HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Live audio here http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html?2015-07-...

And slides here (currently on Figure 10) http://www.nasa.gov/keplerbriefing0723

EDIT booooo - audio stream has gone down

EDIT yay!

⬐ jfdk

Back up!

⬐ myth_buster

The slides (specially #5/9/11) gives a very good info for people to understand the significance.

  The size and extent of the habitable zone of Kepler-452 
  is nearly the same as that of the sun, but is slightly bigger because 
  Kepler-452 is somewhat older, bigger and brighter. The size of the orbit of 
  Kepler-452b is nearly the same as that of the Earth at 1.05 AU. Kepler-452b 
  orbits its star once every 385 days.

Close to 300K people tuning in!

⬐ jdavid

My viewer says 4.3K

For those who also dislike timezone-juggling: http://time.is/1200_23_July_2015_in_EDT?http://www.nasa.gov/...

⬐ slayed0

Now can you link one that uses the ISO 8601 date standard, for those of us who also dislike date juggling?

⬐ johnchristopher

I think it uses the browser's locale.

⬐ toxican

Now can you link one that uses unix time, for those of us who hate ourselves?

⬐ pyrophane

Hey, you guys remember swatch beats?

⬐ david-given

Am I the only one who that that beats was actually a pretty decent, if totally doomed, idea?

cricket noises

⬐ ArekDymalski

No, you aren't alone :) However reading [1] influenced my opinion.

[1] http://qntm.org/abolish

⬐ wuliwong

I haven't had my morning coffee and I misread 'reply' as the username and thought you were having a big, multi-threaded conversation with yourself. :) I even vaguely thought 'is that guy's name reply?'

⬐ joshontheweb

Thanks for sharing that. I've been looking for something like this. Traveling and juggling meetings in multiple timezones is a big source of anxiety for me. I'm always wondering if I did the math wrong or if there is a daylight savings I haven't accounted for.

⬐ tonyjstark

Maybe both, or none. It's complex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY

⬐ ParadigmBlender

I also recommend http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/. Sounds like it would fit your use case well.

⬐ rndn

There are actually plenty of tools for problems related to timezones, for example here is one for finding the best time for Skype conferences: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meeting.html

⬐ danielweber

People think they are being more precise by saying "EST," but, quick, are we in daylight savings time now, or out of it?

It turns out we are, and I don't meant to suggest that GP didn't know this. But what if we weren't in daylight savings time, and GP said "EST"? Would we have to change an hour?

I highly recommend just saying "Eastern Time."

⬐ ycombobreaker

I agree, wrong timezone (DST or not?) is as bad as no timezone. I have gotten in the habit of using Olson timezone names, US/Eastern for example, because I have seen CT used to refer to both US and European Central time.

⬐ danielweber

Crap, I was wrong. "S" doesn't stand for "Savings," it stands for "Standard." We really are in EDT.

All the more reason to never specify it! :)

⬐ joshstrange

Welcome the world of pain that is timezones and DST... As someone who has had to write an extensive amount of deal with these two concepts they are the worst things ever. We should just abolish timezones, DST, and move to the International Fixed Calendar. Time sucks. I'm even in favor of moving to a seconds-based time unit like kiloseconds, miliseconds, etc instead of minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years/etc. "Metric Time" if you will...

⬐ DanAndersen

>We should just abolish timezones, DST, and move to the International Fixed Calendar.

You may find these links interesting:

- "So you want to abolish time zones" (http://qntm.org/abolish)

- "You advocate a ________ approach to calendar reform" (http://qntm.org/calendar)

⬐ Asbostos

Or better yet, UTC or GMT since probably more people in the world know their offset relative to that, than EST.

⬐ lostbit

True. We know our current offset from UTC (or legacy 'GMT'). I always use the real offset at that time. Thus, I just inform my clock saying UTC-3 (or UTC-2 when we are in daylight savings time).

⬐ malkia

I just missed it.

Is there a recording of it? Never figured out how to get it out of ustream...

⬐ DavidBradbury

Full text new release:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2013/feb/HQ_13-063_NuSTAR_Bl...

⬐ jmeekr

Feel like I'm listening in to an old school radio broadcast.

⬐ None

None

⬐ uvdiv

Some briefing materials are already up,

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/nustar/news/telecon2013022...

Spoiler: it's the first measurement of a black hole spin.

⬐ None

None

⬐ None

None

⬐ StevenRayOrr

Not having the necessary background in physics, I'm not quite sure what this means. I'm sure some pop-science site will break it down later, but is the gist that this has implications on our understanding of the way that black holes expand?

⬐ lutusp

Black holes have only a handful of properties compared to, say, a star -- they have mass, electrical charge, and spin (spin angular momentum).

More detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_black_hole#Types_of_bl...

The reason black holes possess spin is because spin angular momentum is conserved, and the masses that fall into the BH each have spin angular momentum. The black hole's spin angular momentum is therefore the sum (so to speak) of the constituent masses that make it up.

⬐ Tloewald

I don't think so. Theory of black hole formation predicts they will spin (although emitting energy slows the spin). They have different predictions for the kind of spin or lack thereof which would produce different observations -- and the data gathered supports one spinning model over another, either of which agrees with theory. Non spinning black holes would be perplexing.

⬐ lutusp

> Non spinning black holes would be perplexing.

Only if none were ever observed to be spinning. One non-spinning black hole is like one planet with a perfectly circular orbit -- we can chalk it up to chance.

⬐ jlgreco

What does it mean for a black hole to spin? Does that mean that matter past the event horizon is in motion, and information about that is somehow being leaked out? Or just that matter outside the event horizon is circling the drain?

⬐ jessriedel

Udo is correct, but I want to clarify: the natural result of rotating matter undergoing gravitational collapse is a rotating black hole, and this "spins" in a way which is independent of any matter remaining outside of its event horizon. The spacetime itself has a well-defined notion of angular momentum, and there need not be any matter remaining at all.

The mathematical model for this in the language of general relativity is the Kerr metric, named after its discoverer Roy Kerr:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerr_metric

⬐ lutusp

> What does it mean for a black hole to spin?

In many ways, a spinning black hole is much like an ordinary mass spinning at the same rate. If frame dragging (a prediction of general relativity) turns out to be observable, we should see black holes affecting the masses around them as a result of the spins of (a) the black hole and (b) the affected masses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame-dragging#Frame_dragging_e...

⬐ Udo

Matter past the event horizon falls into the singularity pretty quickly, and that's a mere dimensionless point in space. But the singularity's spin does have an effect on spacetime around the black hole, in effect creating a second (much stranger) type of event horizon called an ergosphere. In a way one could say that rotation changes the shape of the black hole and that property can be observed from the outside to determine the spin. This is cool because, while pretty much everybody was certain that black holes do spin, this hypothesis was not yet backed up by data. The phenomenon doesn't have anything to do with quantum information leaking out, however.

I didn't get to see the actual announcement but my guess is that effect of the spin on spacetime has now been actually observed in the wild.