For decades, Jim Woodward dreamed of a propellantless engine to take humans to the stars. Now he thinks he’s got it. But is it revolutionary—or illusory?
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Thursday, September 3, 2020
How to Fix “Shared connection to x.x.xx closed” Ansible Error
In this short article, we will explain how to solve the: “module_stderr“: “Shared connection to x.x.x.x closed.\r\n”, “module_stdout”: “/bin/sh: /usr/bin/python: No such file or directory\r\n”, while running Ansible commands. The following screenshot shows the
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Wednesday, September 2, 2020
How to Setup Sublime Text sFTP for Remote Development
This article is the second in a series about sublime text and how to set it up for remote development using the SFTP package. I suggest you refer to our previous article about the
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Dragon's Dogma | Character showcase | Netflix
Fighting to protect his beloved family from the Dragon, Ethan is robbed of his heart by the nightmarish beast. Although thought to have perished, Ethan is resurrected as the "Arisen." Reawakened, Ethan meets a follower of the Arisen, a Pawn named Hannah. Together, the two set out on a quest to retrieve Ethan's stolen heart. Meet for the first time the people Ethan and Hannah encounter on their journey of vengeance against the Dragon who robbed Ethan of his heart. First a globally beloved game franchise, now an anime, catch "Dragon's Dogma," A NETFLIX ORIGINAL ANIME SERIES streaming worldwide on Thursday, September 17, 2020. SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/29qBUt7 About Netflix: Netflix is the world's leading streaming entertainment service with 193 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on any internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments. Dragon's Dogma | Character showcase | Netflix https://youtube.com/Netflix Resurrected as an Arisen, Ethan sets out to vanquish the Dragon that took his heart. But with every demon he battles, his humanity slips further away.
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Fighting to protect his beloved family from the Dragon, Ethan is robbed of his heart by the nightmarish beast. Although thought to have perished, Ethan is resurrected as the "Arisen." Reawakened, Ethan meets a follower of the Arisen, a Pawn named Hannah. Together, the two set out on a quest to retrieve Ethan's stolen heart. Meet for the first time the people Ethan and Hannah encounter on their journey of vengeance against the Dragon who robbed Ethan of his heart. First a globally beloved game franchise, now an anime, catch "Dragon's Dogma," A NETFLIX ORIGINAL ANIME SERIES streaming worldwide on Thursday, September 17, 2020. SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/29qBUt7 About Netflix: Netflix is the world's leading streaming entertainment service with 193 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on any internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments. Dragon's Dogma | Character showcase | Netflix https://youtube.com/Netflix Resurrected as an Arisen, Ethan sets out to vanquish the Dragon that took his heart. But with every demon he battles, his humanity slips further away.
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Monica talks working with Kim Kardashian to get C-Murder released
The singer is speaking out about her decision to turn to the reality TV star and her legal team in the fight for justice.
Monica caught major heat last month for joining forces with Kim Kardashian to help free her ex-boyfriend C-Murder from a Louisiana prison. Now she is speaking out about her decision to turn to the reality TV star and her legal team in the fight for justice.
Monica recently addressed the matter with Kenny Burns for V103 Atlanta. The R&B singer explained that before she reached out to Kardashian, she researched why the wife of Kanye West is on a mission to help reform the criminal justice system and free wrongly convicted inmates.
“Before reaching out, I researched. I researched her father. I researched why this is a desire of hers,” Monica said during the virtual interview.
Read More: Brandy, Monica take over 30 out of 40 spots on Apple Music chart after Verzuz battle
As theGRIO previously reported, the rapper, whose real name is Corey Miller, is best known for being the brother of music mogul Percy “Master P” Miller. However, tragedy altered his life. In 2009, a jury of his peers found him guilty of second-degree murder in the 2002 fatal shooting case of a 16-year-old teen named Steve Thomas, NOLA.com reported.
Miller, 49, is currently serving a life sentence in the Louisiana State Penitentiary but his supporters say he is the victim of a corrupt criminal justice system that allowed false witness accounts and police interference to undermine his defense.
Monica said the amount of evidence that proves he was wrongfully convicted motivated her to work with Kardashian and use her platform to raise awareness about Miller’s case.
