Greata Thunbervg speaks truth to power

 

Greta Thunberg’s full speech at Glasgow COP26 rally

Glasgow 5 Nov 2021 – It’s not a secret COP26 is a failure. It should be obvious that we cannot solve a crisis with the same methods that got us into it in the first place. More and more people are starting to realise this, more and more people are starting to ask themselves what will it take for the people in power to weak up. But let’s be clear, they are already awake, they know exactly what they are doing, they know exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to maintain business as usual.

The leaders are doing nothing, they are actively creating loopholes and shaping frameworks to benefit themselves, and to continue poverty from this disruptive system, this is an active choice from the leaders to continue to let the exploitation of people and nature and the destruction of present and future living conditions to take place.

The COP has turned into a PR event with people giving beautiful speeches and announcements of fancy commitments and targets, while behind the curtains the governments of the global north countries are still refusing to take any drastic kind of action. It seems like their main goal is to continue to fight for the status quo. This COp26 has been named the most exclusionary ever, this is no longer the climate conference, this is now the global north greenwash festival, a two week long celebration of business as usual and bla bla bla.

The most affected people in the most affected areas still remain unheard and the voices of future generations are drowning in their greenwash, empty words and promises, but the facts they don’t lie and we know that our emperors are naked.

To stay below the target set in the Paris agreement, and minimising the risk of setting off the irreversible chain reaction beyond human control, we need immediate drastic annual emission cuts unlike anything the world has never seen and as we don’t have the technological solutions that alone would go anything even close to that, means we will have to fundamentally change our society and this is the uncomfortable result of our leaders repeated failure to address this crisis.

At the current emissions rates our remaining CO2 budget giving us the best chances to remain below 1.5 C will be gone within the end of this decade and the climate and ecological crisis, of course, doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but it is directly tighten to other crises and injustices that date back to colonialism and beyond; crises based on the idea that some people are worth more than others and therefore have the right to steal from others, to exploit others, and steal their land and resources; and it is very naive of us to think that we can solve this crisis without addressing the root causes of it. but this is not going to be spoken about inside the COP , its just too uncomfortable, it’s much easier for them to simply ignore their historical debt that the countries of the north have towards the most affected people and areas.

And the question now must to ask ourselves now is what we are fighting for: are we fighting to save ourselves and the living planet or we are fighting to maintain business as usual? Our leaders say we can have both, but the harsh truth is that this is not possible in practice, The people in power can continue to live in their bubble fuelled with their fantasies like eternal growth on a fine air planet and technological solutions that will suddenly appear seemingly out of nowhere and erase all of this crises, just like that…

All this one world is literally burning on fire and while people living on the frontlines are still bearing the brunt of the climate crisis, they can continue to ignore the consequences of their inaction, but history will judge them poorly and we will not accept it. We don’t need anymore distant, non binding pledges, we don’t need anymore empty promises, we don’t need anymore commitments of fool and loopholes, incomplete statistics that ignore historical emissions and climate justice. Yet that is all we’re getting, and I know that is not radical to say, but just look at their track record they had 26 Cops, they had decades of bla bla bla and where has that led us?

Over 50% of all our CO2 emissions have occurred since 1990 and about a third since 2005. All this, what the media is reporting is what the people in power say they are gonna do rather what they actually do. Time and time again the media fail to hold the people in power responsible for their action and inaction, as they continue to expand fossil fuel infrastructure, opening up new coal mines coal power plants, granting new oil licences and still refusing to do even the bare minimum like delivering on the long promised climate finances for loss and damages to the most vulnerable and less responsible countries. This is shameful.

Some people say we are being too radical, but the truth is that they are the ones who are radical. Fighting to save our life-support systems isn’t radical at all, believing that our civilisation as we know it can survive at 2.7 degrees with 3 degree hotter world on the other hand it is not only extremely radical, it’s pure madness. Out here we speak the truth, the people in power are obviously scared of the truth, yet no matter how hard they try, they cannot escape from it, they cannot ignore the scientific consensus and, above all, they cannot ignore us, the people, including their own children, they cannot ignore our scream as we reclaim our power. We are tired of their bla bla bla. Our leaders are not leading; this is what leadership looks like.

Canada has 'one eye shut' when it comes to climate policy

 https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-429-what-on-earth/clip/15873948-encore-canadas-climate-strategy-oil-gas-problem

As Canada strengthens its Paris Agreement targets, critics point to the elephant in the room — oil and gas expansion. We revisit an earlier episode and hear why Canada has 'one eye shut' when it comes to climate policy and what might be a first step toward a solution.

