Latest news with #EyeofSauron
New York Post
a day ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Crowds wowed by stunning astronomical event ‘Sauronhenge' featuring ‘evil' NYC tower
Move over, Manhattanhenge. City residents are gushing over 'Sauronhenge,'' the newly coined phrase for an astronomical phenomenon involving the sun aligning with the top of the 'evil'-looking Brooklyn Tower — looking akin to Sauron's lair from the flick 'Lord of the Rings.'' Dozens of Brooklynites lined up at the intersection of Dekalb and Vanderbilt avenues in Clinton Hill last week for the perfect glimpse of the stunning sight. Advertisement 5 An astronomical phenomenon in Brooklyn has been compared to the 'Eye of Sauron' atop Barad-dûr in the flick 'Lord of the Rings.' 'The rumors are true!' an enthralled commentator wrote in a 'Lord of the Ring' sub Reddit, which touts more than a million members. The 'Manhattanhenge'-inspired viewing event gained attention when Park Slope-based urban planner Kevin Clyne decided to calculate when the sun would appear right above the meme-ified black Brooklyn skyscraper – a scene that fans say resembles Sauron's glowing, fiery eye atop Barad-dûr. Advertisement 'People talk about that building all the time and sort of how it looks like something out of 'Lord of the Rings,' ' Clyne told The Post of the quirky, online fascination with the SHoP Architects-designed tower. 'I've just always wondered if the sun would ever align perfectly with the top of the building.' 5 A 'Sauronhenge' viewing event draws a crowd to the intersection of Dekalb and Vanderbilt avenues in Clinton Hill. Kevin Clyne The phenomenon is reminiscent of Manhattanhenge, when New Yorkers watch in awe as the setting sun aligns perfectly with the city grid every once in awhile. Advertisement Clyne said the view near his Brooklyn home was always 'too far south' to tell if 'Sauronhenge' would ever happen. He said it wasn't until he moved to Park Slope and 'boredom' hit that he figured out the alignment dates – Aug. 8 to 13 from 6:25 p.m. to 6:35 p.m., to be exact – using 'back-of-napkin' math to calculate the perfect time and place, he said in a now-viral New York Groove blog post. 5 'The rumors are true!' an excited Reddit user wrote of the predicted phenomenon. parenthetica_n / Reddit 'I thought it'd be a nerdy, niche story that would just get some likes online' — hardly the response it got, he said. Advertisement A Reddit user wrote last Monday, 'My lady and I both saw the article and then decided to walk over [t]his evening, 'There were like 30 people there, it was great.' Clyne said he almost didn't attend last Tuesday evening's viewing, which drew even more people, out of fear his calculations were wrong. 'At the start of the week, I started getting Instagram DMs from just strangers tagging me in their photos,' he said. 'I didn't realize people were going to actually go check it out. 5 The event captivates the Brooklyn neighborhood last week. Kevin Clyne 'I think it was pretty amazing, how many people turned out with such short notice,' Clyne said. 'I saw online people commenting like, 'When's it going to be next year? I'm sad I missed it.' So I think it might end up being a thing from now on.' The sight has drawn both 'Lord of the Rings' fans and 'people just fascinated by 'evil'-coded architecture,' according to New York Groove. 5 Viewers try to capture the stunning sky event. Kevin Clyne Advertisement The mass fascination with the supertall Brooklyn Tower in Downtown Brooklyn — the borough's first skyscraper when it was erected in 2023 — is undoubtedly owed to how omnipresent it is along the skyline, Clyne said. 'You can still sort of see it everywhere,' he said. 'I take the train from Grand Army Plaza, and even there, it just sort of looms over the trees. … It makes itself known, like no matter where you are.' A Reddit user wrote, 'I see the tower directly from my window on Queens [sic]. Advertisement 'I feel like Gondor.' The fact that the 1,066-foot-tall luxe residential tower at 9 Dekalb Ave. is a menacing onyx hue with battlement-like spires among gray and glass surrounding architecture doesn't help it's 'evil' reputation, the urban planner said. 'It's very divisive,' Clyne said. 'The fact that it's like, almost pitch black is rare for a skyscraper nowadays. 'And it does look kind of evil.'
