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Hubble Finds Double Einstein Ring
Einstein Duble brings us news that astronomers using the Hubble Telescope have discovered an extremely rare double Einstein Ring. Occasionally, galaxies or other bright objects are located in such a way that they are behind another galaxy when viewed from Earth. When light from the further galaxy passes a sufficiently massive closer galaxy, the path of the light is bent inward from all sides, creating a "ring" effect. In this case, not one, but two galaxies are directly behind the foreground galaxy, so the gravitational lens produces two distinct rings. Quoting Presscue:
"The distribution of dark matter in the foreground galaxies that is warping space to create the gravitational lens can be precisely mapped. In addition, the geometry of the two Einstein rings allowed the team to measure the mass of the middle galaxy precisely to be a value of 1 billion solar masses. The team reports that this is the first measurement of the mass of a dwarf galaxy at cosmological distance (redshift of z=0.6)."
Proving Einstein's theory was always been about getting a little behind as it were. The solar eclipse of May 29,1919 was the first confirmation of this. And, this new discovery is much like the 191 observation only writ large, one might say glactic large.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
One of the cool implications becomes clear if you realize this means our galaxy is the 4th galaxy in a line with these three. To someone standing on a planet in that backmost galaxy, 11B Ly away: ...
* The one that's the "foreground galaxy" to us would be the inner ring.
* The one that's the "first ring" to us would be the foreground galaxy for them and
* The Milky Way would appear as the outer ring!
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
I've seen plenty of Libertarians that don't want the government to fund much of anything, ever, because "taxation is theft" or something like that.
I'm glad to see that there are at least a few veins of common sense among the Libertarians, though, because the extreme sort are the most noisy.
There's a great story about the first person to accurately measure the height of Mount Everest, whose name escapes me at the moment.
His calculations came out to precisely 29,000 feet. Thinking no-one would believe such a round number, he added two feet to make 29,002 feet but was greatly annoyed by the whole thing.
Later it was more accurately measured at 29,029 feet (going from memory here) using lasers or something.
Seriously, I'm not being hostile with this question. Is your life better for knowing the precise mass of a galaxy which no human will ever visit? I could go out and mass a stone in my back yard rather precisely with a calibrated instrument right now -- that would advance The Sum Of Human Knowledge, insofar as nobody had ever determined the approximate mass of that particular rock before -- but is that knowledge *useful*?
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Personal freedom, sound economic policy, measured intervention in things that won't look after themselves - isn't this what we used to call 'Liberalism'? All the Libertarians I have encountered labour under the delusion that they are universal experts and that nobody but them (least of all people with actual domain-specific training!) should be doing any resource allocation. They don't want to fund street repairs - in case someone else uses tarmac they helped pay for - let alone science. Certainly a total failure to grasp the notions of insurance and natural monopoly is de rigeur. So ... since you aren't a selfish fool, why do you label yourself this way? Is there some benefit?
I'm sorry, I know I sound rude, but otherwise intelligent Libertarians are an endless source of frustration in my life.
Ha-ha... Those are universal values. The political distinction depends on what you call "personal freedom", what is sound economic policy, how you measure the intervention, and which things you identify as incapable of "looking after themselves".
"Liberalism" in America tends to consider free health care (at someone else's expense) an inalienable right, for example, while denying the right to carry weapons. You must send your children to school (home-schooling is fought tooth-and-nail), but if you want to choose a non-government school, you'll have to pay for it yourself.
American "Liberalism" also insists, the government is better at securing citizens' retirement than the citizens are themselves; and is very much in favor of government regulation of businesses. Their deep suspicions of the businesses trying to collude into a "trust" to keep/push their prices higher do not — quite mysteriously — apply to the exact same collusion of the workers (what are trade unions, but "trusts" aiming to keep/push labor prices high?).
"Liberalism" in Europe, on the contrary, argues for the free enterprise — and is viewed with serious suspicion by trade-unions and other Socialists. Evidently the understanding of those universally-sounding values is quite different...
Now Libertarians tend to think, that the enormous overhead of the clumsy government doing things — even the worthwhile things — does not sufficiently compensate for alleviating whatever shortcomings the purely Libertarian society would have.
For example, yes, universal education is nice, but if that means government schools with government-set curriculum and an untouchable body of teachers, then no thanks. Let's allow anyone to go/send their children to competing private schools. Yes, this would mean somebody may not get a good education, but the existing alternative is a laughing stock of the civilized countries too. That was just one sample of when the wrench of tax-oppression was turned a few notches to solve a problem, failed to solve it, but would not relax anyway — that's a universal trend of government's "measured interference", and is why Libertarians reject it, even where it might seem promising.
Helping the unfortunate? A noble idea, except Americans were and remain the biggest charity-sponsoring people in the world. So, why am I forced (at gun point, of course) to fund USAID, but still find myself having to donate to IRC, because nobody else seems interested in what's happening to Darfuris?
Whose resource, dear? Yours? Theirs? Or that of those "actual domain-specific" experts? Because I suspect, somehow, that you are talking about something either entirely or mostly theirs, and you better show some respect to the people, whose money you are "allocating".
Oh, but they do. They just don't want to be forced to do it (at gun-point). When Benjamin Franklin ran his publishing business in Philadelphia, he convinced fellow businessmen/neighbors, that a cleanly-swept sidewalk was better for business and more pleasant for life.
Insurance is very much compatible with the Libertarian philosophy
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.