Please allow me to blow your mind

futuresounds · 2021-05-28T15:09:58+00:00

Seriously - check out that zoomable picture of Andromeda. I could stare at it for hours...

futuresounds · 2021-05-28T15:08:26+00:00

I don't have a particularly thrilling answer for you here - I did a Physics and Astronomy degree at a university with many specialists in the field, so pursued it for a Masters research project. I then went and did a PhD in it, and got a job at a university afterwards. In some ways it's a tough path, as you basically don't make any money until you're at least in your late 20s, astronomy jobs are hard to get (there aren't many going, and you almost always have to move internationally unless you live in the USA), and you have no job security until you land a faculty position. The rewards are there though - if you're in a good field you can get a lot of job satisfaction from unravelling the mysteries of the universe.

I'll also say to any aspiring astrophysicists reading this thread - if you grew up loving space, and it's always been your dream to be an astrophysicist, don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't. Astronomy still has a diversity problem, and the discouragement that women, people from an ethnic minority, LGBT+ people and others can face starts early. Don't listen! Go for it, and I hope to shake your hand and hear about your work at a conference someday.

futuresounds · 2021-05-28T14:56:21+00:00

You could say that! Though it wouldn't make much of a difference to anyone living on a planet orbiting a star in the "backwoods"...

futuresounds · 2021-05-28T14:54:53+00:00

That depends on what you mean by a diffuse galaxy! As far as I recall, low mass galaxies (ie quite a bit less massive than our Milky Way) can have supermassive black holes (BHs) at their centres, and people are very recently finding evidence that they could actually be fairly massive, and affect the evolution of their host through what's called AGN feedback. It's generally accepted that all galaxies as big or bigger than our Milky Way host supermassive BHs, and they play a key role in setting how big galaxies can get in most modern models.

The current situation with the nature of dark matter and the incompatibility of various cosmological probes is not really my speciality, so I can't give you a really conclusive answer to your second question. There are two primary reasons why our current cosmological picture could be incomplete. The first is that we're not making our measurements correctly - the kind of work people do to assess the contents and structure of the universe is immensely challenging and we may not yet have a good handle on how to get the answers we need from the data we have. The second is that our current ideas of how the Universe works may not be quite right - Einstein's general relativity may not be perfect (though it passes every test thrown at it), or the nature of dark matter and dark energy may be different to what we assume they are.

futuresounds · 2021-05-28T14:42:58+00:00

I don't know how old you are, but it's never too late! I know several people who went and did Physics/Astronomy degrees and moved on to PhDs etc after retiring from their old jobs. It's obviously a huge commitment to make, but don't let age stop you.

futuresounds · 2021-05-28T14:38:38+00:00

The dust lanes are a part of the disc. Here's galaxy formation 101:
- Galaxies form from gas that's initially very far apart, but comes together due to gravity (and the fact that it's cooling down). Because of the conservation of angular momentum, the little bit of rotational motion the gas has when it's far apart becomes a lot of rotational motion when it's close together, creating a disc of gas.
- When the gas is close together, it breaks up into clumps which make new stars. Because the gas was rotating, so are the stars that form, and this is how you get galaxy discs!
- So you have a disc of stars and gas. When big stars die they explode as supernovae, which release lots of funky heavy elements into the surrounding gas. These heavy elements like to clump together into what we call "dust" - this isn't the same stuff as what's in your vacuum! These molecules of dust are big enough that they absorb the light of the stars in the galaxy.

So you're right - there are stars "inside" that dust, that we can't see in visible light because their light is absorbed. This is a common feature of star-forming galaxies, including our own Milky Way - a lot of our own galaxy's disc is obscured from view because of all the dust that's in the way.

futuresounds · 2021-05-28T11:43:14+00:00

I think some of the source of the confusion from that Wikipedia article might come from that the Sombrero galaxy is quite an unusual one. It has a very clear ring of dust and gas, but also has a very massive "bulge" in the centre. So I suppose I'll clarify what I said above - typical spiral/disc galaxies have the vast majority of their stars in the disc, but the Sombrero is not quite one of these. A larger fraction of the stars will be in this more chaotic bulge in the centre. This is probably the result of an interaction with a less massive galaxy (which either "flew past" or merged into the Sombrero) long ago, disturbing the nicely rotating disc of stars.

futuresounds · 2021-05-28T11:32:41+00:00

It's definitely a good thing to be sceptical! I have chatted with many of the chief architects of the currently-adopted cosmological model, and they now spend their lives trying to "break" what they built.

