It’s a newsletter I read because I enjoy tea. Also, she’s a part of Romancing the Vote, an organization that does work near and dear to my heart. I also own one of her books, with several more on my wishlist. Anyway, she’s got a little editorial in the letter this week, worthy of a read. There is no link to the letter, but the link to sign up for the letter is here.
“The Purpose of the Postmenopausal Female…
“I’ve been immersed in politics for, um, several weeks. Part of it is hope that finally, endlessly, we will be able to put some of the awfulness of the last years behind us and move forward into a world where we care about an equitable future.
“But also, confession time: JD Vance speaks directly to a very specific grudge that I’m holding.
“You want to know my grudge? I am endlessly grudging against what I call in my head the ‘legal abuser network’—that set of people who think that power is more important than, you know, treating folks with dignity. They’ve aligned themselves with abusers over and over and gaslit everyone who remains. JD Vance is On My List. In other circumstances, ‘stop being such assholes and treat people well!’ would be a moral statement and not a grudge. But they tried to induct me into the ‘no, look, you’ll get power, it’s cool, just pretend the abuse didn’t happen’ club, and so it’s absolutely a grudge and I want them all to fail.
“But I digress.
“I have been taking a very grim pleasure in watching people flip over rocks and seeing—yet again—that there is JD Vance, writhing away from the light like a many-legged centipede, leaving a trail behind him filled with things like his rancor for childless cat ladies and his belief that the Italians and the Irish were violent immigrants who maybe should have been banned from entering the country in the 1840s, and his statement that the only purpose that a postmenopausal female (it’s always females! Jerks like JD Vance can never use the word ‘women!’) serves is to do childcare.
“Last night, I was thinking about how Vice President Harris has reinvigorated a campaign that many (but not me) thought dead. I was watching Michelle Obama deliver a speech as probably one of the best orators in the nation, possibly beating out her husband who is a generational talent at giving speeches. And I thought about how many women in their generation—a scant decade older than me—faced barriers to entry from so many sides, and how much of who they have become was shaped by opposition.
“And it made me doubly proud to be the party of Not JD Vance, because as we can all plainly see, the purpose of a postmenopausal female is to kick ass.”
August 22, 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower announced a voluntary moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. A report outlining a system for monitoring and verifying compliance of a complete ban on such testing had been released just the day before. The Conference of Experts, as it was known, had been meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, to work out the details on detection of violations of such a treaty. The U.S. delegation was led by Nobel physics laureate Ernest Lawrence from the University of California (the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is named after him). Eisenhower predicated his moratorium on U.S.S.R. and U.K. agreement to the same limitations. All three countries agreed to the one-year halt in testing and to begin negotiations on a complete test ban at the end of October; all three performed last-minute (atmospheric) tests before the opening of talks.
August 22, 1964 Fannie Lou Hamer, leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), testified in front of the Credentials Committee at the Democratic National Convention. She was challenging the all-white delegation that the segregated regular Mississippi Democrats had sent to the presidential nominating convention. Singing at a boardwalk demonstration: Hamer (with microphone), Stokely Carmichael (in hat), Eleanor Holmes Norton, Ella Baker . Mississippi’s Democratic Party excluded African Americans from participation. The MFDP, on the other hand, sought to create a racially inclusive new party, signing up 60,000 members. The hearing was televised live and many heard Hamer’s impassioned plea for inclusion of all Democrats from her state.The hearing was televised live and many heard Hamer’s impassioned plea for inclusion of all Democrats from her state. In her testimony she spoke about black Mississippians not only being denied the right to register to vote, but being harassed, beaten, shot at and arrested for trying. Concerned about the political reaction to her statement, President Lyndon Johnson suddenly called an impromptu press conference, thereby interrupting television broadcast of the hearing. Hear her testimony Link to photo gallery
August 22, 1971 The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) arrested twenty in Camden, New Jersey, and five in Buffalo, New York, for conspiracy to steal and destroy draft records. Eventually known as the Camden 28, most were Roman Catholic activists, including four priests, and a Lutheran minister. “We are not here because of a crime committed in Camden but because of a war committed in Indochina….” Cookie Ridolfi The Camden 28
August 22, 1972 Rhodesia’s team was banned from competing in the Olympic Games with just four days to go before the opening ceremony in Munich, Germany. The National Olympic Committees of Africa had threatened to pull out of the games unless Rhodesia was barred from competing. Though the Rhodesian team included both whites and blacks, the government was an illegal one, controlled by whites though they represented just 5% of the country’s population. It had broken away from the British Commonwealth over demands from Commonwealth member nations that power be yielded to the majority. Read more
August 22, 1986 The Kerr-McGee Corporation agreed to pay the estate of the late Karen Silkwood $1.38 million ($2.68 in 2008), settling a 10-year-old nuclear contamination lawsuit. She had been active in the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union, specifically looking into radiation exposure of workers, and spills and leaks of plutonium. The story of Karen Silkwood
The Democrats are offering joy and hope while Trump offers doom and gloom Read on Substack
(I’m sharing in full because he doesn’t write this stuff on WordPress anymore, though he publishes the toons. This one is particularly funny and timely, so it goes here.)
