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Katie Mack
@AstroKatie
, 3 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
Climate inaction in government is not so much like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater as it is like seeing the theater is on fire and locking all the doors and telling us to remain calm for fear that we might ask for our tickets to be refunded
30 different fire alarms are going off and the air is thick with smoke and people are gagging on the ground but they keep pointing to the one alarm that's not sounding and saying "look we don't know for sure"
When people get desperate enough to break down the doors they'll be charged with property damage and disrupting the peace, and the theater owners will decry the impact on their popcorn sales
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Katie Mack
@AstroKatie
First ever direct image of a black hole! The supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 -- 6.5 billion times as massive as the Sun! #EHT #BlackHole The image is better than I expected! A glowing ring, brighter on the bottom, with a dark region in the middle
How was this image created? A giant global network of radio/millimeter-wave telescopes joined together to create a virtual PLANET-SIZED telescope. The image is patched together from the data from all of these. #EHT #BlackHole (image: Akiyama et al and ApJL) Globe with six telescope sites labelled and with lines drawn between them. Acronyms on image: JCMT, SMA, SMT, LMT, PV, APEX, ALMA, SPT.
There's a brief write-up at @PhysicsWorld here: physicsworld.com/a/first-images… with more images. Here's the image seen (left) compared with a simulation (middle) and the simulation blurred to the expected resolution of the telescope (right). (Image via Akiyama et al & ApJL) Blurry image as seen, left. (It looks like a fuzzy bright donut.) Center has a swirly sharp image with a bright ring and a dark hole in the middle, with a label of the scale showing 40 micro-arcseconds. Then on the right is the simulation image blurred so that it looks pretty much exactly like the observed image.
Read 10 tweets
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Katie Mack
@AstroKatie
My favorite part of this is that we call these fields (or, rather, their particle manifestations) “gluons” because they’re extremely sticky.
How sticky are they?

If two quarks are stuck together with gluons, & you try to pull the quarks apart, you’ll have to pull SO HARD that the energy you’re putting into the effort will spontaneously create two more quarks in between so now you have two bonded pairs instead of one
Here’s an article by @StartsWithABang talking about how proton mass is mostly gluons and how we have to smash particles together at places like @CERN to figure out how this all works: forbes.com/sites/startswi…
Read 3 tweets
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Katie Mack
@AstroKatie
This is the beam switch in the LHC control room at @CERN. If something goes wrong, this lets controllers “dump” the proton beam by spreading it out and slamming it into a concrete-encased graphite composite cylinder. Every unplanned dump costs CERN about a million dollars. A small red switch on a panel, sitting on a wooden desk with wires passing by. The panel is labeled “BEAM INTERLOCK SYSTEM”. On the left, it says “BEAM DUMP” and on the right, “BEAM PERMIT”. It’s switched to the “permit” side in this photo. The bottom of the switch says “Swich 1”.A view of the LHC control room. There are tons of computer monitors and a small sign on the right that says “LHC - Large Hadron Collider.” Theres one person sitting at a desk in front of one of the computers, and there’s also a large old-fashioned panel with lights and switches and things.
During my visit, the proton beam was already off, but they still didn’t let me touch the beam dump switch. I got close though! 😁 Thanks to accelerator physicist @AndreaStmaria for taking the time to show me around (and for resisting tackling me when I approached the switch)! My finger next to the BEAM DUMP switch (see previous tweet in thread for description of switch)Me grinning maniacally while reaching in to switch the beam dump switch. I’m not ACTUALLY touching it but I’m very close!Me and Andrea standing in front of the LHC control room filled with computer monitors and a CERN logo in the back. I’m about a head taller than her.A giant panel of lights and switches, and a panel that shows a diagram of the collider ring and MORE lights and switches. There was a really interesting mix of super high-tech computers and old-school-looking giant panels.
More on Large Hadron Collider proton beam dumps, and how they have to spread the beam out first because “in its compressed form it would drill a hole tens of meters long in any material” 😧 symmetrymagazine.org/article/decemb…
Read 6 tweets

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Aaron Paquette
@aaronpaquette
My grandfather was a soldier in World War II. My family has a history of military service.

The normalization of racial supremacy, the encouragement of it by some political leaders as a path to power, isn’t just abhorrent, it is a threat to our peace & to our communities.

#yegcc
As we mark the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide let me say:

- how easy it is to stoke economic fear and pair it with racial fear. We have history to prove it. We know that road.

- Canada is not immune. We must always be on guard for the small wedge that opens the door.
Atrocity may explode like a powder keg, but it’s never the big event that is the cause, that’s just the effect.