Elsewhere in the conversation with Burns, she denied being romantically involved with Miller at the time of his arrest. And while she has continued to support him throughout his incarceration (including visiting him and allegedly putting money on his books), the songstress slammed speculation that she was carrying on an “emotional affair” with Miller while she was married.
“The idea of the ‘relationship’ of it — of course, that’s how we knew each other but we weren’t together when he was arrested. And we weren’t together during incarcerated but that never changed out friendship,” Monica said. “It was kind of unfair when other people got brought up. For instance, my ex-husband, I never did anything disrespectful in that light. And every time I went to New Orleans, he would too.”
Watch the full interview via the YouTube clip above.
Read More: Singer Monica enlists Kim Kardashian to help free C-Murder from prison
Meanwhile, Miller is appreciative of the efforts of Monica and Kardashian. He wrote in an Instagram post that he was able to sleep for the first time in years because of renewed hope.
“7 months ago I called @monicadenise & she conferenced in @kimkardashian ! I did not know Moses had been working to reach Kim. After our call for the first time in 19 years, I slept!! You can rest behind these walls but never do you actually sleep!,” he wrote.
“My case had been stagnant for years! So I published multiple books to help feed my kids & pay lawyers bare minimum! I am a man so it was no one’s responsibility to save me & no one attempted to! But when you trust God he will send his angels!,” Miller added.
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Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, wife and kids test positive for COVID-19
The Hollywood superstar said he and his wife and their 2 young daughters contracted the virus from family friends.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has revealed that he and his family tested positive for the coronavirus.
In a post shared on social media on Sept. 2, the Hollywood superstar revealed that he and wife Lauren and their 2 young daughters, Tiana and Jasmine, contracted the virus from close family friends, TMZ reports.
“I can tell you that this has been one of the most challenging and difficult things we have ever had to endure as a family, ” the actor said Wednesday on Instagram. “And I’ve gone through some doozies in the past…I’ve gotten my a– kicked a little bit in the past…but testing positive for COVID-19 was much different than overcoming nasty injuries or being evicted or even being broke, which I have been a few times,” he added.
Read More: Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson says he wants a leader who can ‘normalize equality’
Johnson said his children didn’t experience any bad symptoms and he attributes his family’s healthy lifestyle to helping them bounce back.
Hear more from The Rock about his family’s coronavirus ordeal via the IG video below.
“We as a family are good,” Johnson tells his followers in the clip. “… We are no longer contagious and we are, thank God, we are healthy.”
“Our babies, Jazzy and Tia, it was they had a little sore throat the first couple of days but other than that they bounced back,” he explained. “Lauren and I…it was a little bit different…We had a rough go, but we got through it.”
The Jumanji star also noted that the “close family friends” who they contracted the potentially deadly virus from are “devastated that it led to them infecting our family.”
Johnson’s Instagram post included the following message urging his fans to:
“Stay disciplined.
Boost your immune system.
Commit to wellness.
Wear your mask.
Protect your family.
Be strict about having people over your house or gatherings.
Stay positive.
And care for your fellow human beings.
Stay healthy, my friends.”
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Black jogger wrongfully arrested by San Antonio police: ‘I was guilty before proven innocent’
A Black jogger spent two days in jail after San Antonio police believed he was a suspect in an assault incident
A Black jogger in San Antonio was arrested despite not fitting the description of the suspect police were actually looking for.
Mathias Ometu was jogging in bright-colored clothing when police approached and detained him, KSAT reported. The cops believed he was the armed suspect they were in search of following a family dispute on Aug. 25. Bodycam footage that released on Tuesday showed that Ometu did not fit the profile of the man the police sought.
Read More: NFL endzones to proclaim ‘End racism, it takes all of us’ for 2020-2021 season
The insurance adjuster exercised his legal right in Texas not to give his name to police after being repeatedly asked. Within minutes, the two cops placed Ometu under arrest and inside a police SUV because his “demeanor became aggressive,” according to SAPD officials. The footage was captured on bystander video.
“I felt bad for the guy, so I kept videotaping it,” San Antonio attorney Victor Maas said, after posting the video to social media.