Tuesday was better than Monday for me here in Chicago. I didn’t get food poisoned or crack my head open on Tuesday. Yay.
In fact, I felt really good. Despite feeling like I’d rather have a salad, I went out and got some Chicago deep dish (more on that later today), I took a nap, and then I headed to the convention earlier than I did Monday.
I took the L on the Orange line, transferred to the Green line, and got off at Ashland, walked down the street, and landed smack-dab in the group of RFK Jr supporters.
I wanted to see what they were up to because they were being pretty noisy but there wasn’t many of them. When I walked up, they all started laughing and started shouting something about the bear. What bear? I had momentarily forgotten about RFK Jr’s confessions of dumping a bear carcass in Central Park. I had also forgotten I was wearing a Taylor guitar shirt with a bear on it. And for some reason, one of the RFK Jr people, a crazy lady, had decided I was someone important enough to be lobbied.
RFK Jr fuckers defacing posters of Kamala Harris on Ashland
She started talking about Kennedy being censored and even without me arguing with her, proceeded to follow me down the street for the next three blocks. I kept asking her, “Don’t you need to go back to your friends?” Nope, she just kept following me talking shit about vaccines and herbicides.
And each time I asked if it was her group that defaced some Kamala Harris posters, she’d ignore the question and launch into more conspiracy shit.
Libertarians are just as bad. Start a conversation with a Libertarian and see what happens. I dare ya!
I eventually ditched the Kennedy lady by running away, hopping over some bushes, running through a backyard and a Taco Bell drive-thru, and then hiding behind a garbage can where I stayed until after she ran by screaming, “Mr, I haven’t told you about chemtrails yet.” No, what I actually did was say to her, “Well, I’m just going to try to keep walking away from you until you take the hint” and two blocks later, she finally gave up.
Then I found the Billy Goat Tavern.
The Billy Goat Tavern
I had heard of this place. I entered and the convention was on all the TVs. The volume was on too. I’m used to going into bars that have Fox News on (even all the ones in Milwuakee were playing Fox News). This one had CNN. Oh, thank god.
I sat down to some people working for the DNC but I didn’t bother them until, for some reason, one of them said all Geminis are Republicans and that’s when I bothered them, saying, “Excuse me, sir, but I’m a Gemini and I assure you I am NOT a Republican.” They were a bunch of obnoxious blazer wearers.
And then a large Black man with a red “Make Chicago Great Again” cap sat next to me and I thought, “Nah…he’s wearing it ironically.” I quickly learned he was NOT wearing it ironically. Republicans don’t do irony…duh! There’s just one Black Trumper in Chicago and who does he take a seat next to at a bar? Me, that’s who.