Aired: Oct. 24, 2021

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https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-oct-25-2021-1.6223730

As world leaders prepare to gather in Glasgow for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, leaked documents show some governments tried to water down a recent UN science panel report on global warming. Activists say that behind-the-scenes lobbying undermines those governments' public commitments to change, and it could hinder efforts in Glasgow. Matt Galloway talks to Simon Lewis, a professor in global change science at University College London; and Severn Cullis-Suzuki, the executive director of the David Suzuki Foundation.

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LIsten to Tim Gore interview:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/fighting-climate-change-wealthy-donors-1.6239230

 

Solving the climate crisis should not depend on the charity of billionaires. Governments need to set up proper taxation systems to make sure people like Bezos and companies like Amazon pay their fair share.

Amazon paid no federal income tax in 2018 even though it made more than $11 billion in profits. Bezos personally uses tax loopholes to pay himself through low interest loans against his Amazon stock. Debt isn't taxed, so Bezos lives largely tax free, even though he's one of the richest men in the history of the world.

World's wealthiest are top carbon emitters:

This "mensch" deserves a leadership role at a higher level!

 Long-time Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi is in the final days of his 11 years leading the city. He reflects on his time in office, political and pandemic division, and what it means to serve in a country like Canada.

Aired: Oct. 15, 2021

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-63-the-current/clip/15872302-calgary-mayor-naheed-nenshi-11-years-office-means

We are getting cooked!!

Occupy Wall Street-----ten years later

 

FOA: Occupy Ten Years 
Ten years ago this week, Adbusters put out a call for a peaceful occupation of Wall Street. Tonight, we revisit a conversation with the magazine's co-founder about the movement's staying power.

FOA: Occupy Ten Years

CH: The idea was simple. And -- for good measure -- it was alliterative: to "seize a square of singular symbolic significance." It came from Adbusters Magazine co-founder Kalle Lasn. In a blog post published ten years ago this week, he advocated that Americans take their cues from the occupation of Tahrir Square by Egyptian protesters -- and stage their own occupation of Wall Street. He called the district "the financial Gomorrah of America". And thousands of New Yorkers clearly saw it that way too -- turning up just a few months later with tents and camp stoves in the city's Zuccotti Park. That historic takeover of public space put the one percent on notice, and sparked a global movement. But by November, 2011, naysayers were already predicting its demise. Kalle Lasn spoke with Carol on "As It Happens" at the time.

SOUNDCLIP

CAROL OFF: Mr. Lasn, since the Occupy Wall Street movement started, people have speculated as to when it will shut down, expecting it to do so any time. Instead, of course, as you know, it has spread. Why do you think that is?

KALLE LASN: Well, I don't think it's about to... to shut down anytime soon. I have a feeling that it's... it's done something quite miraculous over the last five weeks or so, it has launched a national conversation in the United States. It's creeping across into Canada now. And I think we've got the whole world talking about it. We’ve captured the imagination of the whole world. And I think now that winter is approaching, I can see this first wild, messy, crazy occupation phase kind of slowly winding down and the second phase will begin. And I think that the interesting times are still ahead.

CO: What do you think is the second phase?

KL: Well, it's hard to say, you know, movements or revolutions, they have their own dynamic and... and they're full of surprises. But... but I believe that the young people today that the core impulse behind this movement is this feeling that so many young people around the world have, which is that the future does not compute, that their future lives are full of ecological and political and financial crisis, that they won't be able to pay off student loans and they will have to live in a very hot planet down the road. And... and politically, they'll have to put up with systems that are corrupted by money. And young people realize that unless they stand up and start fighting for a different kind of a future, they're not going to have a future. And I think this is the second phase. The second phase will be people, you know, some people will continue to sleep in the... in the parks and, you know, sleep in the snow and inspire all of us. But in the meantime, many of us will go home and we will resurface next spring and we will start fighting for Robin Hood taxes. And in the United States, they'll... they'll fight for the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act and will try to ban high-frequency flash trading and... and basically will try to get that money out of... out of our political systems and start creating a new model of democracy that actually is exciting. And... and I predict down the road, you know, there'll be third parties in America evolving, you know, and that America will get beyond this kind of a Pepsi Cola, Coca-Cola, kind of a political system they've had there for a long time. And a third party will rise up and... and dare I say it, I think in Canada as well. I think there's a real potential that, you know, elements of the NDP, elements of the Liberals, elements of the... the Green Party will suddenly coalesce somehow. And this new excitement, young energy, will come in there and we will come up, you know, with a highly energised political system here in Canada instead of this boring, absolutely deadly boring thing that we've had for so many years now.

