It's true, according to VERA.
Not Vera Lynn, the English singer who sang "We'll Meet Again" during World War II. She died in June at the age of 103.
And not Vera Ellen, the American singer who appeared in the 1954 film White Christmas . She died in 1981.
No, friends, I mean VERA as in VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (and by the way, "VLBI" stands for Very Long Baseline Interferometry), a project that was started in 2000 to map three-dimensional velocity and spatial structures in the Milky Way.
Perhaps we are not 2,000 light-years closer to being sucked into The Black Hole At The Center Of All Things but you won't know for sure unless you read this article right here plus there is a lovely map of our galaxy with lots of arrows to keep you puzzled and/or amused as well.
Speaking of space exploration, tonight's unanswerable question on Jeopardy!, which I of course knew, was "What is a heat shield?"
One question I expect never to hear on the program that shall remain nameless is "What is Very Long Baseline Interferometry?"
Carry on,
I looked at the article and was told that Firefox had blocked a fingerprinter on that site. Therefore I have not been fingerprinted. Will it make a difference when we get to the black hole?
ReplyDeleteTasker, I think when we get to the black hole, make that if we get to the black hole, we will count ourselves fortunate indeed to still have fingers, never mind fingerprints.
ReplyDeleteWere you able to read the article or did Firefox’s Fingerprinter Blocker (FFB? also) block your eyes from seeing the article?
Oh my God! I had forgotten about You Are There. That was a good program.
ReplyDeleteEmma, it was one of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting that the Sagittarius A black hole was discovered in 1974 at the Green Bank Observatory. Now that is an interesting place to visit.(GBT not the black hole) I'm sad about the decommissioning of the Arecibo telescope.
ReplyDeleteI hope to get our telescope out and see Jupiter and Saturn on Dec 21.
I have always had an amateur interest in astronomy. I hate it that one effect of the macular degeneration I have had since 2017 is that I am gradually losing the ability to see any but the brightest objects in the night sky. I still remember with fondness the night back in the late 1970’s when my children were young when we went to Feenbank Science Center here in Atlanta and looked at Jupiter and four of its moons through the planetariom’s big telescope.
ReplyDeleteI note that Black Hole Sagittarius A* may also be referred to as Sgr A* which is rather cool and gives that particular black hole street cred. To acquire street cred yourself you should consider renaming yourself RBr*.
ReplyDeleteYP, every almost-80-years-old guy needs street cred. It’s where the Rbr* meets the road.
DeleteMy usual response to any article that I don't understand is that I knew all the words but just not the order in which they were. In this case I didn't even know that. The article did remind me what pitiful specs of matter we are in the greater scheme of things.
ReplyDeleteGraham, I agree that we are specks but not that we are pitiful.
DeleteYes, I agree. I stand corrected. Thank you.
DeleteHang on. I was just thinking about what we have done since we have been inhabiting this world. We are destroying it. We are destroying each other in wars and with hatred. Perhaps we are deserving of pity.
I think the jury may be out.