And this guy bitched. He complained about everything. First, he was angry about the phone charging station at the bar that wouldn’t work for him. It worked but I didn’t tell him how to work it. Fuck that guy. Then, he complained about Doug Emhoff’s speech, especially when he mentioned brisket. The Trumper said, “That don’t appeal to Black people, talking about brisket. We need ribs.” And then he said, “Black people don’t relate…you know…,” and then he looked at me and said, “N-word,” except he didn’t say, “N-word.” He said the word.
I didn’t engage because I didn’t want a conversation with him. Trumpers are often like Libertarians and RFK Jr fuckers. They want to talk to you, they don’t want to stop talking to you, and they try to convert you. They’re worse than Hairy Krishners.
Put a dime into a Republican and the record won’t stop.
I finally broke my silence when he said, “I’m driving a bunch of Black senior citizens in a van on election day to vote for Trump,” and that’s when I said, “No, you’re not.” He started to speak again and I interrupted, “Just stop.” Amazingly, he walked away…but he returned later to yell at the charging station some more.
And then (What? Is there a magnet on me?), a couple of Democrats from New Mexico made a bee-line from the front door to me to ask if Democrats are supporting genocide. They told me they were not voting for Democrats this time because of their support for Israel. I told them, “Yeah, make Trump president and then see what happens to Palestine.” They never sat down. It’s like they only came into the bar to scream at me. Or maybe they just thought they didn’t want to stay at the Billy Goat if people like me were there. I tried to distract them with, “Have you met the Black MAGAt screaming at a charging station?”…but nooooo…they insisted on yelling at me before leaving. They were nice.
I feel it’s important to point out that the MAGAt was Black because that is weirder than a run-of-the-mill MAGAt. It’s like Blacks for the Klan. It doesn’t make any fucking sense.
I went back to watching the speeches and would occasionally converse with the people who said all Geminis are MAGAts, but I didn’t talk to them much. They were annoying and kinda stupid. Who needs that?
I sat in the bar from Emhoff to Obama. It was a great spot to meet and see people from the convention. I plan to return tonight and maybe get a burger this time. I hear good things.
On the train, I saw a couple with DNC shirts and I asked if they were enjoying the convention and the young lady said, “yeah, we’re going to move to another car.” What? She made me feel like the crazy Kennedy lady of the Black bar MAGAt. What did I do?
When I got off to transfer, I ran into them again and she said, “Hey, have a great night” and I responded with, “Yeah, whatever.”
I sure told her.
Creative note: My buddy and fellow cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz is also in Chicago for the convention, except he gets to go inside (fucker). We were talking this morning and he asked if I added a dateline to my cartoons from Milwaukee which reminded me that I had to do that for my Chicago cartoons. Thanks, Lalo. Proofreader Laura also brought it up a bit later.
Drawn in 30 seconds: go watch this on the page, they’re interesting. Also, if you subscribe, you get these in email.
(My great- Aunt and Uncle lived in St. Petersburg, and my sister and I went there to visit. I got to hold a lime, and a grapefruit, attached to trees in their backyard, which was a big deal to a little kid.) Good news for Florida!
By KATE PAYNE Updated 10:28 PM CDT, August 20, 2024
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — School board candidates in Florida backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis were defeated Tuesday in several counties, results that opponents of the Republican say are a rebuke to his conservative education agenda.
Incumbent school board members in one of Florida’s largest swing counties appear to have held off a challenge from candidates backed by DeSantis, according to preliminary results. Activists had hoped that three challengers endorsed by the local chapter of Moms for Liberty would win a conservative majority in Pinellas County, home to St. Petersburg on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
But unofficial results show current school board chair Laura Hine and incumbent member Eileen Long have held on to their seats, after arguing that a political shift on the board could create turmoil in the district and distract from the mission of student achievement.
In a third race for an open seat on the Pinellas board, candidates Stacy Geier and Katie Blaxberg appeared to be headed for a runoff, after no one in the three-way contest cleared 50% of the vote.
With 100% of precincts reporting, Hine, the board chair, carried 69% of the vote over DeSantis-backed challenger Danielle Marolf’s 30%, according to preliminary results. Incumbent member Long brought in 54% of the vote over the 45% netted by Erika Picard, who was also endorsed by the Republican governor.
