Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton

by Theodore Frimet

oh my!

Ok. I’ll take what I can get. It is a dangerous thing to shout out a Hypothesis. Especially when professional scientists are doing the math, and writing their journal entries. And then you find a match! Ok, maybe this is a Sheldon moment. Not to be outdone, by this beloved member of the Big Bang Theory, I read the ensuing article. I chased down a few of the citations from the dusty, dank corridors of the WWW. Coughing up the dust, from this proverbial library, I find Russian literature that was previously hidden from my sight.

In the August 6, 2019 essay, “Planetary Nebula”, I chastised myself for being unable to source citations. My bridge forming relativistic electron scaffold, streaming from an active black hole, was not to be found. I couldn’t make the stream culpable for forming the matrix upon which white dwarfs caste their nebulae upon.

Within the reach of this Amateur, we were hopelessly entrenched with binary stars in the formation of Planetary Nebula. I discussed how those systems had long discarded their gas. They had left their binary partner, a White Dwarf, naked and alone.

Thru an online lecture, I learned to appreciate complementary light spectrums, and how they indicated the presence of binary stars, in nebulae local parentis. I finally alluded in closing, to complementary light spectrums, and periodicity of the light curve. “Perhaps where there is no light, there is only a hole. Look closely and find periods, with no complementary light spectrum, sans the ever present White Dwarf.”

I can now be a bit braver, and no longer hide in prose. Black holes are x-ray emitters and can be detected with x-ray telescopes. When Black Holes are quiet, they do not emit x-rays, and are not detectable. However, they can be detected if gravitationally bound to the White Dwarf. The dwarfs periodicity can be measured – either by occultation light data, or by alteration in her orbital data.

Kevin T Smith, writes the report on “A noninteracting low-mass black hole – giant star binary system”, (Science 01 Nov 2019: Vol. 366, Issue 6465, pp. 637-640 DOI: 10.1126/science.aau4005), writes about a 2.6 solar mass object that emits no light, including x-rays. Combining radial velocity and photometrics demonstrates that the massive star is in a binary system, paired with a black hole.

What led me to chuckle, were two references that I had long sought out. They were hiding in the Harvard repositories. This is the quote (Smith, et al) that brought me to their doorstep:

“Quiescent noninteracting black hole stellar binaries have not been found in radial velocity searches, although the existence of such systems has been discussed for decades (10, 11).”

(10) O. K. Guseinov, Y. B. Zel’dovich, Collapsed stars in binary systems. Sov. Astron. 10, 251 (1966). Google Scholar

(11) V. L. Trimble, K. S. Thorne, Spectroscopic binaries and collapsed stars. Astrophys. J. 156, 1013 (1969). doi:10.1086/150032 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

I gingerly keyed into the citation, numbered 10. The original article was submitted October 18, 1965. The Journal hailed from Soviet Astronomy, Vol. 10, p251. It discusses detection of collapsed stars, which are members of spectroscopic binaries.

I hold my breath, as I click on citation, numbered 11. In the abstract, I find, “the absence of a secondary spectrum in these systems, could, in principle, result from the secondary star’s being either a collapsed star or a massive neutron star.”

Although Einstein predicted black holes in 1916, the term “black hole” wasn’t coined until John Wheeler did so in 1967. So there are two caveats, here. In the citation, there is no mention of a black hole, only “collapsed stars”. And secondarily, the author appears uncomfortable with the lack of x-ray emissions. Reading further, they discard unseen companions that are less than the Chandrasekhar limit, and declare the unseen companion as a white dwarf. They back-reference to Zel’dovich & Guseinov, where discovery of x-rays or gamma-rays, “would constitute evidence for the presence of a collapsed star or neutron-star secondary.”

I remain comfortable in my wheel-house this morning. I add to the mix, from August’s essay, that nebular gas, structured upon relativistic outflow of electrons, and in many cases, no longer appearing present among the many nascent white dwarfs, have had their gaseous orbs and out-layers, gobbled up, long ago, by their unseen partner, a black hole. No Watson. No Holmes. Just sheer dumb luck.

by Theodore R. Frimet

How to measure a Gravitational Lens

The daily commute to backfill, in Norristown, sometimes has me waiting in the off-ramp. Car is idle, and I spy a bird on the left shoulder. She sits atop a tree. Looks like a bad version of a Blue Spruce. Not the bird, the tree. I wonder at her, as she lofts from the tree, and off into the brush, nearer to my gas guzzling, carbon spewing, iron chariot. Ok, not so much a guzzler. Sure, there is a carbon footprint – yet my car is mostly light steel, aluminum and plastic. The bird flies away. Ironic.