Ometu was charged with two felony counts of assault on an officer and spent two days in jail before he posted a $200K bond. The victim in the initial dispute confirmed that Ometu didn’t assault him and all of the charges against Ometu were dropped.
Darren Smith Jr. was named as the suspect in the assault Ometu was accused of. Smith was arrested Friday for a robbery unrelated to the assault case, KSAT reported.
Ometu held a press conference on Wednesday with his lawyers to share what happened, explaining his refusal to allow the police to take him to the victim’s home for identification.
Read More: Editor of Kenosha newspaper quits over tone-deaf coverage: ‘Today is about Jacob Blake’
“Once those doors close on you, you never know when they’re going to open again,” Ometu said.
Ometu also denied kicking or scratching the police officers that detained him but admitted that he was aggravated over the situation.
“I was guilty before proven innocent,” Ometu said.
He added about his time in jail, “I experienced true darkness.”
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus defended the actions of the officers involved. However, he appealed to Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales to drop the charges against Ometu in order to bring healing to the community.
McManus also extended an invitation to Ometu to be a part of the dialogue.
“Both officers felt it important to use this incident as an opportunity for unity and understanding at a time when it is most needed. It is clear that pursuing charges against Mr. Ometu would not bring us closer to our goals of building trust and creating partnerships with our community,” McManus said in a statement.
“We have invited Mr. Ometu to start a dialogue on policing in San Antonio, and that invitation will remain open.”
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Kimora Lee Simmons, daughters launch new Baby Phat Beauty line
Baby Phat follows Rihanna and Kylie Jenner with a new skincare/makeup line
Kimora Lee Simmons started her career as a model before she became a wife, mother of four, reality TV star, and fashion designer. Now, she and daughters Ming Simmons and Aoki Simmons, who she shares with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, have developed their own beauty line under the Baby Phat brand.
Read More: Usher and girlfriend Jenn Goicoechea are reportedly expecting a baby
An outgrowth of Russell’s Phat Farm clothing line, Baby Phat first launched in 1999. At that time, the line was full of hood-chic and sexy clothing that gave the streetwear trends a feminine appeal. After several dormant years once she sold it, Kimora repurchased it and brought the brand back last year.
Now, following in the footsteps of recently launched beauty and skincare lines by Rihanna‘s Fenty Beauty and Kylie Jenner Skin, Kimora is relaunching her brand into a new arena, with the help of 21-year-old Ming Lee and 18-year-old Aoki Lee.
“This is the retro brand that’s reborn looking through the eyes of young people like Ming and Aoki,” Kimora, 45, told People. “My girls have been working with me and going to school – and that’s tough. It can be tough, but it’s exciting that we’re pushing that needle forward.”
The brand initially offers the Shimmer Dreams set ($45) in Opulence, Ethereal and Divine. Each set includes a lluminating Body Spray, Hydrating Body Lotion, and Plumping Lip Gloss. Opulence is floral with notes of bergamot and caramel, Ethereal’s primary scent is pear and amber, and Divine’s has major notes of jasmine and vanilla.
“When I launched Baby Phat in 1999, I had to fight for a seat at the table in both the high-fashion and streetwear worlds,” Kimora said in a statement.
“I did that by staying true to myself and bringing up an entire generation who embraced diversity, body positivity, and body confidence all while being unapologetically glam and sexy. Buying back the brand has given me the opportunity to tell that story all over again to a new generation — a generation I raised. Launching into beauty, feels like the most relevant way to tell that story in today’s landscape.”
Read More: Meet B. Lin Murphy, the designer putting Black women first with her anti-microbial bodysuits
Kimora says that her brand will also be one that makes a difference. Some proceeds from the sale of the Shimmer Dreams set will benefit Fairfight, the voting rights organization founded by Stacey Abrams.
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States should prepare to distribute COVID vaccine by late October: CDC
Critics are accusing President Trump of rushing the vaccine for political gain.
Health officials in all 50 states have been notified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prepare to distribute a coronavirus vaccine by late October or early November.
The vaccines will first be made available to healthcare workers, essential workers, national security officials, long-term care facility residents and high-risk racial and ethnic groups, CNN reports.