“We have got to stay focused on that work at hand and not be subject to the social political winds. Education is vital. And it has to be stable,” Hine told The Associated Press ahead of Tuesday’s elections.
In the third race for the board, Stacy Geier garnered 37% of the vote compared to Katie Blaxberg’s 34%, with a third candidate Brad DeCorte netting 28%, according to the county’s preliminary results. Geier was endorsed by DeSantis and the local Chapter of Moms for Liberty, while Blaxberg has argued parental rights activists have gone too far, with some equating books with pornography and labeling teachers as “groomers”. She found herself on the opposing side of the local chapter of Moms for Liberty and was targeted by conservative activists online.
“The misinformation that has been spread by this group of people and the intent to … place mistrust in our teachers,” Blaxberg said, “people are tired of it.”
Much of the political debate in the races had hinged on “parental rights”, a movement which grew out of opposition to pandemic precautions in schools but now is animated by heated complaints over teachings about identity, race and history.
Long, one of the Pinellas incumbents, said she sees the results as an admonishment of the governor.
“People want sanity. People want common sense. And people believe we should educate everyone,” Long said. “The people have spoken.”
Incumbents in Hillsborough County hold off conservative challengers
some headlines and click open my local e-newspaper, and holy cow what is news here today:
Two Sumner County residents arrested, Fentanyl seized, three migrants discovered inside vehicle’s trunk
August 21, 2024 Cueball
Sumner Newscow report — According to a news website in Del Rio, Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border, two people with Sumner County ties have been arrested for human smuggling.
In a report for the Eagle Pass News Leader, Maverick County Sheriff’s Office deputies successfully intercepted a human smuggling attempt, rescuing three illegal immigrants who were found crammed into the trunk of a car. The incident unfolded on Highway 277 North, where deputies stopped a blue Honda Accord with Kansas plates for a traffic violation.
The driver was identified as 29-year-old Jordyn Swift and her passenger as 32-year-old Joshua Michael Asbury, both from Caldwell. Upon conducting a thorough investigation, deputies discovered a bag of fentanyl hidden in Swift’s undergarments.
Further inspection of the vehicle led to the shocking discovery of three individuals concealed in the car’s trunk. The migrants were promptly rescued, and Swift and Asbury were arrested on charges of human trafficking and possession of dangerous substances. Border Patrol agents arrived at the scene to take custody of the migrants and continue the investigation. This incident highlights the ongoing challenges law enforcement faces in combating human smuggling and the dangers posed by the trafficking of illicit drugs like fentanyl.
By Eric Bradner, CNN 3 minute read Updated 4:58 PM EDT, Tue August 20, 2024
Donald Trump said Tuesday he would “certainly” be open to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. playing a role in his administration if the independent candidate drops out of the 2024 race and endorses the former president.
“I like him, and I respect him,” Trump told CNN’s Kristen Holmes in an interview after a campaign stop in Michigan.
“He’s a brilliant guy. He’s a very smart guy. I’ve known him for a very long time,” the Republican presidential nominee said. “I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out, but if he is thinking about getting out, certainly I’d be open to it.”
Trump’s comments came after Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, said on a podcast posted Tuesday that the Kennedy campaign is considering dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump. She described the decision as intended to reduce “the risk” that Vice President Kamala Harris defeats Trump.
Trump said he would “love that endorsement, because I’ve always liked” Kennedy.
Asked if he would consider appointing Kennedy to a role in his administration if he wins in November, Trump said he “probably would.”
“I like him a lot. I respect him a lot,” Trump said. “I probably would, if something like that would happen. He’s a very different kind of a guy — a very smart guy. And, yeah, I would be honored by that endorsement, certainly.”
The former president also downplayed the potential for backlash from Republicans for appointing Kennedy, who has taken a number of progressive positions.
“I like smart people, and Republicans like me,” Trump said. (snip-More on the page, linked in the title of this post.)
The Inflation Reduction Act has sparked a manufacturing boom across the U.S., mobilizing tens of billions of dollars of investment, particularly in rural communities in need of economic development.
