News you are not meant to understand

[ChrisGreaves]

Astronomers detect rare 'ultramassive' black hole, about 33 billion times the mass of the Sun, using gravitational lensing
Even a glorious four-year stint in Arithmetic at University can't help you here.
The human brain is not equipped to know what a Billion is like, let alone the mass of the sun, let alone a billion times the mass of the sun, not to mention thirty-three billion times the mass of the Sun.

Be Honest: When you were seventeen years old and knew everything, had you any idea at all of what you would feel like at thirty-three years old?

As for "2.7 billion light-years from Earth", well, I still think of a drive to Clarenville as the same (in 1957) as a drive from Southern Cross to Merredin, which gives you an idea about how often my spatial memory gets updated.

Strangely though, I feel that I have got a grip on "run hundreds of thousands of simulations of light traveling the same path" and changing the mass parameter so that when the results matched the image ... which might be difficult for most of my acquaintances in Bonavista to Comprehend.
I mean, not just the simulations, but that I might feel right at home with them.

At the start of Winter 2022 I went back to hanging laundry on the line in the shed and letting sublimation do its thing. It turns out that (I think I got this right) three billion molecules of water can fit in a one cubic millimetre space, which means that I don't have to spread out my bed sheets like I used to. Good to know.

Depressingly yours, Chris

PS tonight's drift-off-to-sleep theme is to work inframassive into a usable sentence. C

[Graeme]

Astronomers detect rare 'ultramassive' black hole, about 33 billion times the mass of the Sun, using gravitational lensing
Even a glorious four-year stint in Arithmetic at University can't help you here.
The human brain is not equipped to know what a Billion is like, let alone the mass of the sun, let alone a billion times the mass of the sun, not to mention thirty-three billion times the mass of the Sun.

I read that earlier, that black hole is big indeed. The Guardian article says there's an ultra massive black hole at the centre of galaxies like the Milky Way. There isn't. Your ABC article (thanks for that) is correct. The Milky Way BH is 4 million solar masses, it's a Supermassive black hole. I've not heard of Ultra massive BHs before. The Monthly Notices of the RAS article describes them as 30 to 50 billion solar masses!

A billion is tricky to get your head round. I like the analogy if you count a thousand seconds it will take you nearly 17 minutes. A million seconds would take 12 days. A billion seconds will take 32 years. Counting a trillion seconds would take 32 thousand years!

Regards

Graeme

[ChrisGreaves]

A billion seconds will take 32 years

Hah!
Now who mentioned not being able to understand thirty-three years old?

There are all sorts of weird analogies. A non-starter is "a thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools", and only iof you have filled or emptied a single Olympic pool with one gallon cans of water can you hope that it might be possible to anticipate ...
My second non-favorite is "An ant walking from New York to Los Angeles".
Cheers, Chris

[Jay Freedman]

Speaking of measurements that no one understands, a year ago the Daily Mail published a story about an asteroid "half the size of a giraffe".

The Facebook group Astronomy Cartoons promptly went ballistic with discussions of "what size is the other half of the giraffe?" and "which way is the giraffe bisected?" among many other topics. Thread drift brought comparisons of other species, ranging from some fraction of a baleen whale to some non-integer number of platypuses.

[Graeme]

Speaking of measurements that no one understands, a year ago the Daily Mail published a story about an asteroid "half the size of a giraffe".

Not sure what's wrong with 2.5m to 3m? (I can't believe I just searched for "how tall is a giraffe"!)

[ChrisGreaves]

(I can't believe I just searched for "how tall is a giraffe"!)

But at least you have a new measurement of time on your hands:
"Half of Jay Freedman's waking life"
Cheers to BOTH of you
Chris
PS And to preempt your next question "Half of Chris Greaves's waking life" C

[ChrisGreaves]

Then in the BBC this morning The benefits of 'deep time thinking'
"The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far back into the abyss of time. And while we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much further reason may sometimes go than imagination may venture to follow."

From the planet's perspective, our lives are momentary flashes of light on the surface of a lake; briefly bright, but quickly gone.

"People think in five generations – two ahead, two behind – with heavy concentration on the one in the middle. Possibly that is tragic, and possibly there is no choice."

"Numbers do not seem to work well with regard to deep time. Any number above a couple of thousand years – 50,000, 50 million – will with nearly equal effect awe the imagination to the point of paralysis,"

Cheers, Chris

[Jay Freedman]

Speaking of measurements that no one understands, a year ago the Daily Mail published a story about an asteroid "half the size of a giraffe".

Not sure what's wrong with 2.5m to 3m? (I can't believe I just searched for "how tall is a giraffe"!)

The article implied but didn't specify that the asteroid was half the height of a giraffe. Speculation arose that it may have meant the back half or the front half, or various other bisections.