The documents sent to public health officials across the nation on Aug. 27 outline scenarios for distributing to two candidates described as Vaccine A and Vaccine B.
The CDC noted in its guidance that “limited Covid-19 vaccine doses may be available by early November 2020,” before clinical trials have been completed.
Read More: Over 90% of COVID-19 deaths in US had contributing factors: CDC report
The plans also lay out technical specifications for shipping, mixing, storage and administration at hospitals, mobile clinics and facilities offering initial access to the vaccine to the initial targeted groups.
“The Covid-19 vaccine landscape is evolving and uncertain, and these scenarios may evolve as more information is available,” the agency said in one of the scenario documents.
Critics are accusing President Trump of rushing the vaccine for political gain.
“This timeline of the initial deployment at the end of October is deeply worrisome for the politicization of public health and the potential safety ramifications,” said Saskia Popescu, an infection prevention epidemiologist based in Arizona. “It’s hard not to see this as a push for a pre-election vaccine.”
An earlier report on theGRIO noted that Trump believes, without offering any proof, that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is intentionally slowing down the testing of COVID-19 vaccines to hurt his chances of reelection in November.
In a tweet posted on Aug. 22, Trump said that the FDA is part of the deep state and they are manipulating drug companies into slowing down their enrollment of test subjects, thus delaying an approved vaccine, according to Reuters.
“The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics,” Trump write.” Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives! @SteveFDA”
Read More: CDC chief warns that US has ‘way too much virus’ to control
CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said Wednesday that one or more coronavirus vaccines could be available before the end of the year.
“Right now I will say we’re preparing earnestly for what I anticipate will be reality … that there’ll be one or more vaccines available for us in November, December — and we have to figure out how to make sure they’re distributed in a fair and equitable way across the country,” Redfield said during an interview with Yahoo Finance.
Redfield informed governors in a letter last month that permits would soon be requested to build vaccine distribution centers, and he reportedly wants them to fast track permit approvals.
Meanwhile, three vaccines are reportedly in Phase 3 trials in the United States.
“I believe that by the time we get to the end of this calendar year that we will feel comfortable that we do have a safe and effective vaccine,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
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Pastor John Gray apologizes for alleged emotional affair
Pastor John Gray apologizes to his wife and church after new allegations of an extramarital affair.
After new allegations of an extramarital affair, Pastor John Gray has issued apologies to both his wife and his church.
Read More: Oprah Winfrey Network cancels Pastor John Gray’s TV show
According to Greenville News, the faith-based author confronted rumors of an affair after a woman claimed she had been communicating with the pastor. During an almost hour-long virtual sermon, he shares plans for therapy. While he never explicitly confirms or denies the existence of an affair, Pastor Gray acknowledges the damage caused.
“Aventer, I am sorry for the pain I have caused you, and my prayer is that the life I live from this moment will be one worthy of the love that you extended that our family receives from. I am grateful for you and our children,” he said.
Read More: Woman at center of Pastor John Gray’s so-called ’emotional affair’ is spilling the tea
“To my church, I am sorry. You’ve gone through enough. From cars to meetings with leaders that have caused great pain and deep division among political ideologies to one thing after another. I want to tell you I’m sorry.”
According to Hip Hop Wired, Pastor Gray allegedly engaged in FaceTime and iMessage conversations with a woman identified as ‘Mary’ requesting photos, meals, and sending money.
His legal team insists that in this case, a physical affair was never alleged and Gray is the victim of extortion and blackmail. Attorneys Devon Puriefoy and Kimberly Thomason informed Greenville News the latest claims are alleged to be only phone calls.
“There are allegations that there were phone conversations between the two parties, and that’s essentially the extent of the allegations,” Puriefoy said to the news outlet. “When you take her own words, she says there was no affair, no physical contact, they never met each other, they never saw each other.”
Gray leads the Relentless Church in Greenville, South Carolina, and is an associate pastor for Joel Osteen‘s Lakewood Church in Houston. Gray says he is aware of the damage done to his reputation.
“There are people who may never listen to me preach again, and I am so very sad about that,” he said in the video.