The future of those investments could hinge on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The prospect of a Republican victory has shaken the confidence of some investors who worry the IRA could be weakened or in a worst-case scenario repealed.
Actual manufacturing investment has totaled $89 billion, an increase of 305% compared to the two years prior to the IRA, according to MIT and Rhodium. Overall, the IRA has leveraged half a trillion dollars of investment across the manufacturing, energy and retail sectors, according to the data.
“It is having a transformative effect within the manufacturing sector,” said Trevor Houser, a partner with the Rhodium Group. “The amount of new manufacturing activity that we’re seeing right now is unprecedented in recent history, and is in large part due to new clean energy manufacturing facilities.”
Some 271 manufacturing projects for clean energy tech and electric vehicles have been announced since the IRA passed, which will create more than 100,000 jobs if they are all completed, according to the advocacy group E2, a partner of the National Resources Defense Council. The investments sparked by the IRA have been a boon for rural communities in particular, Houser said.
“Unlike investment in AI and tech and finance, which is clustered in big cities, clean energy investment really is concentrated in rural communities, and is one of the brightest sources of new investment in those areas,” Houser said.
The IRA has also accelerated the deployment of renewable energy, with $108 billion in invested in utility-scale solar and battery storage projects. Investments in solar and battery storage have surged 56% and 130%, respectively, over the past two years, according to the Rhodium data.
“The more mature technologies, so like wind and solar generation, electric vehicles, those have achieved escape velocity,” Houser said. “They will continue to grow no matter what. It’s a question of speed.”
Trump threats to IRA
But the “manufacturing renaissance” is still in its early stages and remains fragile, Houser said. Without the IRA, the resurgence of new factories would not have taken off, said Chris Seiple, vice chairman of Wood Mackenzie’s power and renewables group.
Former President Donald Trump has threatened to dismantle the law as he advocates for more oil, gas and coal production.
“Upon taking office, I will impose an immediate moratorium on all new spending grants and giveaways under the Joe Biden mammoth socialist bills like the so-called Inflation Reduction Act,” Trump told supporters at a May rally in Wisconsin.
“We’re going to terminate his green new scam,” he said. “And we’re going to end this war on American energy — we’re going to drill, baby, drill.”
Radio host tears up reading open letter to men by female co-host
All across the globe, men and women have different experiences from childhood through adulthood. We are socialized differently which causes us to walk through the world differently. Since much of the world is still patriarchal, women’s lived experiences are vastly different than men’s. These different experiences can make it feel nearly impossible to understand what it feels like to move through the world as the opposite gender.
“I wondered whether it’s time for you guys to stand up and speak up and speak loudly. And I think sometimes men don’t think about what it’s like to walk in the shoes of a woman. So I’m thinking if you read out the thoughts that I wrote down. I don’t know if it might mean more people will listen or if it might give a different perspective of what it feels like to be a woman in this country at the moment,” Carrie says to her co-host.
Tommy immediately obliges Carrie’s request and begins to read the letter. The co-host doesn’t make it too far into the letter before beginning to look visibly uncomfortable and before long he’s choking back tears.
“Not only do we have to sleep in fear of what possible man outside, or the man inside, or the taxi driver, the Uber driver, a former partner, a current partner, a man we’ve never met, we now have to be the ones to fix the issue too. No not all men are monsters but we live in fear of the ones who are. We change our behaviors for the bad men not the good ones because the risk is too high for us not to,” Tommy reads while attempting to hold back emotions.
The open letter is raw and full of struggles women face on a daily basis. Hearing it read by a man made some commenters feel appreciative of the way the two co-hosts used their platform to spread the message as well as being thankful that Tommy agree to read the letter.
“Thank you for using your platform to raise awareness of the severity of this issue,” someone writes.
“Extremely powerful.. I wish I had been more vocal… I wish I had left sooner, I wish I had him reported.… I wish a lot of things. I was scared, but I am alive.. and I will always protect and teach my daughters moving forward. Thank you for putting such a powerful message out there,” another person shares.
