On this day, 25 September 1968, the Seattle city council brought in a gun-control law at the behest of Republican mayor, James Braman to prevent self-defence patrols by the Black Panthers. Authorities around the US were panicked by the sight of African-Americans defending themselves from violence by white racists and police. In particular they were alarmed in Seattle when armed Panthers appeared at Rainier Beach high school to defend Black students who had been attacked and threatened by whites. The city passed an emergency measure to prohibit the display of a “dangerous weapon” to “intimidate others”. It was just one of many laws introduced around this time, often by Republicans, and often with the support of the National Rifle Association, to disarm Black people.
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Five Reasons You Wouldn’t Want to Live Near a Black Hole
Black holes are mystifying yet terrifying cosmic phenomena. Unfortunately, people have a lot of ideas about them that are more science fiction than science. Black holes are not cosmic vacuum cleaners, sucking up anything and everything nearby. But there are a few ways Hollywood has vastly underestimated how absolutely horrid black holes really are.
Black holes are superdense objects with a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape them. Scientists have overwhelming evidence for two types of black holes, stellar and supermassive, and see hints of an in-between size that’s more elusive. A black hole’s type depends on its mass (a stellar black hole is five to 30 times the mass of the Sun, while a supermassive black hole is 100,000 to billions of times the mass of the Sun), and can determine where we’re most likely to find them and how they formed.
Let’s focus on supermassive black holes for now, shall we? Supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most large galaxies. Some examples are Sagittarius A* (that’s pronounced “A-star”) at the center of our Milky Way and the black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87, which became famous earlier this year when the Event Horizon Telescope released an image of it. As the name suggests, these black holes are — well — supermassive. Why are they so enormous? Scientists suspect it has something to do with their locations in the centers of galaxies. With so many stars and lots of gas there, they can grow large rapidly (astronomically speaking).
You may have seen a portrayal of planets around supermassive black holes in the movies. But what would the conditions on those worlds actually look like? What kinds of problems might you face?
1. 100% chance for cosmic winds
“Space weather” describes the changing conditions in space caused by stellar activity. Solar eruptions produce intense radiation and clouds of charged particles that sweep through our planetary system and can affect technology we rely on, damaging satellites and even causing electrical blackouts. Thankfully, Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field protect us from most of the storms produced by the Sun.
Now, space weather near a black hole would be interesting if the black hole is consuming matter. It could be millions — perhaps even billions — of times stronger than the Sun’s, depending on how close the planet is. Even though black holes don’t emit light themselves, their surroundings can be very bright and hot. Accretion disks — swirling clouds of matter falling toward black holes — emit huge amounts of radiation and particles and form incredible magnetic fields. In them, you’d also have to worry about debris traveling at nearly the speed of light, slamming into your planet. It’d be hard to avoid getting hit by anything coming at you that fast!
2. Hello? Can you still hear us?
We launched the Parker Solar Probe to learn more about the Sun. If you lived on a world around a supermassive black hole, you’d probably want to study it too. But it would be a lot more challenging!
You’d have to launch satellites that could withstand the extreme space weather. And then there would be major communication issues — a time-delay in messages sent between the spacecraft and your planet.
On Earth we experience time gaps when talking to missions on Mars. It takes up to 22 minutes to hear back from them. Around a black hole, that effect would be much more extreme. Objects closer to the black hole would experience time differently, making things seem slower than they actually are. That means the delay in communications with a satellite launched toward a black hole would become longer and longer as it got closer and closer. By the time you hear back from your satellite, it might be gone!
3. Can someone turn off the lights?
Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies typically have a lot of nearby stars. In fact, if you were to live on a planet near the center of the Milky Way, there would be so many stars you could read at night without using electricity.
That sounds kind of cool, right? Maybe — unless your planet is actually orbiting the supermassive black hole. Being that close, the light from all those stars would be concentrated and amplified due to the extreme gravity around the black hole, making the light stronger and even causing scary beams of strong radiation. You would want to have a bucket of sunscreen ready to apply often — or simply never leave your home.
4. Did someone leave the oven on?
And not only would it be really bright, it would also be really toasty, thanks to radioactive heating! Those stars hanging around the black hole emit not just light but ghostly particles called neutrinos— speedy, tiny particles that weigh almost nothing and rarely interact with anything. While neutrinos coming from our Sun aren’t enough to harm us, the volume that would be coming from the cluster of stars near a black hole would be enough to radioactively heat up whatever they slam into.
The planet would absorb neutrinos, which would, in turn, warm up the core of the planet eventually making it unbearably hot. It would be like living in a nuclear reactor. At least you’d be warm and could toss your winter coats?
5. You are what you eat?
If your planet got too close to a black hole, you’d likely face a gruesome fate. The forces from the black hole’s gravity stretch matter, essentially turning it into a noodle. We call this spaghettification. (Beware the cosmic pasta-making machine?) Imagine yourself falling feet-first toward a black hole. Spaghettification happens because the gravity at your feet is sooooo much stronger than that at your head that you start to stretch out!
Maybe you wish you could simply drift around a black hole in a spacecraft and enjoy the view, or travel through one like science fiction depicts. Sadly, even if we had the means to get close to a black hole, it clearly wouldn’t be that simple or even very enjoyable.
Watch Dr. Jeremy Schnittman’s talk on the science behind the black hole from the movie Interstellarhere.
Victor Crowley’s Hatchet Halloween Tales will be released on October 9 via American Mythology. The 32-page one-shot comic book features three stories set in the Hatchet universe during Halloween.
“Following” is written by Jason Pell, “In the Company of Freaks” is written by SA Check, and “Gourd to Death” is written by James Kuhoric. It features art by Cyrus Mesarcia, Puis Calzada, and Richard Bonk.
There are five cover variants: the main cover by Roy Allen Martinez, a Shining parody by Richard Bonk, a cover by Cyrus Mesarcia, an American Mythology-exclusive cover by Puis Calzada (limited to 500), and an orange version of Martinez’s cover (limited to 350).
You can pick them up directly from American Mythology for $3.99-$9.99 each, or you can get them signed by Hatchet director Adam Green from ArieScope for $12-$16 each or $50 for the complete set.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., on Wednesday unveiled a package of anti-poverty proposals to give more people — including undocumented immigrants — access to federal benefits like Medicaid.
The bills — packaged as a bundle called “A Just Society” — would expand access to benefits by updating the federal poverty line to include expenses like child care and Internet access and be adjusted based on where someone lives. About 40 million Americans live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census.
“I think one of the things that that we can get done is build popular support in acknowledging how bad the problem already is. In doing so we can actually begin to fundamentally address those problems,” Ocasio-Cortez told NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “If we can acknowledge how many Americans are actually in poverty I think that we can start to address some of the more systemic issues in our economy.”
On this day, 28 July 1932, the US government sent in the army to attack World War I veterans and their families with tanks, fixed bayonets, teargas and sabres, killing three, when vets marched demanding wartime bonuses they were promised. The bonus payments were due to be paid in 1945 but when the great depression hit, leaving many veterans destitute, they decided to demand earlier payments. Up to 25,000 vets, black and white, formed a “Bonus Army” and set up camp in Washington DC. Major Patton, whose life had been saved by one of the protesters, advised his troops to stab protesters with bayonets, and kill a large number of veterans as “an object lesson”. General MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower were the other officers in charge of the operation which killed two veterans and an 11-week-old baby, partially blinded an 8-year-old boy and injured a thousand others.
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Yes! And this is not to dismiss or undermine Greta but many Indigenous youth have been clearly and passionately articulating these issues for many years.
We should just give the keys to the world to these young people.
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If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
