Star’s extreme proximity to Sagittarius A* means it could open new window onto black hole’s fundamental properties Astronomers have detected the fastest known star in the Milky Way, hurtling around the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy. The star, called S301, travels at about 25,000km (15,500 miles) per second, 100,000 times faster than a commercial plane. It is also the closest known star to the Milky Way’s central black hole, Sagittarius A*, approaching it around the distance of Saturn to the Sun. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/NGtUWuq via IFTTT
National Gallery, London
The 19th-century artist worked at a time when the Americas were a wonderland of discovery – but his unromantic, objective view of ancient rocky formations is sadly quite boring
José María Velasco’s 1894 painting Rocks is the size and format of a grand portrait but, instead of a socialite in taffeta or tails, it portrays a huge reddish-brown rock formation. It isn’t even a very special outcrop, rather the kind of shapeless mass you might encounter on any mountain walk. That’s the point.
Velasco is a scientific artist who worked at a time when the Americas were a wonderland of discovery. He identified a new species of salamander that lives in a lake near Mexico City, only one of the many finds, living and fossilised, uncovered in his era across the New World. In 1902, the first Tyrannosaurus rex fossil was excavated in Montana; in 1909, very early life forms were found preserved in Canada’s Burgess Shale. Most important of all, back in the 1830s, Charles Darwin found the first evidence for evolution in the rainforests and rocks of Brazil and Peru.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/rQ3bKVL
via IFTTT
Comments
Post a Comment