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Phil Plait @BadAstronomer
, 5 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
Hey, want some non-political news?

Ten billion years ago, the Milky Way ate a decently big galaxy. And we can still see the undigested bits floating around the sky!

syfy.com/syfywire/the-m…
2/ One of those undigested bits is the glorious Omega Centauri. It’s not only a massive globular cluster (w/millions of stars), it’s *the* most massive GC orbiting our galaxy. It may be the core of the galaxy that we ate eons ago!
3/ Omega Cen is so big and bright it’s visible to the naked eye! I saw it once by accident many years ago; huge coincidence and extremely lucky to spot it *just* over the horizon.

I was amazed, but now I know I may have seen the core of a long-lost galaxy.

Wow.
4/ Galaxies grow huge by eating each other, and the Milky Way is a giant. We see many leftover remnants of cannibalized galaxies in ours. Such is the cosmos.
5/ This ancient fodder galaxy was found in @ESAGaia data. I wonder what else is waiting to be excavated in that profoundly enormous data set? There so many wonders still to learn.

/fin
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More from @BadAstronomer see all

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1/ Today is #BlackHoleFriday, an annual science outreach event that, by complete coincidence I’m sure, is done on #BlackFriday. You’ll read lots of cool stuff about black holes on the hashtag. Here’s mine.
2/ Black holes are weird. Duh. People like to think of them as something like incredibly dense nuggets of stuff that sucks other stuff in. But they’re not like that.
3/ If you squeeze enough mass into a small enough volume, the gravity gets so intense that it’s impossible to escape them *if you get too close*. From far away, though, gravitationally they more or less act like anything with that much mass.
Read 19 tweets
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1/n This is quite seriously one of the most jaw-dropping observations I’ve ever written about:

Astronomers have detected material *just* over the edge of a black hole’s Point Of No Return.

syfy.com/syfywire/astro…
2/n Before I mention a thing or three about it here, I’ll note that the lead image is a *simulation* based on the observations. Don’t want to confuse people so I’m being up front. [P.S. Credit goes to ESO/Gravity Consortium/L. Calçada; link in the article]
3/n When I first heard the news, I figured the stuff had been detected indirectly. Maybe some effect on dust farther out, or an odd relativistic effect.

Nope. The motion was detected *directly*. In other words: They. Saw. The. Dust. Clouds. Move.
Read 10 tweets
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1/n OK, so #exomoons. First, here’s the article I wrote with the latest news, and links to the press release and paper: syfy.com/syfywire/more-…
2/ It’s important to note that the evidence is pretty compelling for an exomoon orbiting Kepler-1625b, but it’s not proof. Still, let’s assume for this thread it’s there. I started thinking about it…
3/ The planet is about the same size as Jupiter, though probably more massive. The moon is about the size of - get *this* - Neptune. That's big. WAY bigger than any moon in our solar system.
Read 16 tweets

Related threads

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Still on a bit of a nostalgic #DoctorWho kick, in particular for the Moffat Era.

So now watching “Dark Water”, the first part of the two-part eighth season finale.
“It's a terrible thing. Just a terrible, terrible thing.”
“It wasn't terrible.”
“Clara?”
“It was boring.”
“Boring?”
“It was ordinary.”

Clara is a fascinating companion, in large part because she’s essentially riffing on the sense of entitlement that Rose felt.
“He deserved better. And so did you.”
“I don't deserve anything. Nobody deserves anything.”
“But I am owed better. I am owed.”

Clara is selfish and self-centred. But she’s aware of that, and the show is aware of that.

These traits are explored as developed. They make her human.
Read 222 tweets
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One of my godfathers back in my likkle yout days, still today is Douglas Vaz so was Edward Seaga...in my late teen years I told Uncle Dougie how I felt about the fallout between the two and he was good with it...we still meet and speak regularly to this day
We spoke one day about @annmarievazja and my wish to see her in full time politics but I doubted Poomps would agree...Uncle Dougie gushed about her being more in sync with the people from all walks of life, JLP, PNP ...and agreed maybe it was a good idea...where? Portland...good
Then I decided to really invest the time to make sure she was made of true political strength...because not every right person is right for politics, it is not for the shakey, or those easily shaken...and I found a strange thing about @annmarievazja
Read 16 tweets
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One of the things I appreciated about Booker’s line of questioning last night (based in part on the emails that became the subject of conversation) is that he really laid out how Equal Protection jurisprudence has paradoxically turned into protection for racism.
Structural elements of racism, including lack of historical access to resources and unconscious bias, mean that government programs often have disproportionate racial impacts, sometimes massively so.
Under current equal protection jurisprudence, disproportionate impact is not something you can sue about. It doesn’t matter if it discriminates, as long as it’s not done with the mental PURPOSE of discrimination.
Read 7 tweets
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1/ Manu (The progenitor of Humankind)
All different races of Mankind are derived from Manu and Shradha. The current Manu is Vaivasvata Manu.
2/ The word Manu literary means man but it is a title given to the progenitor of mankind. According to Hindu Puranas there are many kalpas (One day of Lord Brahma the creator) and each Kalpa has 14 manvantara and each manvatara has one manu. So basically each Kalpa has 14 Manus.
3/ The current manu of the present manvantara is Shraddhadeva or Vaivasvata Manu of this current Kalpa. He is the son of Vivasvat (Probably Surya) and is therefore also known as Manu-vaivasvata.
Read 155 tweets

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