CO: That's a very, very large vision. [laughing]

KL: Yeah, well, it's you know, permit me for being grandiose for the moment, but I think I can feel it. I can feel this movement is the beginning of a deep transformation of capitalism. It's a game-changer. And down the road, you know, we're going to do things.

CO: But, you know, just wasn't that many years ago you were giving talks, speeches, talking about how you thought that humanity as an experiment had hit a wall, and you had a despairing picture.

KL: Yes.

CO: What do you think the factors are? I mean, there's so many things that contributed to this. The Arab Spring, the... Warren Buffett, perhaps a bit of that, the despair of Americans.

KL: Yeah.

CO: Why... why have you become so inspired by what you see and not despairing of it?

KL: Well, out of despair, revolutions are born. And yeah, for many years, I had a feeling that... that humanity was hitting the walls, that this very dark black hole future we were looking at was actually going to happen. But... but, you know, this movement has given me hope. And I think there's a new magic there, a new mystique. And I believe that... that these young people that are sleeping in parks all around the world and... and eventually in further phases of this movement, I think this movement has the potential to... to... to grow into something that is... that is truly sort of significant and possibly even historic.

CO: The mainstream media initially dismissed this movement. And now we're seeing increasingly that the media, including business media, trying to understand. And I actually include us in that, the CBC, as we try to understand. Do you think we're getting close? Do you think that we are covering this with an understanding of what's really behind it?

KL:I don't think so. I don't think you're even close. I think that this dimension that I'm trying to introduce right now, [chuckling] this idea that this could be a very significant movement, that... that's a game-changer and that we're going for a deep down systemic change, not just nationally, but internationally, and that we want to have a Tahrir moment, not just in America and not just in Canada, but we want to have a global Tahrir moment that we're actually going for a new model of democracy and a deep transformation of the current global system, where, you know, that has one-point-three trillion dollars a day of derivatives and credit default swaps and all kinds of financial instruments sloshing around the system, and which is 50 times more than the actual commercial transactions. That means something. So we're looking at a global economy that is fundamentally corrupt. It's basically run by a bunch of fat cats and financial speculators who make money off money off money ad nauseum. And... and then the whole whole scene is just like a Las Vegas kind of a global casino. And... and this has to change. And this is the sort of fundamental deep down change that we want to pull off. We want to dismantle the global casino. For one thing.

CO: Mr. Lasn, you are an inspiration.

KL: [chuckle] I'm so glad to hear that!

CO: It's good to talk to you.

KL: Adios for now. Bye.

CO: Bye-bye.

Extreme heat : more frequent and more severe heatwaves

 

A wake-up call on climate change 

by Richard Cannings

Richard Cannings, MP

Jul 9, 2021

Last week was a remarkable week, a watershed moment in the Canadian—and global—climate crisis. The temperature anomalies that British Columbians experienced in those four days were greater than any anomalies ever witnessed by humans since temperatures have been recorded. The town of Lytton destroyed the Canadian all-time extreme temperature record three days running, then on the fourth day was itself destroyed in a wildfire that raged through the community in a matter of minutes.

Two people died in the Lytton fire and hundreds of lives were changed forever as homes and businesses were lost. The high temperatures sparked more fires, and the smoke clouds from those fires sparked an unprecedented barrage of thousands of lightning strikes across British Columbia. There are now more than 200 wildfires throughout the province.

Last week was a wake-up call for all of us who knew about climate change but thought of it as something in the future, something that wouldn’t really affect our own lives. For the first time, many of us now realize how climate change is affecting us right now. As Lytton resident Gordon Murray said on CBC, “We are a small, rural, Indigenous, low-income community, and we are at the spearpoint of climate change. But it's coming for everybody.”

I grew up in Penticton, and for the first time in my life it was simply too hot to be outside for more than a few minutes at a time. Summers here used to be defined by the sounds of lawn sprinklers and cicadas, the smell of suntan lotion at the beach. Now almost every summer is dominated by the sounds of water bombers overhead and the smell of smoke.