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A “bang” in LIGO and Virgo detectors signals most massive gravitational-wave source yet
For all its vast emptiness, the universe is humming with activity in the form of gravitational waves. Produced by extreme astrophysical phenomena, these reverberations ripple forth and shake the fabric of space-time, like the clang of a cosmic bell.
Now researchers have detected a signal from what may be the most massive black hole merger yet observed in gravitational waves. The product of the merger is the first clear detection of an “intermediate-mass” black hole, with a mass between 100 and 1,000 times that of the sun.
They detected the signal, which they have labeled GW190521, on May 21, 2019, with the National Science Foundation’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of identical, 4-kilometer-long interferometers in the United States; and Virgo, a 3-kilometer-long detector in Italy.
The signal, resembling about four short wiggles, is extremely brief in duration, lasting less than one-tenth of a second. From what the researchers can tell, GW190521 was generated by a source that is roughly 5 gigaparsecs away, when the universe was about half its age, making it one of the most distant gravitational-wave sources detected so far.
As for what produced this signal, based on a powerful suite of state-of-the-art computational and modeling tools, scientists think that GW190521 was most likely generated by a binary black hole merger with unusual properties.
Almost every confirmed gravitational-wave signal to date has been from a binary merger, either between two black holes or two neutron stars. This newest merger appears to be the most massive yet, involving two inspiraling black holes with masses about 85 and 66 times the mass of the sun.
The LIGO-Virgo team has also measured each black hole’s spin and discovered that as the black holes were circling ever closer together, they could have been spinning about their own axes, at angles that were out of alignment with the axis of their orbit. The black holes’ misaligned spins likely caused their orbits to wobble, or “precess,” as the two Goliaths spiraled toward each other.
The new signal likely represents the instant that the two black holes merged. The merger created an even more massive black hole, of about 142 solar masses, and released an enormous amount of energy, equivalent to around 8 solar masses, spread across the universe in the form of gravitational waves.
“This doesn’t look much like a chirp, which is what we typically detect,” says Virgo member Nelson Christensen, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), comparing the signal to LIGO’s first detection of gravitational waves in 2015. “This is more like something that goes ‘bang,’ and it’s the most massive signal LIGO and Virgo have seen.”
The international team of scientists, who make up the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and the Virgo Collaboration, have reported their findings in two papers published today. One, appearing in Physical Review Letters, details the discovery, and the other, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, discusses the signal’s physical properties and astrophysical implications.
“LIGO once again surprises us not just with the detection of black holes in sizes that are difficult to explain, but doing it using techniques that were not designed specifically for stellar mergers,” says Pedro Marronetti, program director for gravitational physics at the National Science Foundation. “This is of tremendous importance since it showcases the instrument’s ability to detect signals from completely unforeseen astrophysical events. LIGO shows that it can also observe the unexpected.”
In the mass gap
The uniquely large masses of the two inspiraling black holes, as well as the final black hole, raise a slew of questions regarding their formation.
All of the black holes observed to date fit within either of two categories: stellar-mass black holes, which measure from a few solar masses up to tens of solar masses and are thought to form when massive stars die; or supermassive black holes, such as the one at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, that are from hundreds of thousands, to billions of times that of our sun.
However, the final 142-solar-mass black hole produced by the GW190521 merger lies within an intermediate mass range between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes — the first of its kind ever detected.
The two progenitor black holes that produced the final black hole also seem to be unique in their size. They’re so massive that scientists suspect one or both of them may not have formed from a collapsing star, as most stellar-mass black holes do.
According to the physics of stellar evolution, outward pressure from the photons and gas in a star’s core support it against the force of gravity pushing inward, so that the star is stable, like the sun. After the core of a massive star fuses nuclei as heavy as iron, it can no longer produce enough pressure to support the outer layers. When this outward pressure is less than gravity, the star collapses under its own weight, in an explosion called a core-collapse supernova, that can leave behind a black hole.
This process can explain how stars as massive as 130 solar masses can produce black holes that are up to 65 solar masses. But for heavier stars, a phenomenon known as “pair instability” is thought to kick in. When the core’s photons become extremely energetic, they can morph into an electron and antielectron pair. These pairs generate less pressure than photons, causing the star to become unstable against gravitational collapse, and the resulting explosion is strong enough to leave nothing behind. Even more massive stars, above 200 solar masses, would eventually collapse directly into a black hole of at least 120 solar masses. A collapsing star, then, should not be able to produce a black hole between approximately 65 and 120 solar masses — a range that is known as the “pair instability mass gap.”
