@franco_vazza@mastodon.social
@franco_vazza@mastodon.social avatar

franco_vazza

@franco_vazza@mastodon.social

#SimulatedUniverses #AstroPhysicsFactlet
Astrophysicist at Bologna University and https://respublicae.eu/@ERC_Research grantee.
I study the cosmic web, extragalactic magnetism and clusters of galaxies with colorful simulations.

https://cosmosimfrazza.eu
#astrodon #astronomy

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johncarlosbaez, (edited ) to random
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz avatar

If you could watch an individual water molecule, about once in 10 hours you'd see it do this!

As it bounces around, every so often it hits another water molecule hard enough enough for one to steal a hydrogen nucleus - that is, a proton - from the other!

The water molecule with the missing proton is called a hydroxide ion, OH⁻. The one with an extra proton is called a hydronium ion, H₃O⁺.

This process is called the 'autoionization' of water. Thanks to this, roughly one in ten million molecules in a glass of water are actually OH⁻ or H₃O⁺, not the H₂O you expect.

And this explains why protons can move through water much more easily than larger ions can. Let's watch how it works.

(1/n)

johncarlosbaez,
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz avatar

How does electrical current move through water? Here's a little movie of it, made by Mark Petersen. A positively charged proton gets passed from one molecule to another!

This is called the 'Grotthuss mechanism' because Theodor Grotthuss proposed this theory in his paper “Theory of decomposition of liquids by electrical currents” back in 1806. It was quite revolutionary at the time, since ions were not well understood.

Something like this theory is true. But in fact all the pictures I've shown so far are oversimplified! A hydronium ion is too powerfully positive to remain a lone H₃O⁺. It usually attracts a bunch of other water molecules and creates a larger structure!

(2/n)

A chain of water molecules passing an extra proton along. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Proton_Zundel.gif This work has been released into the public domain by its author, Matt K. Petersen a.k.a. w:User:Pigwiggle. This applies worldwide.

vicgrinberg, to Bulgaria
@vicgrinberg@mastodon.social avatar

Get into the car in the morning and drive through France into Belgium on the way to the Netherlands. And the only sign of change of country is a sign along the road that I almost missed. Nobody checked our (German) IDs and we did not need a passport.

Living in the #EU, we tend to take it for granted that we can easily cross borders. But it's an wonder, an achievement, something worth fighting for.

#Europa #Europe

mntmn, to random
@mntmn@mastodon.social avatar

if you can, please vote in the EU elections today—let's stop fascism in europe.

franco_vazza, (edited ) to Julia
@franco_vazza@mastodon.social avatar

How a rich cluster of galaxies is born in an Enzo simulation by former PhD Stud. Matteo Angelinelli, rendered in #Julia
#SimulatedUniverses #astronomy #astrodon

mkwadee, to edge
@mkwadee@mastodon.org.uk avatar

: on
of the Day

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240606.html

coreyspowell, to space
@coreyspowell@mastodon.social avatar

The center of our galaxy is streaked with puzzling filaments of radio emission, some of them hundreds of light years long.

Now we have a clue to how they work. At least one of them seems to be energized by a pulsar -- a tiny, rapidly spinning stellar corpse.

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/millisecond-pulsar-lurking-galactic-centre

mattkenworthy, to Astro
@mattkenworthy@mastodon.social avatar

Bonse+ present a new high contrast imaging algorithm “4S - Signal-Safe Speckle Subtraction” demonstrated with the pre-recovery of the exoplanet AF Lep b from 2011 NaCo data. The software webpage has an interactive figure where you can play with and see the improvement over PCA. Nice! #astrodon 🔭🪐 https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.01809

badastro, to random
@badastro@mastodon.social avatar

JWST has very likely seen the most distant galaxy ever found, and I'm still kinda boggling about it. It's too big, too massive, and too bright to exist according to our current understanding of how the Universe works.

We need a better understanding!

https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/jwst-bags-distant-galaxy-ever-seen-hoo-boy-mystery

VergaraLautaro, to random

HISTORY OF PHYSICS

The spin

1/

fraser, to random
@fraser@m.universetoday.com avatar

The first stars in the Universe formed from the primordial hydrogen and helium left over from the Big Bang. They were extremely massive and lived short lives, detonating as supernovae. Unfortunately, they were shrouded in vast gas clouds, hidden from our current telescopes. Researchers have developed a new strategy to search for these first stars, looking for when they strayed too close to black holes and were torn apart by the extreme tidal forces.

https://www.hku.hk/press/press-releases/detail/27298.html

CosmicRami, to Astro
@CosmicRami@aus.social avatar

#JWST is often cited for its amazing work with galaxies, BUT LOOK AT IT DISSECTING UP THE CRAB NEBULA AND SHOWING US STAR GUTS FROM A 1000-YEAR OLD STELLAR DETONATION.

Wow! Look at the pulsar!

So epic that we can see this detail, the different structures, elements, velocities, energies, etc. from an event that Chinese and Japanese astronomers witnessed and documented 1000 years back.