And the impact of the heat dome was felt just as dramatically—in some ways more so—in the Lower Mainland. Hundreds of people died from the heat there. Let me repeat that—hundreds of people died.

Agricultural crops were impacted throughout BC—cherries and raspberries literally baked on the branches. Irrigation systems were maxed out as we tried to save our gardens and shade trees. Billions of mussels and other intertidal animals were literally cooked along the coast of British Columbia. Trees in the rainforests turned red.

Many people talk about this as the new normal. This is not a new normal, it’s a new baseline. Summers will not get cooler as we battle climate change. Greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere stay there for centuries. Our challenge is to dramatically reduce and finally stop those emissions. IF we do that, we can minimize the additional damage we do to our climate, minimize future temperature increases and the frequency of catastrophic flooding and droughts.

I’m hoping that the silver lining in the black cloud of last week’s heat wave is a new sense of urgency, a new, deeper understanding of the critical importance of taking climate action seriously. The pandemic has shown us what we can accomplish quickly when faced with a clear crisis. We need to face climate change the same way and stop making only tentative moves to a clean energy economy.

Young people are deeply concerned about their future as climate change continues to impact our world. Workers are deeply concerned about their future as they see good jobs in the fossil fuel sector disappearing. We have to face these challenges and take bold measures to allay these concerns. To fight climate change like we mean it and create new jobs in a new energy sector at the same time. We can do this. We know what we have to do, but we need governments at all levels to show the will to do what is necessary.

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Tragedy in fire-ravaged Lytton, B.C., could be catalyst for global action on climate change, expert says | CBC Radio

Social Sharing

Climate scientist says that the events in B.C. could inspire innovative ways to combat the problem

CBC Radio · Posted: Jul 05, 2021 3:45 PM ET | Last Updated: July 5

Two cars, pictured above, incinerated in Wednesday's fire that engulfed Lytton, B.C. (Jon Mundall)The Current14:19

Preparing for the consequences of a warming climate

There's only one feeling that Lytton, B.C., resident Gordon Murray has when remembering fleeing his home last week: "numb." 

After recording Canada's highest ever temperature (49.6 C) last Tuesday, Lytton was consumed by flames the following day — forcing its 250 residents to flee. 

A motorist watches from a pullout on the Trans-Canada Highway as a wildfire burns on the side of a mountain in Lytton, B.C., Thursday, July 1, 2021. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

Murray, who spoke to The Current's Matt Galloway, says the destruction of Lytton is a stark warning that there needs to be immediate action on climate change. 

"We're the canary in the coal mine," he said. "Climate change is happening now [and] it's happening fast."  

"Everything seems the same and seems fine until it changes in an instant, and everything's gone."

While the exact causes of the fire that destroyed most of Lytton are under investigation — the heat wave contributed to tinder-dry conditions, but the B.C. Wildfire Service said human causes were likely behind the ignition — the numerous wildfires burning across the province have led many to wonder how extreme weather is going to impact B.C. in the future. 

Mark Maslin, a climate change professor at University College London, U.K., argues that the ongoing events in B.C. are a very real example of disasters to come.

"What really upsets me is we've had many of these warnings before about extreme heat waves and climate change, and people are only now just starting to listen," Maslin said. 

"I'm really hopeful that, firstly, the Canadian government, and then other governments around the world, will suddenly take notice."

A 'new normal'

The tragedy in Lytton and the subsequent B.C. fires have created a conversation among experts about how western Canada can deal with wildfires in the future. 

The Merry Creek Wildfire

Why the rich get richer...while the poor get poorer!

cbc.ca/aih june 10,2021

ProPublica Rich Tax

Guest: Jeff Ernsthausen

CH: We've seen the stories during the pandemic: the world's richest got richer and richer, while so many around the world lost their jobs, got sick, and in some cases, died of COVID-19. And that dispiriting disparity is why a story by reporters at ProPublica is getting worldwide attention this week. The headline is: "The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveals How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax." ProPublica said it made the findings about U-S tax filings after it obtained a "vast trove of IRS data" from an anonymous source. The White House has called the leak "illegal," and the IRS has said it's investigating. Jeff Ernsthausen is one of the ProPublica reporters who worked on the piece. We reached him in New York.

CO: Jeff, it's widely perceived that the mega-rich don't pay much in taxes, but you have the evidence, right? What does it show?