Like the frog in the pot of increasingly heating water, it’s the prejudices, hate & fear that are allowed to spread & given platforms that lead to the boiling point.
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Setting Sands
@settingsands
1. New theory on #TheStorm: There will be no storm. This is slow starvation for the #Cabal. Q said “bait expends ammunition.” He baited them into using their ammo (a Bush on ice) for GHWB Funeral to stall #Directive5 & Huber testimony on Clinton Foundation. #RBG next.
2. He also said, “Hints expend ammunition.” We’ve seen this time and time again - #FISA declass hint resulted in NYT op ed, HRC “blank blank blank” video drop hint resulted in “#DeepFakes” AI video tech story, now long forgotten by the public.
3. In the words of Sting in his song, “Shape of My Heart”: “He may conceal a king in his hand, while the memory of it fades.” When ammunition is expended, the fingerprint in public consciousness only lasts so long. This song is about using #Babylonian #BlackArts #ChaosMagick
Read 17 tweets
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Dr Kim Nicholas
@KA_Nicholas
#climate twitter! I want to donate 10% of my 2019 income where it will do the most good to reduce emissions. Would love to hear your take on the most effective orgs (in this thread or private DM). Thanks! Ping @drvox @KHayhoe @Fisher_DanaR @AmyAHarder @LeehiYona @EricHolthaus
As I replied to @EricHolthaus- I'm aware of and inspired by @givingwhatwecan & @GiveWell work on global health/poverty; I personally want to support climate mitigation. I realize there's no one right answer, depends on theory of change etc; curious to hear different perspectives.
Esp. in climate arena where impact could be on different possible levels (eg X tons avoided from cookstoves vs Y tons #fossil CO2 kept in the ground vs systemic political or economic change)- curious to hear diverse range of theory of change or evidence of effectiveness.
Read 11 tweets
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patrickcherry #FBPE
@patrickcherry
How about a #Remain manifesto, agreed & promoted by all major Remain groups? #RemainManifesto

The purpose would be to explain how, if we Remain, we can address Leave's concerns and can commit a future govnt to enact them, to the letter. 1/20
The manifesto could address the main reasons we have been told for the Leave vote.

It could focus purely on the key areas - immigration, sovereignty, EU federal plans, EU wastefulness.
It could detail precise ways in which we can protect ourselves from these concerns. 2/20
hy not compromise by changing Britain as it is today, but not by leaving the EU? And save the cost & risk of Brexit.

But I think we should only address the areas directly detailed as being the reasons for the Leave vote. Not what we suspect may be underlying. 3/20
Read 21 tweets
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Karol 🌿
@karolcummins
🍿#Fear🍿

Unresolved recusal & financial issues require a pause in the Kavanaugh hearings

Mueller will accept some written answers from Trump.

Woodward’s book reveals an admin having a "nervous breakdown of executive power" -is unflattering in the extreme. The WH is #CrazyTown
🍿#Fear2🍿

Trump said condemning white supremacists was ‘biggest f---ing mistake I’ve made’: Woodward book

The accusations sending tremors through the Catholic Church are a concerted and dubious attack by ultraconservatives on Pope Francis.

📌Pope Francis is #AntiMafia
🍿#Fear3🍿

“US air defense is back in Europe!

@SCNationalGuard 678th #AirDefense Artillery Brigade arrived in 🇩🇪 for a 9-month #AtlanticResolve deployment;

This marks 1st time a US air defense artillery brigade has deployed to Europe since Cold War”
Read 62 tweets
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KidTempo #FBPE
@KidTempo
#Remain voted for:

A say in whether the EU enlarges or not.
A say in if the EU federalises or remains a union of independent states.
A say in if there is an EU army.
Being the financial capital through which the majority of € is traded while still keeping the £.

#BrexitReality
#EnlargedEurope

The UK has taken the lead in efforts for EU enlargement. It pushed for the inclusion of Eastern European states. It pushed for Turkey to get its shit together so that it could join (which it made very slow progress with, and has largely been undone by Erdogan)
After #Brexit, the UK will have no influence on EU enlargement. In fact, as setting the EU as a rival, every country that joins the EU will a) strengthen the EU, and b) unravels any trade deals that the UK will have made with that country, isolating it further.
Read 25 tweets

Trending hashtags

#ableg #FISA #softbrexit #MockingbirdMedia #FetalStemCells #Wikileaks #HumanTrafficking #ParisAccord #auspol #heroes #UK #Indigenous #ActOnClimate #RESIST #Kavanaugh #FBPE #CrazyTown #Unborn #energyefficiency #StopBrexitSaveBritain #climate #cleanenergy #Leaders #Love #climatechange
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