The first extragalactic black hole

In the world of black hole researchers, there is a group led by Tomer Shenar that, so far, has mostly demonstrated the non-existence of black holes previously announced by other teams.
As Shenar himself recalled, however,

For the first time, our group has come together to discuss the discovery of a black hole, instead of eliminating one.

We are talking about a black hole found inside the Tarantula Nebula, which is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way.
In particular, this black hole, of stellar mass, is of the "dormant" type, that is, it emits very low levels of X radiation, which are the radiations with which black holes are generally discovered.
This happens because the black hole interacts very little with its surroundings.
Another interesting aspect of the discovery is the absence of any trace of the star that generated the black hole.

[It] appears to have completely collapsed, with no sign of a previous explosion.

This black hole, the first extragalactic, was discovered orbiting a massive star thanks to six years of observations at ESO's Very Large Telescope.

How long you can survive in space without spacesuite

Murray Gell-Mann: Proposing quarks

In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork". Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark". Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark", as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork". But the book represents the dream of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau" words in Through the Looking-Glass. From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark", in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature.

- Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar, 1995 - via en.wiki

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The map of mathematics

The field of mathematics is massive, but a lot of people stop dealing with more complex maths after leaving university. Or, if you're not involved in an occupational field that needs mathematics, you might stop taking mathematics courses toward the end of high school. However, math is much bigger than most people realize. This creative map of mathematics made by Domain of Science puts the entirety of the field onto a single map.
The video traces the origins of math back to counting, which the video points out is not an exclusively human activity. It then quickly mentions how early civilizations tapped into counting and transformed it, most notably Arab scholars who created the first books on algebra. From there, mathematics and the sciences exploded during the Renaissance period.
After that point, the video starts to take off and diverge into a variety of mathematics we've come to know today. Maths diverged into two categories: pure maths and applied maths. Pure maths consists of the studies of numbers systems, structures (like algebra and group theory), spaces (goemetry and trigonometry) and more. Applied mathematics then taps into the application of pure maths. It includes the calculations that help determine how life functions, like mathematical chemistry or biomathematics. It also includes daily usage of math in economics, game theory, and statistics. By the end of the 11 minute video, viewers are left in awe (or simply overwhelmed) by all the possibilities that fall under the umbrella of "maths."
There were some mistakes made in the video that have since been corrected in the video's description. One of the biggest is that the video mistakenly mentions 1 as a prime number. However, prime numbers by definition are numbers bigger than 1 that can be divided evenly only by 1 or itself. The number must be greater than 1.

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The man who measured Mount Everest

Radhanath Sikdar was an Indian mathematician who, among many other things, calculated the height of Mount Everest in the Himalaya and showed it to be the tallest mountain above sea level.

Paolo Nespoli reads Emily Dickinson

#1695

There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself–
Finite Infinity.

Sputnik-2 or: Laika, Our Hero

Laika was a Soviet space dog who became one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth. Laika, a stray dog from the streets of Moscow, was selected to be the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957.
Little was known about the impact of spaceflight on living creatures at the time of Laika's mission, and the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, so Laika's survival was never expected. Some scientists believed humans would be unable to survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so engineers viewed flights by animals as a necessary precursor to human missions. The experiment aimed to prove that a living passenger could survive being launched into orbit and endure a Micro-g environment, paving the way for human spaceflight and providing scientists with some of the first data on how living organisms react to spaceflight environments.
Laika died within hours from overheating, possibly caused by a failure of the central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload. The true cause and time of her death were not made public until 2002; instead, it was widely reported that she died when her oxygen ran out on day six or, as the Soviet government initially claimed, she was euthanised prior to oxygen depletion.
On April 11, 2008, Russian officials unveiled a monument to Laika. A small monument in her honour was built near the military research facility in Moscow that prepared Laika's flight to space. It features a dog standing on top of a rocket. She also appears on the Monument to the Conquerors of Space in Moscow.

video via Popular Science

Buzz Aldrin: from Milano to Mars

Yesterday Buzz Aldrin was in Milano for the Wired Next Fest. The conference room was full of people, and I cannot enter in it. So I see Buzz's conference from the large screen outside in front of the stage. Even if mediated in this way, I could perceive the power of the character, the charisma, the magnetism of a man who goes by now for the nineties but who is not tired yet to point his eyes to the sky. Towards Mars, for precision!

What if we done the Schrodinger's cat experiment?

The Schroedinger's cat is a thought experiment proposed by Erwin Schroedinger in 1935 in order to proof the limits of quantum mechanics and Copenaghen interpretation. One of the most known consequence of the paradox is the many worlds interpretation, but also artist was inspired by the paradox. For example Chavdar Yordanov created a beautiful and funny animation with the music created by Sian Smith (via Open Culture).

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The aircraft of the future

Pierpaolo Lazzarini is an italian designer, who proposed an interesting concept personal aircraft for the future of mobility: I.F.O.

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The project is an evolution of the previous U.F.O.

Super Science Friends: how to save Newton

There is a new animated series in the city⁽¹⁾: Super Science Friends. Created by Brett Jubinville of Tinman Creative Studios, it was funded the first short through Kickstarter, while the rest of the episodes can be supported on Patreon.
The series is evidently inspired by Super Friends, produced by Hanna-Barbera for DC Comics, with the place of the heroes of JLA taken by some iconic scientists: Marie Curie, with a radioactive ring similar to Green Lantern’s one; Charles Darwin, able to transform into any animal, like Beast Boy from the Teen Titans; Nikola Tesla, with electromagnetic powers, like Magneto from Marvel universe, historical X-Men enemy; Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis with oversight of lust, to be seen as an alternative to Aquaman with his oversight of aquatic creatures.