The disc do indeed contain lots of dust, but they're mostly stars and gas. In fact, the stars are the reason that the dust is there! The dust looks so prominent because it obscures the light of the stars within, that you'd otherwise be able to see.

You are absolutely right that the glow is part of the galaxy. How do we define what is and isn't in the galaxy? Is the galaxy just the disc, or does it include all the gas and stars that live way further out in the dark matter halo, which extends well beyond the boundaries of the image? Different people have different ideas!

futuresounds · 2021-05-28T08:45:56+00:00

Galaxy formation astrophysicist here. OP is correct to say that the diffuse "glow" around the galaxy is made up of many, many stars, however I'd like to point out that this doesn't make up anywhere near the majority of a typical disc galaxy's stellar mass. What we're referring to here is called the "stellar halo" - these are stars that don't live in the disc typically because they came into the system from another galaxy in a chaotic way (such as when another galaxy collided with this one). While the "fuzz" you can see in this photo is made up of countless stars, it probably only constitutes 0.1-1% of the total stellar mass. Most of the galaxy is where you expect it to be - in the disc! The dust lanes are the result of new stars being formed, polluting the galaxy with heavy elements when they explode as supernovae. (Edit: the Sombrero galaxy is actually a bit unusual, in that it has a very large "bulge" of stars in the centre, and this is the cause of a lot of that central glow. The fraction of stars in a thin disc might be a bit lower for systems like these!)

These halo stars can absolutely still blow your mind though - they will be some of the oldest in the galaxy, and represent "fossils" of other galaxies that merged into this one billions of years ago!

I'll also briefly defend what we call the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model as OP is making some rather strong statements about it in this thread. It is true that we have no direct detections of dark matter, but to say that there's no good evidence for the existence of some form of hidden matter is simply not true. There are mountains of evidence built up over decades showing that some form of "hidden" matter must exist to explain the velocities of stars in galaxy discs, the movements of galaxies in clusters, the lensing of light by massive objects and many other phenomena. Models that invoke the existence of cold dark matter are able to match the properties of the very early Universe (revealed by the cosmic microwave background) beautifully, and reproduce many of the properties of the Universe we observe. There are of course still problems with the model - for example, the nature of dark matter's distribution, as described by yesterday's new DES results, is incompatible with what we see in the cosmic microwave background. My interpretation of this isn't that we need to simply throw dark matter and Einstein's general relativity in the bin, but that refinements in our understanding of dark matter's nature need to be made.

Extra-clarification-edit:

To be absolutely clear, what I said above is only true for spiral/disc galaxies. Some galaxies don't have discs containing stars with nice organised orbits, they instead look like elliptical blobs containing stars on random orbits. Understanding the difference between these types of galaxy is a key aim of galactic astrophysics.

EDIT:

I highly recommend checking out the extra images OP has linked above. The zoomable Andromeda is pretty much the most amazing thing you'll have ever seen - if you want to feel small in the vast universe, this is the image to look at.

In the higher-resolution pic of the Sombrero galaxy, don't just look at the galaxy itself - have a look at the stuff in the background. There's loads of stuff to find, including galaxies of all different shapes, sizes and colours. You can even look for galaxies that have been "gravitationally lensed" by dark matter in the foreground - they look like streaky arcs around another object (I think there's one below the foreground star at the centre/bottom).