But now, the heavier of the two black holes that produced the GW190521 signal, at 85 solar masses, is the first so far detected within the pair instability mass gap.
“The fact that we’re seeing a black hole in this mass gap will make a lot of astrophysicists scratch their heads and try to figure out how these black holes were made,” says Christensen, who is the director of the Artemis Laboratory at the Nice Observatory in France.
One possibility, which the researchers consider in their second paper, is of a hierarchical merger, in which the two progenitor black holes themselves may have formed from the merging of two smaller black holes, before migrating together and eventually merging.
“This event opens more questions than it provides answers,” says LIGO member Alan Weinstein, professor of physics at Caltech. “From the perspective of discovery and physics, it’s a very exciting thing.”
“Something unexpected”
There are many remaining questions regarding GW190521.
As LIGO and Virgo detectors listen for gravitational waves passing through Earth, automated searches comb through the incoming data for interesting signals. These searches can use two different methods: algorithms that pick out specific wave patterns in the data that may have been produced by compact binary systems; and more general “burst” searches, which essentially look for anything out of the ordinary.
LIGO member Salvatore Vitale, assistant professor of physics at MIT, likens compact binary searches to “passing a comb through data, that will catch things in a certain spacing,” in contrast to burst searches that are more of a “catch-all” approach.
In the case of GW190521, it was a burst search that picked up the signal slightly more clearly, opening the very small chance that the gravitational waves arose from something other than a binary merger.
“The bar for asserting we’ve discovered something new is very high,” Weinstein says. “So we typically apply Occam’s razor: The simpler solution is the better one, which in this case is a binary black hole.”
But what if something entirely new produced these gravitational waves? It’s a tantalizing prospect, and in their paper the scientists briefly consider other sources in the universe that might have produced the signal they detected. For instance, perhaps the gravitational waves were emitted by a collapsing star in our galaxy. The signal could also be from a cosmic string produced just after the universe inflated in its earliest moments — although neither of these exotic possibilities matches the data as well as a binary merger.
“Since we first turned on LIGO, everything we’ve observed with confidence has been a collision of black holes or neutron stars,” Weinstein says “This is the one event where our analysis allows the possibility that this event is not such a collision. Although this event is consistent with being from an exceptionally massive binary black hole merger, and alternative explanations are disfavored, it is pushing the boundaries of our confidence. And that potentially makes it extremely exciting. Because we have all been hoping for something new, something unexpected, that could challenge what we’ve learned already. This event has the potential for doing that.”
This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.
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An unexpected origin story for a lopsided black hole merger
A lopsided merger of two black holes may have an oddball origin story, according to a new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere.
The merger was first detected on April 12, 2019 as a gravitational wave that arrived at the detectors of both LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory), and its Italian counterpart, Virgo. Scientists labeled the signal as GW190412 and determined that it emanated from a clash between two David-and-Goliath black holes, one three times more massive than the other. The signal marked the first detection of a merger between two black holes of very different sizes.
Now the new study, published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, shows that this lopsided merger may have originated through a very different process compared to how most mergers, or binaries, are thought to form.
It’s likely that the more massive of the two black holes was itself a product of a prior merger between two parent black holes. The Goliath that spun out of that first collision may have then ricocheted around a densely packed “nuclear cluster” before merging with the second, smaller black hole — a raucous event that sent gravitational waves rippling across space.
GW190412 may then be a second generation, or “hierarchical” merger, standing apart from other first-generation mergers that LIGO and Virgo have so far detected.
“This event is an oddball the universe has thrown at us — it was something we didn’t see coming,” says study coauthor Salvatore Vitale, an assistant professor of physics at MIT and a LIGO member. “But nothing happens just once in the universe. And something like this, though rare, we will see again, and we’ll be able to say more about the universe.”
Vitale’s coauthors are Davide Gerosa of the University of Birmingham and Emanuele Berti of Johns Hopkins University.
