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Epic Campaign Confirms Relativity Near Supermassive Black Hole

posted by martyb on Friday July 27 2018, @01:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the E²=(mc²)²+(pc)² dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Caught in the iron grip of the galaxy's most powerful gravitational field, a star known as S2 passed within a scant 20 billion kilometres (12.4 billion miles) of the supermassive black hole lurking at the heart of the Milky Way this past May, streaking by at an astonishing 3 percent the speed of light, or more than 25 million kilometres per hour (15 million mph).

Numbers were in close agreement with predictions made using Einstein's theory of general relativity, revealing a phenomenon known as gravitational redshift in which light from S2 is stretched to longer wavelengths in the gravitational field of the black hole.

In other words, at that speed (0.03c), it could travel from the Earth to the Moon in... one minute. And, orbit the Earth in a mere... six seconds.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @03:55PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @03:55PM (#713716)

    "lol" is an acronym. "roffle" is an attempt to pronounce "rofl", which is another acronym.

    "Epic", on the other hand, is an actual word, entering the language somewhere between 1580 and 1590, from the latin "epicus" and greek "epikós". source [dictionary.com]

    In other words, hearing more people use the word "Epic" has absolutely zero correlation with the odds of hearing more people try to pronounce "lol" and "rofl" as if they were also words. Likewise for "being a nerd".

    That you link the two (three?), and in a denigrating manner, says a lot more about you and how you see the world than it does about anyone else.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @09:18PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 27 2018, @09:18PM (#713838)

    For someone who claims to know about language, your use of the word "denigrating" is offensive. In case you missed it, laws were passed against this sort of segregationist activity in the 1960s.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @04:42AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @04:42AM (#715074)

      You've been modded funny, and you were pretty funny.

      But just in case someone took you seriously:

      denigrate:
      verb (used with object), den·i·grat·ed, den·i·grat·ing.
      to speak damagingly of; criticize in a derogatory manner; sully; defame: to denigrate someone's character.
      to treat or represent as lacking in value or importance; belittle; disparage: to denigrate someone's contributions to a project.
      to make black; blacken: rain clouds denigrating the sky.

      In other words, if a word looks like it might possibly have the word nigger involved... it probably doesn't. And if you jump to that conclusion, you're an idiot.

      You didn't. You were being funny. But therealdonaldtrump might read that and believe you. Be ashamed.