JEFF ERNSTHAUSEN: What we found for our story, it's a... sort of focussed on a very basic concept, right? And it's that you and I, or most people in the world, and certainly the United States, we earn wages or a salary. And every time we're paid, taxes are taken automatically out of that. For the ultra-wealthy, it doesn't work the same way. They're not in the tax system the same way. The bulk of what they bring in is in the form of growth in their stocks and other assets. So the bulk of their wealth grows outside the tax system until they decide to do something like sell it, at which point they would face a tax bill. And so what we found is that the ultra-wealthy have accrued, you know, vast wealth in recent years and paid relatively little in taxes on that.

CO: Can you give us some examples? There are some really stunning ones. Give us the names and the details, if you can?

JE: Yeah, I think people... certainly, we were surprised to see that Jeff Bezos paid no federal income taxes in 2007 and 2011. And Elon Musk, now the second richest man in the world, paid nothing in income taxes, federal income taxes in 2018.

CO: What number of people do you have data on?

JE: So we have records on thousands of the wealthiest individuals in the United States. We're talking the sort of top one per cent of the one per cent. That includes sort of household names like Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Michael Bloomberg.

CO: There's one particular paragraph that is really stunning about Jeff Bezos. In 2011, a year in which his wealth was steady at 18 billion dollars, he filed a tax return saying that he lost money, and that his... his kids got tax credits for 4,000 dollars each, right?

JE: Yeah, it's as a sort of as normal American household at that point. Although, normal American households typically can't get their bill all the way down to zero.

CO: Can you give us some other examples?

JE: Yeah, I think one of the sort of exemplars of what we've seen in our data would be Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett is the sort of synonymous with Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate that owns a lot of large companies, some household names like Geico. Famously, Berkshire doesn't pay a dividend, right? And so, Warren Buffett's wealth grew by over 20 billion dollars between 2014 and 2018. And his tax bill on that was just over 20 million dollars, which means that he paid .1 per cent in taxes on his wealth growth over that period by keeping his income really low. He's one of these folks who's joined the giving pledge. He plans to give away most of his wealth before he dies. And, you know, one interesting consequence of that is that, you know, those charities, they may do a lot of good. It also means that he... his fortune might never be taxed because it will pass tax-free into the charitable foundations.

CO: You say that the point of the article, major centrepiece of it, is to compare what happens with wage earners in the United States compared to those who are making their money from their assets, right? So those who earn money pay taxes, those who gain assets don't, right? So can you just give us… and with numbers, it's hard to hear on radio, but just give us... you have a bit of a comparison about the numbers of people it would take to actually make as much money as these top 25. And what the difference in the taxes they pay.

JE: The figures we came up with in our story, it would take 14.3 million typical American households, typical by... by wealth, working American households, to equal the combined wealth of the top 25 in 2018. That year, the top 25 paid 1.9 billion in taxes. If you look at the taxes that would be paid by a group of 14.3 million typical wage-earning households who paid about 14 per cent in taxes. They paid about 143 billion in that same period. So I think one thing that we try to point out in the article is that really, when you want to compare, how do the ultra-wealthy compare to the normal person? The ultra-wealthy, the vast majority of what they're bringing in, you know, 80 per cent is in sort of untaxed gains on their assets, right? And for the normal household, untaxed gains are a very small part. They might own a house, and it grows a little bit. So really, you want to look at their income tax rate. And the typical household's paying 14 per cent on that. Meanwhile, the ultra-wealthy are paying 3.4 per cent on what really matters for them, which is their wealth.

CO: Are they dodging taxes? Is anything of what the top 25... is what they're doing illegal?

JE: So our report focus entirely on... on what is legal. It's one of the points in our story is that you don't need necessarily illegal techniques to have a low tax bill. The system is set up in such a way that you kind of do it routinely. And there's an entire industry of experts that are out there that will help you do that.

CO: You gleaned all this from a vast trove of tax returns and records. We know that in the United States, like in Canada, people are very guarded. This is probably the best-guarded secrets in the world is people's taxes. And we know that from watching what happened with Donald Trump. How did you get all these records?

JE: I can't comment on how we got them. We don't actually know the identity, so I can't comment any further on that. What I can say is that we were very careful to verify that the information was authentic. We checked it with over 50 data points that we could find out in the world or that we're not out in the world related to the individuals that we're reporting on to verify that the data is, in fact, authentic.

CO: So you're not going to say how you got all the tax returns and all the personal data of these rich people?