A struggle to explain
There are two main ways in which black hole mergers are thought to form. The first is known as a common envelope process, where two neighboring stars, after billions of years, explode to form two neighboring black holes that eventually share a common envelope, or disk of gas. After another few billion years, the black holes spiral in and merge.
“You can think of this like a couple being together all their lives,” Vitale says. “This process is suspected to happen in the disc of galaxies like our own.”
The other common path by which black hole mergers form is via dynamical interactions. Imagine, in place of a monogamous environment, a galactic rave, where thousands of black holes are crammed into a small, dense region of the universe. When two black holes start to partner up, a third may knock the couple apart in a dynamical interaction that can repeat many times over, before a pair of black holes finally merges.
In both the common envelope process and the dynamical interaction scenario, the merging black holes should have roughly the same mass, unlike the lopsided mass ratio of GW190412. They should also have relatively no spin, whereas GW190412 has a surprisingly high spin.
“The bottom line is, both these scenarios, which people traditionally think are ideal nurseries for black hole binaries in the universe, struggle to explain the mass ratio and spin of this event,” Vitale says.
Black hole tracker
In their new paper, the researchers used two models to show that it is very unlikely that GW190412 came from either a common envelope process or a dynamical interaction.
They first modeled the evolution of a typical galaxy using STAR TRACK, a simulation that tracks galaxies over billions of years, starting with the coalescing of gas and proceeding to the way stars take shape and explode, and then collapse into black holes that eventually merge. The second model simulates random, dynamical encounters in globular clusters — dense concentrations of stars around most galaxies.
The team ran both simulations multiple times, tuning the parameters and studying the properties of the black hole mergers that emerged. For those mergers that formed through a common envelope process, a merger like GW190412 was very rare, cropping up only after a few million events. Dynamical interactions were slightly more likely to produce such an event, after a few thousand mergers.
However, GW190412 was detected by LIGO and Virgo after only 50 other detections, suggesting that it likely arose through some other process.
“No matter what we do, we cannot easily produce this event in these more common formation channels,” Vitale says.
The process of hierarchical merging may better explain the GW190412’s lopsided mass and its high spin. If one black hole was a product of a previous pairing of two parent black holes of similar mass, it would itself be more massive than either parent, and later significantly overshadow its first-generation partner, creating a high mass ratio in the final merger.
A hierarchical process could also generate a merger with a high spin: The parent black holes, in their chaotic merging, would spin up the resulting black hole, which would then carry this spin into its own ultimate collision.
“You do the math, and it turns out the leftover black hole would have a spin which is very close to the total spin of this merger,” Vitale explains.
No escape
If GW190412 indeed formed through hierarchical merging, Vitale says the event could also shed light on the environment in which it formed. The team found that if the larger of the two black holes formed from a previous collision, that collision likely generated a huge amount of energy that not only spun out a new black hole, but kicked it across some distance.
“If it’s kicked too hard, it would just leave the cluster and go into the empty interstellar medium, and not be able to merge again,” Vitale says.
If the object was able to merge again (in this case, to produce GW190412), it would mean the kick that it received was not enough to escape the stellar cluster in which it formed. If GW190412 indeed is a product of hierarchical merging, the team calculated that it would have occurred in an environment with an escape velocity higher than 150 kilometers per second. For perspective, the escape velocity of most globular clusters is about 50 kilometers per second.
This means that whatever environment GW190412 arose from had an immense gravitational pull, and the team believes that such an environment could have been either the disk of gas around a supermassive black hole, or a “nuclear cluster” — an incredibly dense region of the universe, packed with tens of millions of stars.
“This merger must have come from an unusual place,” Vitale says. “As LIGO and Virgo continue to make new detections, we can use these discoveries to learn new things about the universe.”
This research was funded, in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation and MIT’s Solomon Buchsbaum Research Fund.
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via Gabe's Musing's
Group of Powerful Black Business Leaders Endorse Biden, Harris
As the contentious race for the White House enters its most critical phase, a political action group composed of high-powered black executives and business leaders endorsed today former Vice President Joe Biden and his running mate, US Senator Kamala Harris for president and vice president, respectively. Making the first presidential endorsement since its inception two years ago, the nonpartisan Black Economic Alliance PAC will place its full support behind the Democratic ticket to defeat President Trump to ensure “strong leadership at this pivotal turning point in our nation’s history.”