Turns out this moment was an amazing teaching moment for parents of boys, “my 14 year old son was in silence and almost in tears listening to your words. We had a fabulous conversation afterwards. Teaching our boys now, is such an important part.”
One woman is joining the chorus of asking the good men to help women advocate, “Carrie hit the nail on the head. I love the idea of having men we trust speaking for us to help us advocate even further. Us women worry every single day, multiple times during the day for our safety, without even realizing we’re doing it. Lock the car as soon as you get in it. Always making sure you’re not being followed. So so so many things we do for our safety that most men don’t even think about, ever. This video is so important.”
Kansas will pay $50,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by a former state Highway Patrol employee who claimed to have been fired for coming out as transgender
ByJOHN HANNA Associated Press August 15, 2024, 6:11 PM
TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas will pay $50,000 to settle a federal anti-discrimination lawsuit filed by a former state Highway Patrol employee who claimed to have been fired for coming out as transgender.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and eight leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature unanimously approved the settlement during a brief online video conference Thursday. The state attorney general’s office pursued the settlement in defending the Highway Patrol, but any agreement it reaches also must be approved by the governor and top lawmakers.
Kelly and the legislators didn’t publicly discuss the settlement, and the amount wasn’t disclosed until the state released their formal resolution approving the settlement nearly four hours after their meeting. Kelly’s office and the offices of Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins did not respond to emails seeking comment after the meeting.
The former employee’s attorney declined to discuss the settlement before state officials met Thursday and did not return a telephone message seeking comment afterward. The lawsuit did not specify the amount sought, but said it was seeking damages for lost wages, suffering, emotional pain and “loss of enjoyment of life.”
The ex-employee was a buildings and grounds manager in the patrol’s Topeka headquarters and sued after being fired in June 2022. The patrol said the ex-employee had been accused of sexual harassment and wasn’t cooperative enough with an internal investigation. The lawsuit alleged that reason was a pretext for terminating a transgender worker.
The settlement came four months after U.S. District Judge John Broomes rejected the state’s request to dismiss the lawsuit before a trial. Broomes ruled there are “genuine issues of material fact” for a jury to settle.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that a landmark 1964 federal civil rights law barring sex discrimination in employment also bars anti-LGBTQ+ bias.
Court documents said the former Highway Patrol employee, a Topeka resident sought to socially transition at work from male to female. The ex-employee’s last name was listed as Dawes, but court records used a male first name and male pronouns. It wasn’t clear Thursday what first name or pronouns Dawes uses now.
In a December 2023 court filing, Dawes’ attorney said top patrol leaders met “a couple of months” before Dawes’ firing to discuss Dawes being transgender and firing Dawes for that reason.
The patrol acknowledged the meeting occurred but said the leaders decided to get legal advice about the patrol’s “responsibilities in accommodating Dawes” in socially transitioning at work, according to a court filing by a state attorney in November 2023.
Court filings said the meeting wasn’t documented, something Dawes’ attorney called “a serious procedural irregularity.”
The patrol said in its court filings that Dawes’ firing was not related to Dawes being transgender.
It said another female employee had complained that in May 2022, Dawes had complimented her looks and told her “how nice it was to see a female really taking care of herself.” Dawes also sent her an email in June 2022 that began, “Just a note to tell you that I think you look absolutely amazing today!” The other employee took both as sexual advances, it said.
Dawes acknowledged the interactions, but Dawes’ attorney said Dawes hadn’t been disciplined for those comments before being fired — and if Dawes had been, the likely punishment would have only been a reprimand.
The patrol said it fired Dawes for refusing the first time an investigator sought to interview him about the other employee’s allegations. The patrol said Dawes claimed not to be prepared, while Dawes claimed to want to have an attorney present.
Dawes was interviewed three days later, but the patrol said refusing the first interview warranted Dawes’ firing because patrol policy requires “full cooperation” with an internal investigation.
“Dawes can point to no person who is not transgender who was treated more favorably than transgender persons,” the state said in its November 2023 filing.