JE: Oh, absolutely not.

CO: OK, but you've talked to everybody that you're reporting on. How did they react when you called them and said, hey, do you want to comment on this wealth you've got that you paid no taxes on?

JE: So, I mean, the general reaction was, look, we pay, what's legal. You know, we follow the law. We're careful to do so. And we pay the taxes that we owe. You know, we think this is... it's relevant what the wealthiest Americans, you know, who control over a trillion dollars in wealth, what they pay in taxes. We think it's relevant information as the country engages in debates about taxation and infrastructure spending and the kinds of things we can afford as a society.

CO: All right, Jeff, we'll leave it there. Thank you.

JE: Thanks for having me.

CH: Jeff Ernsthausen is a data reporter at ProPublica. He's in New York City.

What kind of planet will we pass on to future generations?

 

imagery of Black Hole at center of M87 galaxy

 

Mesmerizing video shows M87 black hole as nobody has seen it before

Chris Davies - Apr 14, 2021, 2:02pm CDT

If you thought the first image of a black hole in distant galaxy M87 was something special two years ago, a newly-released video pulling together the work of 19 observatories will just about blow you away. In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) captured the 25 billion mile wide black hole for the very first time, but don’t let the name fool you into imagining one telescope with an astronomer’s eye pressed to the viewfinder.

The black hole at its center, however, held onto its mysteries far longer. An example of a supermassive black hole, it forced astronomers to think laterally when they wanted to capture a picture of it: after all, black holes by definition capture light. The EHT mustered data from eight different telescopes and pooled that information to create an image of the glowing gas surrounding the ink-black maw at its center, with gravitational bending causing a shadow.

The picture made headlines in 2019, but now the EHT is delivering again with more instruments and more details. “We knew that the first direct image of a black hole would be groundbreaking,” Kazuhiro Hada of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, a co-author of a new study being published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters to describe the new data, explained. “But to get the most out of this remarkable image, we need to know everything we can about the black hole’s behavior at that time by observing over the entire electromagnetic spectrum.”

This time, 19 observatories – including five operated by NASA – were harnessed in order to give an unprecedented tour of M87 in different wavelengths of light. It relies on the fact that the black hole’s gravitational pull can create jets of particles traveling at almost the speed of light, across the whole electromagnetic spectrum. These jets spar out across the universe, spanning radio waves through visible light to gamma rays, with different sets collected by the 19 different instruments.

The video begins with the original EHT image, and then spirals out through radio telescope arrays, across visible and then ultraviolet light, and then X-rays. Finally, there’s data from gamma ray telescopes on the ground, along with NASA’s Fermi in space.

It took 760 scientists and engineers, across 200 institutions, and over the course of March and April 2017, to piece together the vast data set. It’s not just for entertainment, either, with the potential for new scientific breakthroughs to be unlocked.

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LY3E7uXRyls

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xwppoRFLPNo

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We have the 1st photo of a black hole. Here's how it was taken

Social Sh

Observations added up to 'half a tonne of hard drives,' says physicist Avery Broderick

CBC Radio · Posted: Apr 12, 2019 4:18 PM ET | Last Updated: April 12, 2019

This is the first image ever taken of the event horizon of a supermassive black hole, captured by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017. (Event Horizon Telescope)

Quirks and Quarks8:30Seeing the first black hole - and what we'll see next

Some have likened it to a blurry orange doughnut, but it took a team of over 200 scientists, eight special telescopes and churning through millions of gigabytes of data to capture the first image of a black hole.

Astronomers captured the image using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a "virtual telescope" — that produces an extremely high-resolution image by combining data from eight radio telescopes around the world. The black hole has been unofficially named Powehi, a Hawaiian name meaning "the adorned fathomless dark creation" or "embellished dark source of unending creation."

Black holes are very difficult to image, since anything that crosses a critical threshold near the black hole — known as the event horizon — gets pulled inside, even light. As a result, nothing inside the event horizon can ever be seen.

What the team captured in their picture was light from the material about to pass over the event horizon, according to Avery Broderick, a physicist from the University of Waterloo and the Perimeter Institute, who is also a member of the international EHT team.

Avery Broderick is a Canadian physicist. (University of Waterloo)

"It's a churning maelstrom of superheated plasma, hundreds of billions of degrees," he said of the matter observed around the black hole. 