BEA Executive Director David Clunie states in a release: “We have no doubt that Vice President Joe Biden has what it takes to heal our country and create a path toward a more inclusive and just America. He is the proven, dependable leader we need in the White House to put the nation on a new path toward equity and unity during these tumultuous and uncertain times.”
He adds that the Democratic presidential contender is aware of the need to “fundamentally change existing policies that have enabled the structural inequities due to racism to persist for decades. To achieve economic and social mobility, Joe Biden understands that we need to guarantee a living wage, close the Black-White wealth gap, invest in Black-owned small businesses, and expand access to capital.”
Congressman Cedric Richmond (D-LA), co-chair of Biden’s presidential campaign, told BLACK ENTERPRISE that the organization’s backing represents “a big endorsement.”
“We don’t ever want the impression or the thought to go out that African American issues are just police reform and criminal justice reform,” Richmond maintains. “Economic empowerment is a big deal and that covers a whole range of things from wealth creation, home ownership, entrepreneurship, all of those things. And the Black Economic Alliance digs into that tremendously. That’s their wheelhouse.”
The organization’s focus is driving economic progress for African Americans in three core areas – “work, wages, and wealth.” – through public policy, advocacy, and political engagement. Formed during the 2018 midterms, BEA has poured millions into campaigns and endorsed candidates in highly competitive races in which Black voter turnout will make the difference in outcomes.
To achieve its objectives, BEA has assembled a collection of powerhouses like board co-chairs Charles Phillips, CEO of tech colossus Infor, and N. Anthony Coles, chairman and CEO of biotech firm Cerevel Therapeutics as well as advisory board members Dick Parsons, former chairman of Citigroup; Carla Harris, vice chairman, Global Wealth Management at Morgan Stanley: and Susan Rice, former US Ambassador to the United Nations who had been considered for Biden’s running mate.
BEA most certainly will be critical in fundraising – reportedly, the Biden is expected to surpass a record-breaking $300 million for August – and black voter mobilization efforts given its ties to key civil rights organizations like the NAACP and National Urban League as well as other grassroots organizations.
Asserts Richmond: “Their leadership is phenomenal, and it’s been an ongoing relationship. So it’s not just an endorsement because we’ve been talking to them a lot to help craft policy, In fact, members of the group have “had a seat at the table” and have been aligned with the campaign’s “Lift Every Voice” Plan for Black America.
Clunie states that BEA is confident that a Biden Administration will reflect “the diversity of the United States, and he’s already made a strong first step in that direction” with the selection of Harris as his VP pick. Moreover, the organization will urge Biden, if elected, to appoint African Americans to top posts at key economic agencies, including the Treasury Department and Council of Economic Advisors to further push for an expansive economic agenda for Black Americans.
from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/32LW9gA
via Gabe's Musing's
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Family Business Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix
A year ago, the Hazan took off their butchers’ aprons to start a weed business. Since, everything has changed: more money, more pastraweed, but above all, more problems! Good thing Joseph always has a plan for every situation… Family Business S2 – September 11 on Netflix SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/29qBUt7 About Netflix: Netflix is the world's leading streaming entertainment service with 193 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on any internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments. Family Business Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix https://youtube.com/Netflix Forced to choose between growing weed and raising his kids, Joe tries to convince his family to quit the business, setting off a wild chain of events.
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A year ago, the Hazan took off their butchers’ aprons to start a weed business. Since, everything has changed: more money, more pastraweed, but above all, more problems! Good thing Joseph always has a plan for every situation… Family Business S2 – September 11 on Netflix SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/29qBUt7 About Netflix: Netflix is the world's leading streaming entertainment service with 193 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, documentaries and feature films across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can watch as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, on any internet-connected screen. Members can play, pause and resume watching, all without commercials or commitments. Family Business Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix https://youtube.com/Netflix Forced to choose between growing weed and raising his kids, Joe tries to convince his family to quit the business, setting off a wild chain of events.
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