Chris Wallace says Trump showed up too late to the debate to be tested as planned so they had to abide by the "honor system" pic.twitter.com/SonuY7kKD1

— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) October 2, 2020

Very Large Telescope spots galaxies trapped in the web of a supermassive black hole

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-large-telescope-galaxies-web-supermassive.html?fbclid=IwAR077hSmh723fIZ-t29izpovVebor1JdlzB3YRLdYClJBrESuFhS5i65XoA

With the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found six galaxies lying around a supermassive black hole when the Universe was less than a billion years old. This is the first time such a close grouping has been seen so soon after the Big Bang and the finding helps us better understand how supermassive black holes, one of which exists at the centre of our Milky Way, formed and grew to their enormous sizes so quickly. It supports the theory that black holes can grow rapidly within large, web-like structures which contain plenty of gas to fuel them.

“This research was mainly driven by the desire to understand some of the most challenging astronomical objects—supermassive black holes in the early Universe. These are extreme systems and to date we have had no good explanation for their existence,” said Marco Mignoli, an astronomer at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna, Italy, and lead author of the new research published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The new observations with ESO’s VLT revealed several galaxies surrounding a supermassive black hole, all lying in a cosmic “spider’s web” of gas extending to over 300 times the size of the Milky Way. “The cosmic web filaments are like spider’s web threads,” explains Mignoli. “The galaxies stand and grow where the filaments cross, and streams of gas—available to fuel both the galaxies and the central supermassive black hole—can flow along the filaments.”

The light from this large web-like structure, with its black hole of one billion solar masses, has travelled to us from a time when the Universe was only 0.9 billion years old. “Our work has placed an important piece in the largely incomplete puzzle that is the formation and growth of such extreme, yet relatively abundant, objects so quickly after the Big Bang,” says co-author Roberto Gilli, also an astronomer at INAF in Bologna, referring to supermassive black holes.

The very first black holes, thought to have formed from the collapse of the first stars, must have grown very fast to reach masses of a billion suns within the first 0.9 billion years of the Universe’s life. But astronomers have struggled to explain how sufficiently large amounts of “black hole fuel” could have been available to enable these objects to grow to such enormous sizes in such a short time. The new-found structure offers a likely explanation: the “spider’s web” and the galaxies within it contain enough gas to provide the fuel that the central black hole needs to quickly become a supermassive giant.

But how did such large web-like structures form in the first place? Astronomers think giant halos of mysterious dark matter are key. These large regions of invisible matter are thought to attract huge amounts of gas in the early Universe; together, the gas and the invisible dark matter form the web-like structures where galaxies and black holes can evolve.

“Our finding lends support to the idea that the most distant and massive black holes form and grow within massive dark matter halos in large-scale structures, and that the absence of earlier detections of such structures was likely due to observational limitations,” says Colin Norman of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US, also a co-author on the study.

The galaxies now detected are some of the faintest that current telescopes can observe. This discovery required observations over several hours using the largest optical telescopes available, including ESO’s VLT. Using the MUSE and FORS2 instruments on the VLT at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert, the team confirmed the link between four of the six galaxies and the black hole. “We believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg, and that the few galaxies discovered so far around this supermassive black hole are only the brightest ones,” said co-author Barbara Balmaverde, an astronomer at INAF in Torino, Italy.

These results contribute to our understanding of how supermassive black holes and large cosmic structures formed and evolved. ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in Chile, will be able to build on this research by observing many more fainter galaxies around massive black holes in the early Universe using its powerful instruments.

waterfield wrote:

The best I can tell what your saying is if a Trumpee says to me “hey Biden is a socialist” I should NOT respond “no he’s not”. What I should instead say is “hey there is a lot to be said for socialism-let me explain why socialism is so much better than what we have now”. And that will convince the Trumpee that Biden is not a socialist !

