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Very Large Telescope Observes Gas Cloud Being Ripped Apart By Black Hole
An anonymous reader writes "New observations (PDF) from ESO's Very Large Telescope show for the first time a gas cloud being ripped apart by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The cloud is now so stretched that its front part has passed the closest point and is traveling away from the black hole at more than 10 million km/h, whilst the tail is still falling towards it."
Metric aside, what scale is Very Large fall under?
Will the next one be called Big Ass Telescope? Then, perhaps, Ginormous Telescope?
I can't wait for the Fucking-A Telescope.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Dr. Gillessen's web page has additional information here - https://wiki.mpe.mpg.de/gascloud/FrontPage and the ESO website has an article as well thatexplains what is happening - http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1332/
JJW
Although I agree some applause is warranted for the use of the metric system in the summary, and you are correct, I'm from a metric country and we don't use some SI units for whatever reason, maybe we should use them, but we don't. Deci (d), Deca (da) and hecto (h) as examples are often ignored, we typically just go from centimetres (0.01 m) to meters to killometers (1000 m). I think it's probably the same reason that a Furlong isn't used much in the English system. It exists and in some context does get used, but for the most part people will just say an eight of a mile. I mean why wouldn't you say Furlong? It's a fun word to say.
Even in the USA metric units are used in Physics and Astronomy.
While this may be gratifying to see if you are accessing this American website from abroad, and are used to having to do mental conversions, you really shouldn't get the idea in your head that folks here in America have finally decided to reorder their thinking to suit your conveinence.
I swear, give you Europeans an inch, and you'll take a mile. :-)
Human perceivable speeds are usually represented in km/h. Scientifically, most speeds are represented in m/s (save the extremes). Since this article is likely aiming to popularize the observation, it only makes sense to use km/h although this is a rather extreme speed. The reason is that the Average Joe could understand that it's "very very fast".
I salute this approach. Being too scientific for the sake of science is turning lots of interested people away.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
In Soviet Goat.cx, gas-cloud rips YOUR black-hole!
You must be old here.
John
European Extremely Large Telescope
The British are in charge of naming it. So it will be called the "Slightly Larger Telescope".
Have gnu, will travel.
http://www.vlf.it/frequency/bands.html
There is already a precedent
Extremely Large Telescope
Super Large Telescope
Ultra Large Telescope
Very Large Telescope
Large Telescope
Medium Telescope
Small Telescope
Very Small Telescope
Ultra Small Telescope
Super Small Telescope
Extremely Small Telescope
Also note that this is a logarithmic scale. An Extremely Large Telescope would be the size of Switzerland and be able to read the serial numbers off the Mars rovers.
This is a valuable lesson for us in tech as well .. my mother in law was recently surprised I could explain something to somebody without using a single technical term and waving away the boring details.
I had a prof in university who said if you can't explain it to someone who doesn't have a solid background in it, you don't understand it yourself.
Being able to describe at least the overall gist of something to a non-technical person is a very missing skill for a lot of people. I once had a PM laugh that I could describe something complicated using only monkeys and bananas as the metaphor -- but everyone in the room followed what I was saying, and could subsequently cite my metaphor to ask questions. (Obviously, it isn't perfect, but it can be very helpful)
Some people just can't (or won't) try to simplify what they're saying without dumbing it down so far as to not convey any information.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Like anything, it depends entirely on the PM -- I worked on a project the other year that had 3 PMs (out of necessity due to the scale of it).
The lead PM had a very clear path to how we were going to do it, and what had to happen first ... he's the best PM I've ever worked with. He was hard-assed, and demanded a lot. There was a damned good reason for all of it, his timelines were as reasonable as they could be, and he ran with all of the administrivia to ground to make sure it got done so when we finished one set of tasks everything we needed to start the next was already in place. I've respected only a handful of PMs, and he was head and shoulders above the rest.
One of the PMs was utterly useless and everything assigned to her she tried to foist off on me -- and I had to keep telling her the reason she was doing the 'boring' tasks of getting approvals was so we could focus on actually building it.
We got a massive undertaking done on-time, and with great success.
So, if you have a PM who has been in the industry a while and isn't going to get bamboozled by someone, understands you need to have a good clear plan for what you're doing, and can keep everyone on track -- a good PM can be the difference between the success or failure of a large project.
And, a PM who hasn't got enough domain expertise to follow the plot, isn't focused on every detail and staying on top of them ... then, yeah, some of those can be complete wankers who don't help anything get done.
There are PMs out there who are are really good, have enough domain expertise to understand what you're saying (and know when they need to ask questions), and will focus on making it possible for you to do your part. Those ones are really valuable to have around.
If you can do that, you might find yourself very much in demand, because good, thorough PMs are hard to find.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
You must be old here.
Son, that right there is a three digit UID. Ain't but about a thousand of those around any more.
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