home.html

CHAPTER 1

Submission + - Another large Black hole in "our" Galaxy (arxiv.org)

RockDoctor writes: A recent paper on ArXiv reports a novel idea about the central regions of "our" galaxy.

Remember the hoopla a few years ago about radio-astronomical observations producing an "image" of our central black hole — or rather, an image of the accretion disc around the black hole — long designated by astronomers as "Sagittarius A*" (or SGR-A*)? If you remember the image published then, one thing should be striking — it's not very symmetrical. If you think about viewing a spinning object, then you'd expect to see something with a "mirror" symmetry plane where we would see the rotation axis (if someone had marked it). If anything, that published image has three bright spots on a fainter ring. And the spots are not even approximately the same brightness.

This paper suggests that the image we see is the result of the light (radio waves) from SGR-A* being "lensed" by another black hole, near (but not quite on) the line of sight between SGR-A* and us. By various modelling approaches, they then refine this idea to a "best-fit" of a black hole with mass around 1000 times the Sun, orbiting between the distance of the closest-observed star to SGR-A* ("S2" — most imaginative name, ever!), and around 10 times that distance. That's far enough to make a strong interaction with "S2" unlikely within the lifetime of S2 before it's accretion onto SGR-A*.)

The region around SGR-A* is crowded. Within 25 parsecs (~80 light years, the distance to Regulus [in the constellation Leo] or Merak [in the Great Bear]) there is around 4 times more mass in several millions of "normal" stars than in the SGR-A* black hole. Finding a large (not "super massive") black hole in such a concentration of matter shouldn't surprise anyone.

This proposed black hole is larger than anything which has been detected by gravitational waves (yet) ; but not immensely larger — only a factor of 15 or so. (The authors also anticipate the "what about these big black holes spiralling together?" question : quote "and the amplitude of gravitational waves generated by the binary black holes is negligible.")

Being so close to SGR-A*, the proposed black hole is likely to be moving rapidly across our line of sight. At the distance of "S2" it's orbital period would be around 26 years (but the "new" black hole is probably further out than than that). Which might be an explanation for some of the variability and "flickering" reported for SGR-A* ever since it's discovery.

As always, more observations are needed. Which, for SGR-A* are frequently being taken, so improving (or ruling out) this explanation should happen fairly quickly. But it's a very interesting, and fun, idea.

Submission + - Surado, formerly Slashdot Japan, is closing at the end of the month. (srad.jp) 1

AmiMoJo writes: Slashdot Japan was launched on May 28, 2001. On 2025/03/31, it will finally close. Since starting the site separated from the main Slashdot one, and eventually rebranded as "Surado", which was it's Japanese nickname.

Last year the site stopped posting new stories, and was subsequently unable to find a buyer. In a final story announcing the end, many users expressed their sadness and gratitude for all the years of service.

Comment That's relatable (Score 1) 85

I was a child prodigy who skipped a grade, not dissimilar to Sheldon Cooper, except I was better socialized, and excelled at athletics and was a leader in the Boy Scouts.

I had a real problem getting to sleep at night and waking up in the morning. I would read in bed until late at night and be late in the morning.

At some point in my early 20's I experienced a period of unemployment, and at my doctors advice I started tracking my sleep. We determined that I had a 27 hour biological clock. He said it was unusual, but happened to some people, mostly young men, and that I would grow out of it as I got older. Which didn't really happen, but kind of happened. I have a 24 hour clock but I only sleep 6 hours a night, sometimes less.

Comment This is bad (Score 1) 37

This is really bad for those species. It's reasonable to expect that, in a healthy species, there's going to be a few self-fertilizing mutant freaks born. But, when those self-fertilizing mutant freaks dominate the landscape because insects aren't doing the job and there's empty habitat for the freaks to expand into and dominate, it's inviting a blight to take them all out. And then, there will be very few flowers of the species to reproduce with the bees. There's going to be dramatic change.

Comment Re:Crazy US lawmakers. (Score 0) 503

They follow a book. Anyone can read it. It's not bigotry or racism to read the book and claim that it defines the people who openly claim to follow it.

They are sickly, inbred xenophobic and antisocial monsters. They believe they are the chosen people of God, and they have two standards of behavior, one for each other and another for Goyim, who have dirty blood and are no better than animals.

They sexually mutilate little boys, they have irrational eating disorders that stem from mental illness, they are predatory loan sharks, and they engage in lies, slander, theft, banditry, fraud, corruption, propaganda, blackmail, assassination, murder and genocide.

They believe that there are two races. The human race, and the Jews.

It's in their book.

Eighty years ago, the Japanese and the Nazis believed they were the master race and wanted to keep themselves inbred and subjugate outsiders. We, as a species, stomped them, and now they are decent, civilized and valued members of the international community.

The Jews haven't been stomped hard enough yet.

Comment Re: It's all about energy (Score 1) 122

I am not a chemist. But, based on the understanding that I have achieved through my investigation into Russian Stoves aka Thermal Mass Heaters, it should be relatively simple to superheat the off gasses generated by the initial burn in a secondary burn chamber, and produce a system that releases only carbon dioxide and water. Plastic is just hydrocarbons.

Comment Best way to put those computers to use (Score 1) 183

No one has mentioned the possibility of using RDP to connect to a modern computer running Windows 11.

You can buy a computer that is grunty enough to run mutilple sessions simultaneously, and then use these various machines to which you have become accustomed to act as dumb terminals without having to go to much trouble.

Don't connect them to the internet. Do your web browsing and email and whatnot in the remote session. But, you can run that accounting software you started using in 1998, or your favorite DOS games, or whatever makes you still want to use the old machines locally.

Comment It's a campfire (Score 0) 43

People get so caught up in things, they forget that you can get the same happiness sitting outside and staring at the coals of a campfire.

Have you nerds ever sat outside under the stars and stared at the coals of a campfire?

It's a far superior form of passive entertainment than movies, music or video games. But, you would have to experience it to know that.

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