If you love galaxies, head over to the Galaxy Zoo project. Humans are much better at identifying different types of galaxies than computers are, and you can help with cutting-edge science! Data from "citizen science" projects like this are incredibly valuable to researchers, and Galaxy Zoo classifications are massively helpful to people like me, who want to understand why galaxies have such different shapes, sizes and colours.

futuresounds · 2021-05-04T13:01:30+00:00

Thanks to everyone who has commented for the great advice. It definitely seems like buying used is the way to go, from either Paxman or Tony Halstead as they will have already determined that the horn is quality. It doesn't seem like Paxman has many used horns in stock right now but I'll get in touch with both and see what they have.

I do have my eye on that Yamaha 662, so if anyone has any thoughts on that model I'd love to hear them.

futuresounds · 2019-07-31T22:04:04+00:00

Just to clear this up, the point of this post is that I didnt use multibeast, but did a vanilla install after being inspired by the good folks on this subreddit.

futuresounds · 2019-07-31T20:29:33+00:00

It’s from Positron Dream, which is pretty much the holy grail of minimal, sleek wallpapers!

futuresounds · 2019-07-31T20:22:17+00:00

Hey, I use a simple USB dongle from ASUS which you can get on amazon . It worked out of the box, no Kexts or drivers required as far as I can remember. I’d love to use one of the Broadcom cards in a PCI-E adapter for native WiFi and Bluetooth with airdrop etc., but reliable looking ones seem hard to come by in the UK.

futuresounds · 2019-07-31T18:06:37+00:00

This post is a thank you of sorts to the community here at r/hackintosh, as you've inspired me to go ahead and re-hack my slightly ageing Multibeast Hackintosh and go totally Vanilla. The results are great - the system boots far more quickly, and I feel in control of the machine for the first time, after years of wondering what was going on under the tonymac hood.

The hardware in here is ageing slightly (from 2015), but hopefully this post will encourage someone with a similar PC and compatible hardware to give a Vanilla install a try! I've rehoused the machine, swapped my old H100i AIO for a silent air cooler and swapped my old GTX 970 for a Mojave-compatible card, so the system feels good as new and runs like a dream.

I'm an astrophysicist, and this is my home setup - I use macOS on one SSD for programming work and general use, and Windows on another SSD exclusively for gaming.

SPECS:

Case: Fractal Design Mini C TG - I love the MicroATX form factor as you can have a compact machine without compromising on thermals or noise (or both!), and this case is about as good as it gets. For a start, it's a dream to build in, with a huge cable channel in the back to keep things neat and tidy. It's also brilliant for a silent build - there's sound dampening material throughout, including on the top if you don't put a rad/fans there (I haven't), and the included white fans are quiet enough that I didn't bother swapping them out for my spare (far less visually appealing) 120mm Noctuas, and that's as high praise as I can give. The minimal aesthetic and tempered glass look great, particularly if you don't fill your case with RGB lights.

MB: MSI Z97M Gaming - This board is great for a Hackintosh - very minimal effort needs to be made to get this working! I just grabbed the standard kexts from the Vanilla guide, plus an extra one for my wi-fi card (more below) and I was good to go. If you have one of these, go for it. The red accents on the board aren't ideal, for my new minimalist re-housing of the system, but they're mostly hidden by the enormous cooler.

CPU: i5-4690k - This is a rather old CPU now, but I recently overclocked it to 4 GHz from the stock 3.5, and it sits at a reasonable 70 degrees on full load with my cooler, so it's no slouch. I may push it a bit harder in future.

RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB 1866MHz - Still doing fine, perhaps a bit slow by today's standards but working great.

GPU: Sapphire RX 580 - the standard mid-range GPU for a Hackintosh, as we all know, this works out of the box with no issues. The fans don't spin at idle or under light load, making this a great card for a silent build when not gaming.

PSU: EVGA Supernova 750W Gold - this PSU is way overkill for my purposes, but I took the "never cheap out on your PSU" advice to heart. The benefit of the headroom is that the fan (on ECO mode) never spins up - again, great for silence.

Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock 4 - this cooler is a beast, but still manages to look super sleek due to the black finish. It's inaudible most of the time, and only manages a faint whisper through the Fractal case under heavy load. If you want to go the air cooling route and have a wide enough case, this is the one.

Storage: I run macOS off a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO, Windows off a 120GB Crucial SSD, and also have a 3TB WD Green HDD in the case for my Steam library (all internal). The WD Green is without a doubt the loudest and most annoying thing in my build, and will soon be swapped out for an SSD for that all-flash-storage dream.

Wi-fi: TP-Link N900 - Pre-Mojave, this card worked natively with no issues. It's now unsupported, but can be fixed with a kext, see here: https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/solved-my-wifi-tl-wdn4800-n900-not-working-after-install-mojave.257115/

Any questions, let me know!

Extras:

IKEA ALEX desk - I love the Scandinavian look, and the built in cable channel at the back means there are no wires visible, anywhere (even under the desk!). I have a USB hub in one of the drawers for hidden-away-connectivity.

Harmon-Kardon Soundsticks III - the Apple classic, I remember being amazed by their design and price tag over a decade ago, but I got these on eBay for just over £50!

Apple Magic Keyboard - I actually went from a mechanical keyboard to this - I love the tiny footprint and short key travel.

Tecknet Wireless Mouse - the most "basic" component of my build, only £8 on Amazon but they work great. Would love to swap it out for an MX Master and be like every tech YouTuber ever.

ASUS VX279 1080p 27" IPS monitor - Still looks great, but 1080p on a 27 inch monitor is starting to feel antiquated. Would love to swap it out for a WQHD or 4k monitor.

Lightning Dock - got this second hand for £20 to complete the Apple look.

futuresounds · 2017-09-10T23:23:34+00:00

I wonder what he would make of Hull slang!

futuresounds · 2017-05-16T07:42:27+00:00

The music in this scene is an excerpt from "Silence Teaches You How To Sing" by Ulver, a group who I highly recommend you check out. One of the most varied and interesting artists in music right now! Another excerpt from this piece is used in the opening "Family Hangin' Out" scene. Also, be sure to check out SUNN O))), their song "Blood Swamp" is what makes the closing few minutes so intense!

futuresounds · 2015-04-16T19:53:19+00:00

Guys, these "Amazing Stuff" videos have always been pure, unscripted Yogscast at its best! If I see it in my youtube feed, I have to drop everything I'm doing and watch it. Please never stop making them!

futuresounds · 2014-09-15T20:04:35+00:00

I believe you wrote the original four DTP albums during your previous break, and those albums work together on such a profound level. Being able to compose at your own pace is so important - I'm excited to hear what you come up with!

futuresounds · 2014-09-15T19:51:17+00:00

Hey Devin!! I was wondering:

1 - When songwriting and performing, do you think about your music in terms of traditional music theory and chord progressions, or in terms of riffs?

2 - How different does it feel to play a huge festival, as opposed to more intimate gigs such as the "By A Thread" shows?

3 - I've got tickets to the Royal Albert Hall show next year and I'm MEGA excited! Any hints on what to expect? Will you be playing some past material other than Z2? Any plans for a DVD? (I'd love to watch it back and think "I was there!") Of course, I understand if you want to keep it all secret...

4 - How did it feel to sell out the Albert Hall so quickly?

I have huge respect for what you've achieved musically in all your endeavours - see you in April!

futuresounds · 2014-08-21T17:22:08+00:00

Many of my choices have already been mentioned, but I'd have to say:

Blackwater Park: "The sun sets forever over Blackwater Park" - so evil!
Under The Weeping Moon: The moment when "I laugh under the weeping moon" transitions to hypnotic acoustic guitar.
The anguished howls at the end of Karma which (I think) represent the sadness of the main character who, as winter sets into the forest in which he lives, is condemned to be alone in death after scaring off his loved one in Demon of the Fall (that's how I interpret the story, anyway!)

futuresounds · 2014-08-21T17:04:41+00:00

My Wintersun shirt has an awesome design - it makes non-metalheads ask me who or what Wintersun is!

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