Juno: Journey into the unknown

The Juno Mission is travelling in space and it'll arrive near Jupiter today. Waiting this new space event, watch the trailer of the mission:

A mathematical theory of communication

A mathematical theory of communication is a paper by Claude Shannon published in two part in July and October 1948. The paper posed the basis for the modern information theory and the basi elements of communication:

• An information source that produces a message
• A transmitter that operates on the message to create a signal which can be sent through a channel
• A channel, which is the medium over which the signal, carrying the information that composes the message, is sent
• A receiver, which transforms the signal back into the message intended for delivery
• A destination, which can be a person or a machine, for whom or which the message is intended

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Shannon, C. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication Bell System Technical Journal, 27 (3), 379-423 DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x (pdf)
Shannon, C. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication Bell System Technical Journal, 27 (4), 623-656 DOI: 10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb00917.x (pdf)

Alexander Gerst's timelapse

Watch Earth roll by through the perspective of ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst in this six-minute timelapse video from space. Combining 12 500 images taken by Alexander during his six-month Blue Dot mission on the International Space Station this Ultra High Definition video shows the best our beautiful planet has to offer.
Marvel at the auroras, sunrises, clouds, stars, oceans, the Milky Way, the International Space Station, lightning, cities at night, spacecraft and the thin band of atmosphere that protects us from space.
Often while conducting scientific experiments or docking spacecraft Alexander would set cameras to automatically take pictures at regular intervals. Combining these images gives the timelapse effect seen in this video.
Watch the video in 4K resolution for the best effect and find out more about Alexander Gerst's Blue Dot mission.

Universe

pic via @astroperinaldo

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Pluto's Panorama with the Sun far far away imagined in the documentary Universe - via @astroperinaldo

42 and Douglas Adams

http://t.co/OYVsXcrpqm happy #towelday with @ulaulaman

Snowden and the debate on surveillance versus privacy

In June 2013, NSA contractor Edward Snowden met with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen Macaskill and film-maker Laura Poitras in Hong Kong. The whistleblower gave them documents which proved the existence of a massive scale surveillance system that allows the American NSA and other intelligence and security agencies to gather information on citizens without judicial supervision. While in the USA and in Germany the major media outlets reported extensively on the issue, in Italy there hasn't been a proper public debate on privacy and surveillance, as - except for the work of handful of journalists – the media chose not to cover the implications of such revelations. On the other hand, politics is quick to use the fight against terrorism to push for reforms that might limit people's privacy, a fundamental human right that is currently under attack all over the world. Without a proper balance between surveillance and privacy, the freedom of citizens is at risk. Without a proper public debate, it is hard to understand what is at stake. For the first time in Italy, such debate will take place including the voices of the people who made the information public: Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who revealed the scope of the NSA surveillance practices, will be joining the conversation, as well as the independent film-maker Laura Poitras. Poitras recently won an Academy Award for the documentary Citizenfour, where she shows the meetings between the whistleblower and the journalists, and a Pulitzer prize for her journalistic work on the story. The human rights implications will be explored by Ben Wizner (ACLU), Snowden's lawyer, and Andrea Menapace, who directs the newly-born Italian Coalition for Civil Rights and Freedoms. Organised in association with Italian Coalition for Civil Rights and Freedoms (CILD) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Speakers: Edward Snowden (via Skype) Laura Poitras (via Skype) Ben Wizner (ACLU) Andrea Menapace (CILD) Simon Davies (Privacy International) Introduction: Patrizio Gonnella (CILD) Moderator: Fabio Chiusi Con: Fabio Chiusi (journalist and author), Simon Davies (founder Privacy International), Patrizio Gonnella (president CILD), Andrea Menapace (director CILD), Laura Poitras (documentary film-maker (via Skype)), Edward Snowden (whistleblower (via Skype)), Ben Wizner (ACLU), Ben Wizner

The dark side of the moon

#moon #astronomy #NASA #video #PinkFloyd

The first photo of the lunar far side taken by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3 on Oct. 7, 1959 - via Universe Today

A magnet falling in a metal tube

by @ulaulaman http://youtu.be/keMpUaoA3Tg about #magnet #school #physics #experiments #magnetic_field

Sometimes teach physics, and a couple of years ago the colleague of the educational laboratory proposed to the students a simple experiment: a magnet that descends along a metal tube⁽¹⁾ does not fall at the same speed of the same magnet that we throw from the same height, for example, inside a not metal tube. The magnet inside the metal tube will drop almost as if it remained in suspension, swinging a little to the right a little to the left, in a manner apparently inexplicable, but just let us allow to the students, exceeded the initial amazement, to think above the phenomena, even without too much knowledge, and they realize that in some way that the behavior of the magnet inside the tube is due to an interaction between the two objects that goes beyond the simple direct contact.
The secret behind the behavior of the magnet is the so-called Lenz's law:

An induced electromotive force (emf) always gives rise to a current whose magnetic field opposes the original change in magnetic flux.

The deadly irony of gunpowder

In the mid-ninth century, Chinese chemists, hard at work on an immortality potion, instead invented gunpowder. They soon found that this highly inflammable powder was far from an elixir of life -- they put it to use in bombs against Mongol invaders, and the rest was history. Eric Rosado details how gunpowder has caused devastation around the world, despite the incandescent beauty of fireworks.