You’ve read the preamble, and you are confused. So am I. How did this experience ever spew intelligence onto the light bending affects of gravitational lensing? I dunno. No clue.

Here is what did follow, as I stepped onto the accelerator;

[which by now you should all know that this isn’t your fathers gas pedal – it is a link to actuate, via micro-controller, your mass flow air sensors, and aggregate accoutrements.]

was a brief time foray into a meager graphic analysis of how I could measure density differences of a gravitational lens.

Here it is briefly. It is brief because I choose not to augment my mind-scape with mathematics. I leave that to you, all. Calculus, anyone? Ok. My bad. It is simply because I can’t possibly drink another cup of coffee, without offending someone, or something. Sigh. I could probably use a dose of polynomial mathematics, where each band of the Cross is represented by a separate variable and coefficient – and the answer is the total mass of the lens. “What?” – Lil John.

Borrow, beg or steal three Hubble images. They need to be representative of a gravitational lensing effect. No time? No worries. I’ve done this for you in a past essay. We’ll repost the three images. Here is the link: Ring Around The Rosies

Caveat Emptor. I dug these out on my own, and they aren’t the BEST images of gravitational lensing effects, ever. Whomsoever, they will do. ‘That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.’

The best ever would show an Einstein Cross. So, for now, use your imagination. Take the composite image, and put it into a graphics program. Or print it out, in full color, and put it onto the table before you. No matter. (Hey, maybe that’s a pun- ‘no matter’ – hehe).

Construct a Cartesian plane onto your image. You know? Four quadrants. Cool beans. Find a matching element, from one of the mirror image galaxies, that was smeared across the page. Measure it, coordinate – to – matching coordinate. You are going to see if there was any subtle movement, in any mirror image.

Or more easily enough, look at my composite. I have stacked three Grayscale images, and enabled them as RED, GREEN and BLUE, in a graphics program. They appear to you, in the above link, as ‘black and white’, separately, and color (RGB) when combined. Where-ever you find subtle color shifts, in different quadrants, please know that the grayscale values shifted, over time. Remember that each image used in the composite was taken at a different time. You would imagine that there would be shift in the image. However, I would expect that each mirror image would shift the same. It does not. Did it? You tell me. After all, it’s your Universe.

In an Einstein Cross, the images that swirl, up and down, left and right, have some variance in position. If you deconstruct the images, and their effect, perhaps by means of a reverse-Gaussian algorithm, you might come to one of two of my conclusions. Either space-time was severely constrained, or warped, differently in each of the quadrants. Or the massive galaxies that make up the galactic lens have an obvious geometry and structure that can be recreated by studying an Einstein Cross’.

Yes, the geometry and structure of the massive galaxies warp space-time, and create the lens. Yes, I think that you can at the very least, know which quadrant has a more “dense” allocation of gravity bending space-time matter. Above we hint at the structure, and function of what is behind the eye of this Cosmological Camera obscura.

If you have access to more advanced channels of Cosmology, may I recommend a cup of Quasars, detected in the background, and to meter the differences in their absorption spectrum? This notion, I must admit, was borrowed from the article, “Gas filaments of the cosmic web located around active galaxies in a protocluster”, Science, 4 October 2019, Col 366, Issue 6461, pp 97-100.

by Theodore R. Frimet

Ok. I am going to actually write about the Milgram Experiment (2). That was where volunteers gave shocks to people. The shocks were make-believe, and the persons receiving the shocks faked their pain and suffering. A high number of participants shocked the subjects, despite the apparent visual suffering. And to Milgram’s surprise, the increase shock level would have killed a participant; yet the volunteer continued to deliver the fatal dose. Some, as they left the center, never inquired as to the health or welfare of those they acted on. Milgram discovered a persons intent to follow authority, without question.

Without realizing it, somehow I have connected the dots between Nazi Germany, California’s early Eugenics program in denying the Deaf their reproductive rights (3), and people that write hurtful, and lasting social imprints on the World Wide Web. The first resulted in the deaths of millions, while the second was the progenitor of Shoah. I wait with baited breathe as to the outcome of the Third. Perhaps societal participants writing on the wall, with impunity, is not what it seems to be.

With minds not yet fully developed until the age of 21, the brain simply cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy. An adult watches a movie, and your brain transcends you from your chair, to the scene. A child reads a negative post, and is transfixed into a self-harming relationship. They have been baited with your breath. I regret to discuss the outcome of your make-believe Milgram shock.