[ChrisGreaves]

... that the asteroid was half the height of a giraffe. Speculation arose that it may have meant the back half or the front half, or various other bisections.

The writer should have used a commonly (now) recognized term "the greatest elongation".
If more writers frequented Eileen's Lounge, we would all benefit from better news reports.
Or perhaps fewer news reports.
Cheers, Chris
PS A proper science writer would have tried to impress us by pointing out that if the giraffe were galloping towards us at its maximum speed then
(a) Its apparent length would be fore-shortened
(b) Its orange skin would take on a russet hue and
(c) We should hide behind a tree. C.

[Leif]

...a commonly (now) recognized term "the greatest elongation".

Talking of elongation, this came to mind:
    

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[Jay Freedman]

The hilarity continues: https://m.jpost.com/science/article-735881

[HansV]

Science is wonderful...

[Skitterbug]

I'll be curious to see what is posted on April 1st......

[ChrisGreaves]

The hilarity continues: https://m.jpost.com/science/article-735881

OK Jay; you are a master of logic. Any comments on this?
Yes, CLI overstamping is legal, but only when used for legitimate reasons.

Cheers, Chris

[Jay Freedman]

OK Jay; you are a master of logic. Any comments on this?
Yes, CLI overstamping is legal, but only when used for legitimate reasons.

Cheers, Chris

Oh yes, one of my favorite topics.

Our landline -- which we're required to have because it connects our condo's security system to the monitoring company -- receives an average of five spoofed calls per day. We never answer any call that isn't in our contacts list. An occasional call goes into the answering machine, but most of them hang up without leaving any message.

Our cell phones are monitored by Nomorobo, a paid service that prevents spoofed calls from even ringing our phones. Unfortunately, it can't monitor a non-digital number, which our landline must be.

I've often thought that telephone companies could do the world some good, and make more money at the same time, by offering a paid opt-in service that would refuse to put through any call that uses CLI to make the caller ID fail to match the actual calling number (or optionally send it directly to voicemail). I haven't yet seen any movement in that direction.

[GeoffW]

OK Jay; you are a master of logic. Any comments on this?
Yes, CLI overstamping is legal, but only when used for legitimate reasons.

Thanks for the link. It rings a bell, so to speak.

This is getting way off topic, but it is Scuttlebutt.

I do work caring for elderly or infirm people in their homes. One day, I called in on one lady who was in the middle of a phone call. She was giving answers which rang alarms (and not the cuckoo clock kind). I signalled at her to stop, but she kept going. She proceeded to show her ID to the camera - the person at the other end was opening up a Bitcoin account. I persuaded her to stop by googling the number, which fortunately wasn't spoofed, and showing her that it was a scammer's number. I got her to call the bank immediately to freeze her account. While that stressed her out a lot, it's nowhere near as much stress as if she'd continued just five minutes more.

[ChrisGreaves]

Strictly speaking this is just the opposite:
"News you are meant to think that you understand, but starts off as fancy"
Newswriters writing in a false way with data that they would like you to spread verbatim.
Plants can 'talk' and scientists have recorded the sound they make as they die of thirst
"Look, I've put 'talk' in single quotes to show that I don't really mean, I mean, talk, but well, it's just too cute not to think of carrots and pumpkins discussing Who's for lunch?"

"Dying of thirst" of course has special meaning for Australians.

The meat of the article on vegetable (brain-less) life is that the talking a.k.a. sounds a.k.a. popping noise might be due to liquid/gaseous cavitation bubbles which Mr. Puzey did not cover in class. Or if he did, I was still thinking of Dixie Wilde.
Of course, cavitation can occur almost anywhere on earth, so if I hear a landslide 'talking', you can bet I'll run faster than any vegetable.
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Then of course there is news that nobody can understand, especially the journalist.
660-pound NASA spacecraft is hours away from crashing into Earth after more than a decade studying the sun wherein we find:-
It's unlikely, however, that any of the falling pieces will cause an issue for people on Earth. NASA said the risk of harm is "low – approximately 1 in 2,467."

Unless I am mistaken, that means you have four times the chance of being harmed by an entity that has circled the sun, than of dying on the roads in the USA alone! Injuries must be a much higher number.
This page estimates 42,915 out of a population of about 300,000,000 people where as NASA is saying 1/2047.

(Signed) "Losing it" of Bonavista

[ChrisGreaves]

Even a glorious four-year stint in Arithmetic at University can't help you here.

Snap quiz: Which of these two numeric expressions of quantity can you beat understand?
Or Least Understand, if you find that easier?

Code: Select all

30 trillion tonnes — or approximately 66,000,000,000,000,000lb

Source: About halfway down this page following the heading text "With greater foresight, people also gained increasing control over the future"
Admission: If I had to choose one or the other I would still be sitting by the fire, knitting by candlelight.
Cheers, Chris

[HansV]

Both are completely outside the range I can imagine...