The old science thread seems to have gotten locked, not sure what the rules are but I thought we could try again.

Pretty neat preprint out from The LOFAR Sky Survey. They use low frequency radiation (<100MHz) to map the sky.Most of the paper deals with the technical details, they have to use multiple telescopes separated by 1000s of miles to eliminate noise (the Earth's atmosphere interferes a ton with radiation in that frequency range), but the end result is a nice picture of just supermassive black holes in distant galaxies.



That's about 20k SMBHs in about 5% of the sky. It was widely believed before that SMBHs holes are very common, since they've been found in the galactic centers close enough to resolve, but nice to see more confirmation as LOFAR is equipped to see very high energy point sources, which is dominated by accretion disks of SMBHS.

I find this really interesting mostly because it's still a mystery how these things even exist. Hopefully we will get a better picture of how SMBHs form in the first place, because it's likely a completely different process than what forms stellar black holes.

Interesting stuff. But why are you posting this thread here instead of the SMP Forum? I'm not objecting to or complaining about your thread; it's just that inquiring minds want to know.

But not with 100% fewer religionists.

My original plan was to just post it in the old Science and Religion thread, but like I said that has been locked. I kinda forgot SMP existed....and checking over there I can see why. Looks pretty dead.

Yes, some haters were complaining and got our little playpen locked up.

I also never completely got the difference between this forum and the old politics forum. If it was still just politics, I don't think we would have had the old Science and Religion thread. But adding in & Society is just so vague it seems like virtually anything would be on topic here now.

We still have a religion thread. It's just more accurately titled now.

SMP is a hole, no one actually posts about science stuff there.

Thread is fine as far as I am concerned. Science often crosses over into politics, so I don't see a big issue.

Thank you!

Kewl!

Should be a caveat for this thread, left and right cultists need not apply. Without it the cult people will ruin this like everything else they ruin with their nonsense. Just like democracy!

I'm sure we'll be fine. It's just a thread for various science related articles, questions etc. Not really much that can be ruined even if someone wanted to.

Is Luckbox a left cultist or a right cultist?

Perhaps it is something a lot of people have seen already, but for the first time a Mars Rover was fitted to microphones. NASA released two short clips from the Perseverance Rover, one filtered for Rover sounds and one as-is.

It isn't much more than a microphone catching some wind noise, but it is still the first true sound recordings from another planet.

https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/2562...nds-from-mars/

I subscribe to a bunch of physics & maths youtube channels. Ed'a, do you want me to post new stuff that comes up in my feed in this thread if I think it's good?

Can we put Trump in one of those SMBHs?

Definitely. I was just planning on bumping this when I saw something interesting and at least somewhat comprehensible to a general audience.

I saw a little video on Perseverance and one thing I thought was pretty cool was they were going to store potential samples that may contain ancient life and hopefully design a follow up mission that can retrieve them and bring them back.

And Rudy too, if he will fit.

Melanie gets to stay on Earth.

Melanie has her own SMBH.

Ok, since I see the greenlight and did not want to hijack the thread from the TS, I too will post from some of the sites I follow, one in particular which likes to expose people to 'cool things in science you may have never seen before'.



Did you know that Water can boil and freeze at the same time?

The process is called the 'triple point', and it occurs when the temperature and pressure is just right for the three phases (gas, liquid, and solid) of a substance to coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium.




I will pace my posting to not dominate the thread, since there are a lot of these type 'cool' facts, ...out of fairness to the TS.

NASA’s been dreaming of a Mars sample return for a very long time. Very challenging mission, but maybe it can be done.

New video from Arvin Ash. Segues somewhat nicely into recent discussions in the new religion, poo flinger thread.

China and Russia to build lunar space station (BBC World news)

An interesting tidbit for a science thread, especially in a politics forum.