The Event Horizon Telescope

(Discover Blogs::The Crux) – Erika K. Carlson:

A black hole isn’t an easy thing to photograph. The famously inscrutable objects are so dense that even light can’t escape their vicinity. By definition, they are invisible. So when the Event Horizon Telescope team released the first image of a black hole, but what they really released is an image of the black hole’s event horizon — the minimum distance from the black hole’s center where gravity is still weak enough for light to escape.

And how they imaged the supermassive black hole in galaxy M87 it is nearly as impressive as the image itself. EHT scientists convinced researchers around the world to point their radio telescopes at a select group of black holes, then combined the observations to create one giant array the size of our planet. …

crux 2019/04/10 event-horizon-telescope

Non-Religious Take the Lead

(Patheos::Daylight Atheism) – Adam Lee:

For years, I’ve been charting the slow decline of religion in America and the rise of nonbelief. It’s a trend that has no precedent in history, and it’s one of the most hopeful signs pointing toward a more rational, more peaceful and more tolerant future for humanity.

Now there’s a new data point to report, and it’s a big one. According to the latest U.S. data, the nonreligious have surged into the lead. …

daylightatheism 2019/04 number-one