It's not just the nature of the black holes that makes them difficult to photograph. Observations from multiple telescopes that make up the EHT also added up to a lot of data — five petabytes, to be exact, which translates to five million gigabytes.

Broderick spoke with Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald about the efforts to capture this iconic picture. Here is part of their conversation:

Tell me about the virtual telescope that you used to capture this image.

The Event Horizon Telescope is a combination of existing facilities. So we've really leveraged an enormous amount of investment over the past two decades in radio astronomy and brought them together, added specialized equipment to each of the six sites the eight telescopes are located at, so they could be brought together to form a single new instrument — and that's what the Event Horizon Telescope is.

Image taken during a time-lapse at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the Chilean Andes. ALMA is one of the instruments in the Event Horizon Telescope. (C. Malin/ ALMA)

We take data [from] each of these sites and then we have to bring that data physically back together at special supercomputing locations, where it gets combined to produce the information that goes into producing these images.

• Earth-sized telescope found its roots in Canada: Bob McDonald

How much data are you talking about?

For the 2017 observations, there were five petabytes. That's literally half a tonne of hard drives.

When you did finally go through all of that, what did you actually learn from this image?

Just like any other human, I see something and it becomes more real to me.

And now we can say that in a scientific sense, too. Now we have this prediction from general relativity, it's very unambiguous and that's a rare occurrence. There was really no wiggle room here.

Because we saw what we had anticipated, now we have confidence that general relativity applies not just where it makes small corrections to Newton's theory of gravity. We're seeing it where general relativity is the entire story — where gravity has run amok. And so now we've in some sense book-ended the regions where we can trust Einstein's theory.

We've opened a new window, but we're not done looking through it.- Avery Broderick

What was it like for you, since you predicted what this thing might look like, to see that it actually turned out to be what you thought?

It's a complex set of emotions. I was relieved after spending so much time that it came out to be something like we had thought — that the project has been successful and produced the images we always hoped it would.

You know, one of the great joys of being a scientist is when nature unfolds itself just a little bit to you, you're the first to see that. And then you have the privilege of going around telling the world. But there's also excitement, because this is the beginning. We've opened a new window, but we're not done looking through it.

Tell me about the black hole that's behind this image.

M87 [the galaxy] harbours a 6.5-billion solar mass black hole. That's a behemoth by any standard. Now, every galaxy has something like this. At the centre of our Milky Way is a four-million solar mass black hole. This is almost 2,000 times larger.

The black hole in the M87 galaxy produces a powerful jet of subatomic particles travelling at nearly the speed of light. In this Hubble telescope image, the blue jet contrasts with the yellow glow from the combined light of billions of unresolved stars and the point-like clusters of stars that make up this galaxy. (NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA)

So why did you choose that one as a target for the Event Horizon Telescope?

Since the telescope is looking out on the sky, we don't care if you're the largest black hole and we don't care if you're the closest black hole. You have to be large and close and the way you balance those is it's really how massive [the hole is] divided by how far.

M87 is 2,000 times more massive than the black hole in our galaxy, which is good. It's also about 2,000 times farther away. So it turns out it's about the same size as the one in our Milky Way.

But that additional mass has another effect. Black holes are in a highly dynamical region — things are swirling about them. And the time scale it takes for stuff to go around M87 is about a week, and as a result, it's stationary during the night.

We have to be looking at not black hole portraiture, but black hole cinema.- Avery Broderick

You've talked about looking at the black hole that's at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. How will that be different from the process of imaging M87's black hole?

The chief complication with the Milky Way's black hole is that it really is much smaller in mass, even though it's closer. And that means the time scales for things changing are shorter. They can be as short as minutes.

That's a challenge, but it's also an enormous opportunity. That time variability means we have to be looking at not black hole portraiture, but black hole cinema. And just as a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth a thousand words 25 times per second.

That's going to give us an enormous amount of additional information that we can leverage. But it is a complication, and we are up to that task and we are embarking on it now.

The Milky Way, our own galaxy, hosts a black hole of about 4 million solar masses called Sagittarius A* in its central bulge. The EHT has targeted this black hole for imaging as well. (ESO/S. Brunier)

What's next for the Event Horizon Telescope?

I think, like so many scientists, I am in love with Einstein's theory. I think it's a beautiful theory. I'd like to see evidence for what's next.

I would like to see something that isn't predicted by general relativity. I'd like to see the loose thread that we're going to pull and we're going to unravel what comes after general relativity.