What I said had nothing to do with what we should say to Trumpees. I mean objectively, not only is Biden not a socialist, he’s not even an ordinary American progressive sympathetic with social democracy (which isn’t socialism). So what I do is laugh and shake my head and say that’s such complete bs, Biden makes a career out of attacking progressives.

Since Trumpees don’t listen it wouldn’t matter either way.

Last time I was actually in that kind of discussion with a Trumpee at the time the issue wasn’t “socialism” it was this guy’s idea that Biden identified with, and was the candidate of, the white extremist faction that was involved with all the political violence in Portland Oregon. He thought Biden was the candidate of what he saw as city burning street anarchists. And he was sincere, this was not a put on. I said Biden’s base is centrist and the guy actually laughed at me for my blindness and ignorance. I just remarked on him being a master of unintentional self-irony. And didn’t care. I mean what are you going to do about those types.

…

Kromer always felt he had the talent last year, the guys just did not have the experience.

Hav played hurt all year, as we suspected, until he finally went down.

Both Anchrum and Evans play LOT in practice. Anchrum can play there because while he is just 6’2″ he has very long arms and so can go up against taller DEs.

The Rams offense is hard to run for OL because it involves more movement and variation and you have to understand the concepts. Kromer says when they draft guys, it’s not enough if a college player can just take the guy across from him, they interview prospects and ask them to explain what they were doing and why. They have to be able to do that at a high level or they won’t be Rams. They prize football intelligence. It is tough on the guys at first.

The difference between Blythe this year and last year is that now, he acts more like a captain and leader and sets things up and puts guys in position. Last year he had just moved over to center and didn’t feel he could do that then. Kromer says people underestimate AB and don’t realize his lower body strength and balance because most don’t know what a wrestling background did for him. Has good command of the offense.

I may listen again and add stuff via edit.

Okay added via edit:

Running game–they try to vary it up, run new things constantly, this year they think everyone understands their techniques needed to run such a varied attack.

He praises Kupp as a blocker, both Kupp and Woods actually–they assign WRs to block out DEs on the back end of plays.

When they looked at guys in the draft, they asked are they better than what we have? The guys they had just had to put in more work. Being a Rams OL requires a lot of mental prep and rookies wouldn’t be up on that learning curve.

Whitworth. Is he a hall of famer? Kromer says yes. Played a long time at a high level. He works on being leaner, quicker, faster–he may be quicker now than he was 6 years ago. He just knows how to prepare himself.

Kromer thanks Cleveland for not liking him. Uses power well, athletic. They looked at him in that draft but he went too high for them. They don’t understand what went on in Cleveland.

Anchrum is a steal, Kromer says. They liked him and then he gets here and he’s even better than they thought. Needs a lot of reps.

They think they have a couple of LOT candidates in house.

Billy_T wrote:

Have always thought it was a terrible mistake, even from a political POV, for the Dems to lie about Socialism. They don’t have to make a case for it, though I obviously wish they would. But by trashing it, they’re just aiding and abetting their opponents, who lump them in with “socialism” anyway, no matter how conservative they actually are, and Biden is a conservative — as were Clinton and Obama, at least on most issues.

Aside from socialism being head and shoulders the best political philosophy developed to date, morally, ethically, democratically, environmentally, it’s also the best way for Dems to (indirectly) achieve what they say they want to achieve — by positioning themselves as the “compromise” position between left and right. The “sensible center,” so to speak, between socialism and conservatism. By endlessly attacking socialism (and leftists in general), they destroy that possibility, and make themselves appear as “as the radical left” to a large percentage of Americans, ironically.

FDR understood this. He positioned his New Deal as the compromise between a rising socialist tide and the conservative establishment, and basically told the latter, “It’s me or the guys with the pitchforks to my left. Which would you rather have? I’ll save capitalism for you, in exchange for your support,” etc. etc.

Basically, IMO, the current crop of Dems (going back to at least the early 1970s) have helped eliminate the threat of the pitchforks, which just strengthens the GOP’s hand.

Naturally, I agree with all that.

A football question though. Did you see any of the Bills game?