Scientific American
Letters to the editor from the January 2021 issue of
Scientific American
BIG OLD GALAXIES
Arianna S. Long s “Too Big for the Universe” describes ancient galaxy clusters that are surprisingly massive for their early age. Could this observation be related to how supermassive black holes in the centers of some galaxies have grown so big so quickly that their size is also difficult to explain?
K. CYRUS ROBINSON
Tampa, Fla.
While I was reading Long s article, I happened to be twirling a glass of iced tea and noticed that the bubbles on top had centered in a cluster that looked very much like the image of the Distant Red Core protocluster in the accompanying graphic. I wonder if there might be more of an influence from dark matter on the gases involved. What if the dark matter is also spinning while the gases are forming galaxy clusters?
“Planet Earth Report” provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalists about the extraordinary discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species.
Stephen Hawking –“Treating AI as Science Fiction Would Potentially Be Our Worst Mistake Ever”, reports The Daily Galaxy. “We should plan ahead,” warned physicist Stephen Hawking who died last March, 2018, and was buried next to Isaac Newton. “If a superior alien civilization sent us a text message saying, ‘We’ll arrive in a few decades,’ would we just reply, ‘OK, call us when you get here, we’ll leave the lights on’? Probably not, but this is more or less what has happened with AI.”
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