When we write comments on the performances of others, in a service industry, we can be blunt. Not everyone has the talent of tongue, these days. Most write three or fewer sentences to ascribe their wonder, or blatant dissatisfaction. However, now, in this brief pause between the pauses, I am in dismay. I attribute this to both the public’s fractured memory and the proclivity of the few to practice harmful graffiti.

When you write negatively, be gentle not only with your target audience – be gentle with yourself. Because all the while; all that you experience – your sight, sound, taste, and thoughts, are all recreations in your mindset. Yes. It is an argument that you have with your own ethos. The model that you create is simply yourself. You walk blind in the Universe. Nothing is out there. It is all inside your head.

If you have read up-to-this point, perhaps now you are ready for a new truth. That the lists of ideological mis-steps that you believe in, do order themselves to cause harm to others. The social queues that appear to be unrelated are part of a fuzzy logic system. Simply because the interdependent players remain invisible to you, does not in any way blunt the edge of the knife. When one part of a system is stressed, it will affect the whole. Your practice of leaving behind a curt comment, is only you whetting the edge of a realm where you believe there is absence of malice.

However, I mis-speak. You have decided to not go on. You could continue. The experiment may have required that. It may have been absolutely necessary, and you would have had no other choice. So said, Milgram. You have only written once on the wall. Yet the difference between the Milgram experiment and your licentiousness, is that one act was fleeting; while all the while your participation in a social experiment continues on, day-after-day. Forgive me for being the one that reminds the few – that your practice here, is the undoing of teenagers, everywhere. For you have caste the mold where all learn how to write. Nestled in your brief grammatical structure are the implements of where young minds go to their demise.

Wherefore art thou, Astronomy? He said twice, “I was in a car accident”. I pretended not to hear. I wanted to make sure I delivered the Dob, and beat the rain. It was going to rain. It always clouds in, during an Astronomy event. Why would the conclusion of a sale be any different?

For the past few weeks, I had posted my offer for the great behemoth. Hundreds looked, dozens watched. Several had offered. Many were refused. Of course, all were kicked to the curb, until the last offer. It wasn’t low, and it wasn’t high. It wasn’t even middle of the row. The price was simply right. I accepted. This sale was pre-empted for local pick-up, no delivery. Upon payment, I contacted the buyer. They were busy that afternoon.

Time is a precious thing. Weather can make it more valuable. I needed to look between the clouds, and focus on the light that I could see. Later it would rain. Tomorrow it would certainly be wet. Now is the time. I said, “let me come out to you”. We agreed. An hour later I waited in a driveway, Dob in SUV. Movement. Transfer. New telescope in another home. Nestled under the tree, perhaps? Not really. It isn’t Christmas. Heck, it isn’t Chanukah or Kwanzaa, either.

I am now in the present. The Universe reaches out and taps me on the shoulder this rainy, Sunday morning. It does so with impunity and anonymity. Let’s You and I put away the lazy Susan, and spin a yarn on a crises. Synthetic opioids. Many have the same story. We are truly embedded. It is my time to read the writing on the wall. I am hopeful that I am not succoring to a Milgram experiment. I could list off what I knew of synthetic opioids. I ask you, “what do you know”?

Visit the CDC website and read more about Brenda, Cortney, Devin, Judy, Katie, Mike, Noah, and more. The song remains the same.

The CDC site triggers a memory. A dear friend had committed suicide. So they said. Her fentanyl patch had ruptured. Later we learned that these patches were defective, delivering a fatal dose. I parlayed the story, and suggested that they contact a lawyer. Perhaps there is a class action lawsuit to participate in? A lawyer would know. Always best to send a friend to a doctor who knows best. Or in this case a Juris Doctor.

I will not know the outcome of the story. Not ever. Few are the words that are written on the wall. There is no Milgram participant here to give a shock. My only hope is that all of you, will continue to keep to your ethics. As Amateur Astronomers, as you come out of your seclusion to interact with the public, all I ask is that you too, do not go gently into that dark night.

References

1. Milner – Please read about Brenda Milner’s 1952 research, last accessed on Sunday, October 27, 2019 at 10:43 AM EST:
   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2649674/
2. Milgram – Please read about Milgram’s experiment, last accessed (per tempus) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
3. “Chapter 84.” For Hearing People Only: Answers to Some of the Most Commonly Asked Questions about the Deaf Community, Its Culture, and the “Deaf Reality”, by Matthew S. Moore and Linda Levitan, Deaf Life Press, 2016, pp. 545–554.