We're connected through time with this event to them!

https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.00172

#CrabPulsar #Pulsar #Supernova #Astrophysics #Astrodon

four tile image of the central region of the Crab Nebula in black and white, showing the wispy rings that are in the nebula near the pulsar. The pulsar and other features are annotated.
a blue cloud of gas, and embedded in it is a hot pink structure of twisted and looping filaments. This is the crab nebula and the blue represents synchrotron radiation and pink represents dust. Several arrows are annotated to show the gaps in the edges of the structure.
six tile image showing the grab nebula in six different filters from the JWST. The images progress from a cloudy structure to a cloudy structure with the filaments showing internally.

franco_vazza, to Astro
@franco_vazza@mastodon.social avatar

#SimulatedUniverses :
cosmic rays injected by different processes in my simulation - zoom into a void surrounded by filaments.
ENZO simulations on LEONARDO cluster at CINECA.
#astrodon #astronomy

video/mp4

ylegall, to random
@ylegall@genart.social avatar

three body system

video/mp4

cplberry, to Astro
@cplberry@mastodon.online avatar

Late night candidate

If real, the source is probably a binary black hole

False alarm rate 1 in 530 yr
GraceDB https://gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/S240601co/
GCN https://gcn.nasa.gov/circulars/36594
Rating 🍧🦭🪢

Initial three-dimensional volume localization. Distance around 1.4 Gpc

CosmicRami, to queer
@CosmicRami@aus.social avatar

June is #PRIDE month, where it's fun to convince homophobes and transphobes that light is actually gay and every time they open their eyes, they now are also "a gay".

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Also, let them know that Jupiter is proudly Trans and won't be taking any questions.

📸 Jupiter pic: NASA/ESA/HUBBLE/ @spacegeck

clours of the spectrum on a wall with the wavelength of light in nanometers indicated around the transition of each colour
a bright rainbow arching over an arch bridge - the Sydney Harbour Bridge - off in the distance across the harbour
A false colour image of Jupiter that shows a mix of purple, blues and white with different clouds and band structures.

franco_vazza, to art
@franco_vazza@mastodon.social avatar

In other news, I went full "Stendhal syndrome" in front of the stained glasses within the Cathedral of Lausanne, which are just breath taking.

https://www.cathedrale-lausanne.ch/fileadmin/groups/15/Cathedrale_2019/Rose/ROSE_CATHEDRALE_LAUSANNE_DEPLIANT_ANGLAIS.pdf
The pics do not give the real impression, which is 😱

image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg

CosmicRami, to Astro
@CosmicRami@aus.social avatar

I'm so excited about this find!

Aussie astronomers have used Murriyang (Parkes radio telescope) to confirm the closest millisecond pulsar to the Galactic Centre!

Got to chat with CSIRO astronomer Marcus Lower (Lead Author of the paper) about this exciting new science.

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/millisecond-pulsar-lurking-galactic-centre

📸 Heywood et al. 2022 / me

The Parkes radio telescope tilted on its side and slightly upwards. In the foreground are gardens and three poles with three flags upon them.

franco_vazza, to Astro
@franco_vazza@mastodon.social avatar

As expected, there really was tense discussion yesterday.

Like, someone shouted at me during coffee break, with a lot of "f**k" involved and people around like 😱 .

After, he apologised and we decided we can still be friends outside of astronomy.👍

Also played table tennis vs the one who gave a talk explicitly to dismantle my conclusions of the day before.
Scientists are like 🤷‍♂️

I'd put all this into the basket of the good human interactions I had in life!

CosmicRami, to astrophotography
@CosmicRami@aus.social avatar

Got another 1.5 hours of light last night from nearby(ish) galaxy NGC 3621 which features the recent supernova #SN2024ggi

Have now been grabbing light from this event over a few months and can see its colour/flux temporal evolution.

Caught it with VIVID’s extreme light pollution too! (VIVID is a very popular festival of light here in Sydney in which light pollution increases by several orders of magnitude!)

#Astrophotography #Astrodon #Supernova #NGC3621

Five vertical narrow tiles, each showing a zoomed in section of an astrophotograph of a spiral galaxy’s edge. There is an arrow annotated to one of the bright stars in the galaxy which is the supernova on each of these images.

lana, to random
@lana@mstdn.science avatar

Overleaf, primarily used to write scientific papers, encouraging its users to use AI text. What could go wrong! I am even less open to reviewing papers now. Waiting for Evilsevier to release its "AI for peer reviewers" tool so that we can live in the most boring world ever for a few years. Just until the next generation, with better BS detectors than us, start doing real science again

CosmicRami, to Astro
@CosmicRami@aus.social avatar

If you haven't noticed, radio astronomers worldwide are getting very shouty at radio frequency interference (RFI - akin to light pollution) increasing.

We create these multi-billion, grand-scale projects in specifically legislated radio quiet zones away from human populations to ensure we have the best capabilities to detect the faintest signals from the furthers reaches of the cosmos.

Then along comes the RFI from satellite constellations.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-27/square-kilometre-array-wa-to-face-satellite-noise-interference/103830954

nixCraft, to random
@nixCraft@mastodon.social avatar

Google Ad from 1999. https://www.instagram.com/blackcactusx/p/C4llg93IaGb/

gmarcosanti,
@gmarcosanti@mastodon.uno avatar

@nixCraft
1994: you have to be an hacker to find stuff on the Internet
2004: every information on the Internet is there, easily findable with few clicks
2024: you have to be an hacker to find stuff on the Internet

j_bertolotti, to random
@j_bertolotti@mathstodon.xyz avatar

#PhysicsFactlet
The human eyes have "only" 3 different colour receptors, so multiple spectra can be perceived as the same colour.
(And this without considering all the ways the signal is processed before you actually "see" it.)
#Optics #Colour #Color #Vision

On the left, the absorption spectra of the 3 human colour receptors, with a varying spectrum (shown as a black line) on top. On the right a disk coloured with the RGB equivalent of that spectrum.

albertcardona, to Neuroscience Catalan
@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz avatar

“A Connectome of the Male Drosophila Ventral Nerve Cord”, by Takemura et al. 2024

https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/97769

catherineryanhyde, to random
@catherineryanhyde@astrodon.social avatar

Another crack at M99 last night. But before I could gather even two hours of images, the fog rolled back in.

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