(And of course you should listen to “Supermassive Black Hole” by Muse while enjoying this article. It’s the real only way. 😉)
August 21, 2024 Evrim Yazgin
Astrophysicists at Melbourne’s Monash University have generated the first simulation which accurately depicts what happens when a star ventures too close to a supermassive black hole.
The research, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, is a technical milestone in our attempts to understand these mysterious cosmic giants.
First author Daniel Price, a professor at Monash, tells Cosmos that there are about 100 events which have been observed over the past decade-and-a-half which astronomers believe fit the bill to be a star being destroyed by a supermassive black hole, also called a tidal disruption event (TDE).
Not X-ray vision
But these observations have thrown up some odd measurements which haven’t been explained until now.
“If you dump a bunch of material close to black hole and form an accretion disk around that black hole, there’s a prediction for where the material should land,” Price says. “The material at that location should be more than a million degrees in temperature. It should generate X-rays.
“So, if you have unobscured stuff feeding a black hole, you get X-ray emission. For example, the black hole sources in the galaxy, they’re all X-ray emitters.”
Stars falling into supermassive black holes, however, do not result in emission of X-rays. They emit light in the visible, or optical, spectrum.
Current theories can only speculate why such events lead to material being flung toward us at 20,000km per second – about one-fifteenth the speed of light.
An eating analogy – but not in the way you think
Price explains that the simulation illuminates why it is optical light, not X-rays, which we observe when our telescopes pick up stars falling into supermassive black holes.
“The analogy with me eating is that you don’t see my stomach. You’re not seeing the thing that’s generating the energy, you’re seeing it reprocessed through my skin,” Price says. “If you look at my light curve, you see that I’m a constant temperature of 38°C all day.
“My light curve is very much like a disruption event. The temperatures are pretty much constant. Luminosity changes a bit, but you infer that’s because the size of the objects changing, but the temperature evolution is very flat. So, it looks like exactly like me, just a lot warmer and a lot bigger.”
In fact, this size of the photosphere – the object which emits the optical rays – itself is surprising, says Price.
The photosphere in the simulation, which matches observations, is about 100 astronomical units (AU), where 1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun (roughly 150 million kilometres).
Price says the simulations confirm a theoretical explanation for these unexpected observations called the Eddington envelope.
“That’s the concept that you’re stuffing material down towards the black hole faster than it can process it,” Price says. “By process, I mean like the sun processes the energy from its core – it just kind of gently radiates it away. So the black hole can’t radiate away the stuff that you’re trying to feed it. And, so, it has to literally blow it away.”
This material “smothers” the black hole, absorbing the X-rays that the black hole emits and re-emitting it as optical light.
Price extends the eating analogy to an unpleasant place.
“Basically, it’s like stuffing your stomach. You’re going to vomit eventually. That’s pretty much what happens.”
The power of a simulation
“That’s the exciting thing in simulations. People have speculated for a long time and drawn illustrations and this kind of thing, but there’s no physics in that. That’s just what we call phenomenology. That’s how it must be to explain this phenomena. But we don’t know what produces that kind of envelope or layer, or reprocessing layer,” Price says.
The simulation, Price says, just requires the initial conditions – the star – the fluid mechanics governing the star, and the rules of general relativity.
“Then it’s just a technical challenge,” he says.
“In a lot of simulation work, you’re kind of guessing what might have happened,” he adds. “But in this case, we’re pretty sure what happens. It’s really nice to get that connection to the observations of transients from just chucking a star at a computer.”
Price explains that the simulation will set astrophysicists and astronomers up to be able to understand such phenomena much better as more observations are expected to be made soon.
“The first optical transient was only detected in 2010, but what’s coming is the Rubins observatory being built in Chile. That’s expected to boost the population of these things into the thousands.
“Having a good theoretical understanding of what the kind of phenomena is sets us up really well for that future flood of observations. It’s not just some theoretical speculation. There’s really something we can go after and understand by looking at it.”
Scottie's Playtime 