Earlier today I read an article in QuantaMagazine.org on a calculational shortcut a mathematician and a physicist have found to allow modeling black hole collisions where there is a 10:1 or greater difference in mass between the two objects. This has about zero impact on my quotidian existence but it still felt good reading it. I hope their work proves useful.
I've had a strong interest as an educated bystander in the science of Einstein's work for a long time and since reading Kip Thorne's "Black Holes and Time Warps" more than 25 years ago, I began understanding better that the world is not quite what it feels like. Black holes were a total mystery until I read Thorne's book and though they still remain mysterious, I feel I understand now some things about them.
The confirmation of the existence of gravity waves by LIGO a few years ago was marvelous but it wasn't until much more recently, while looking at a graphic simulation of the merger of two black holes, that it sank in that gravity waves are waves in spacetime, that spacetime is twisted and warped by the massive gravity of these objects and is rotating around them as they spiral into each other. It's an awesome thought.
None of which has anything to do with the photos I'm posting tonight. It's just something I've been thinking about.
These photos were taken a few days after the first posting of detraining and exiting Grand Central Terminal in the second year of the pandemic. There will be more. I wonder when the crowds will be back.
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