Potential space travel breakthrough

[Quijote]

I've always been fascinated by topics related to the cosmos, especially black holes and so on.
Well now here's some exciting news about the possibility of extended space travel just like in sci-fi films:

Hibernation artificially triggered in potential space travel breakthrough

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...l-breakthrough

[Chris]

Interesting. I'll wait for warp drive before taking a trip myself, but for some intrepid young explorers, maybe this will become a reality.

[Quijote]

Interesting. I'll wait for warp drive before taking a trip myself, but for some intrepid young explorers, maybe this will become a reality.

Hah! Are you a Trekkie?

A propos black holes, I just read this article this morning:

Supermassive black hole at heart of ancient galaxy ‘far larger than expected’

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...arger-expected

[Chris]

Hah! Are you a Trekkie?

A propos black holes, I just read this article this morning:

Supermassive black hole at heart of ancient galaxy ‘far larger than expected’

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...arger-expected

I do love the first few Star Trek shows and the movies with the original cast.

I love space, because I was a kid in the 80s when everyone wanted to be an astronaut and go to space, so there is a certain romanticism about it for me.

But I like the black hole stuff mainly because I was trying to learn differential geometry for my job, and at the time the only good resources for learning that subject were in the context of learning general relativity, so I just got a lot of the astrophysics stuff as a bonus.

[Quijote]

[...] But I like the black hole stuff mainly because I was trying to learn differential geometry for my job, and at the time the only good resources for learning that subject were in the context of learning general relativity [...]

Yeah, that black hole stuff, love it, can't say I've really grasped it, and you've lost me on the differential geometry!!

I need to "experience" these concepts and I'm going to give you an example: I was crap at Physics at school. One day we had a lesson about "flight" and the notions of "lift" and "drag", velocity, air pressure over and under the wing and a bunch of mathematical formulae expressing these principles. I didn't understand a thing.

Years later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of a car on a warm day and I extended my arm outside the window and shaped ("cupped") my hand in such a way that it caught the air flow and lifted my arm with no effort from me. I was flabbergasted and "grasped" the concept of flight!

Now I don't know how to "experientially" grasp the theory of space-time, relativity and all that and I doubt I never will, hah!

[Quijote]

A propos black holes and relativity, I really like the sci-fi film Interstellar, with its key but silent "character" Gargantua. The music for this film is, in my view, particularly effective.

As I teach ear-training, I am always on the look-out for material and the music for this film serves me very well when I teach the dominant 7th (V7).

Here's a prime example: low C on the organ underpinning higher B-flats (V7) in the strings in particular, resolving alternatively to the tonic minor and tonic major (Fm/FM). Have to say, it gives me goose-bumps!

See the extract at the 2'33" mark:

https://youtu.be/1t73rxE5T_I?t=156

[Quijote]

More fascinating black hole stuff !

Astronomers detect ‘cosmic bass note’ of gravitational waves

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...tational-waves

[Chris]

It's simultaneously fascinating to get this kind of data and frustrating that we can't just go out there and take a look to see what the source really is!

[Megan]

Well to me, this sounds like underwater noises.

https://cdn.theguardian.tv/mainwebsi...pull2_desk.mp4