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
This real 'Eye of Sauron' spits out ghost particles in space. Here's what it looks like
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. For about 15 years, a powerful radio telescope on planet Earth dutifully recorded data about a location in the cosmos billions of light-years away from us — and, at last, astronomers managed to stitch together those extensive observations to reveal a full picture of what this telescope has been looking at. It's … the Eye of Sauron! Well, sort of. Though the image you're seeing bears a striking resemblance to the jarring symbol associated with the main villain in the Lord of the Rings trilogy of novels by J.R.R. Tolkien, it's actually something far more fear-inducing. At face value, at least. What you're looking at is actually a blazar, which requires a couple of layers to explain. Out in the universe, there are these things called quasars, which refer to the extremely luminous centers of active galaxies (meaning they emit a lot of electromagnetic radiation) that are powered by supermassive black holes. These galactic cores are called active galactic nuclei, or AGNs; and in fact, the monster black holes powering these phenomena can also funnel matter outward in the form of highly energetic jets of particles moving at nearly the speed of light. It's all very intense. Quasars can be so bright that they outshine the collective light of every single star in the galaxy surrounding them. Blazars, on the other hand, are pretty much quasars — except with those supermassive-black-hole-rooted jets pointing within 10 degrees of our planet. That doesn't exactly mean we're about to be obliterated by a jet, though. Remember how I said the fear remains at face value? The only reason we're seeing the jet pointing straight toward us is because of our vantage point, and this doesn't necessarily increase its danger. Still, blazars, because of this serendipitous orientation, tend to appear even brighter than the already ridiculously bright quasars. Not that it matters, but Sauron would sure love them. "When we reconstructed the image, it looked absolutely stunning," Yuri Kovalev, lead author of the study and principal investigator of the Multi-messenger Studies of Extragalactic Super-colliders project at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), said in a statement. "We have never seen anything quite like it — a near-perfect toroidal magnetic field with a jet, pointing straight at us." "This alignment causes a boost in brightness by a factor of 30 or more," explains Jack Livingston, a study co-author at MPIfR. "At the same time, the jet appears to move slowly due to projection effects — a classic optical illusion." And this particular blazar could be the one blazar to rule them all. Scientists have formed a clear image of it using observations from the Very Long Baseline Array (named PKS 1424+240), and it may very well be one of the brightest sources of high-energy gamma rays and cosmic neutrinos ever observed. Neutrinos are mind-blowing items themselves, while we're at it. They're nicknamed "ghost particles" because they're invisible, zippy bits that penetrate the entirety of our cosmos yet remain tremendously difficult to detect. Trillions of these particles are flowing through your body as you read this, but you can't tell because they don't interact with any of the particles that make up your body. They slide right through. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory near the South Pole, specifically built to pin down neutrinos, is actually the institution that discovered PKS 1424+240 in the first place because of its super high neutrino emission levels. Solving this puzzle confirms that active galactic nuclei with supermassive black holes are not only powerful accelerators of electrons, but also of protons — the origin of the observed high-energy neutrinos," concludes Kovalev. Reconstructing the spectacular blazar, according to the discovery team, also allows astronomers to peer directly into the "heart" of this jet — and that could be great news for scientists trying to understand the dynamics of these awesome objects. Kovalev explains that it confirms AGNs with supermassive black holes don't only accelerate electrons (negatively charged particles that make up atoms) but also protons. This is a big find, the researcher explains, because that explains the origin of the high-energy neutrinos PKS 1424+240 appears to be spitting out. A study about these results was published on Tuesday (Aug. 12) in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
13-08-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
‘Eye of Sauron' spotted in deep space
Billions of light-years away, a cosmic jet bearing a striking resemblance to the eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings is swirling at the heart of a very active galaxy. The unique cosmic body was spotted thanks to 15 years of observations using the Earth-based Very Long Baseline Ar-ray and is helping scientists better understand the anatomy of cosmic jets,powerful beams of plasma and energy that come from black holes, neutron stars, and other celestial bodies. The unique attributes of this 'Eye of Sauron' cosmic jet is detailed in a study published August 12 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. 'When we reconstructed the image, it looked absolutely stunning,' Yuri Kovalev, study co-author and astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, said in a statement. 'We have never seen anything quite like it—a near-perfect toroidal [doughnut shaped] magnetic field with a jet, pointing straight at us.' The villanesque cosmic jet is spewing out of a blazar called PKS 1424+240. Powered by a supermassive black hole, blazars are a large type of active galaxy nucleus that belong to a class of galaxies called active galactic nuclei. Blazars are a ventral hub of power and light within these galaxies that aren't powered by stars. A blazar's black hole launches a jet of plasma that moves at roughly the speed of light and blazars. As far as blazars go, PKS 1424+240 has long puzzled astronomers. It is the brightest known blazar that emits neutrinos, or tiny subatomic particles that are so difficult to detect they are nicknamed 'ghost particles.' High energy gamma rays also radiate out from PKS 1424+240, making this unique blazar appear to glow. Even with all of these energetic gamma rays and neutrinos, the cosmic jet appeared to move much more slowly than expected. Only the fastest celestial jets were believed to power high-energy emissions like this, and not PKS 1424+240's glacial pace. Using the Very Long Baseline Ar-ray, an array of ten antennas positioned across the continental United States and in Hawaii and St Croix, researchers stitched together the incredible image of the jet coming out of the blazar, which looks unquestionably Lord of the Rings-esque. PKS 1424+240 and its jet are almost exactly aligned with the Earth. This amplifies the high-energy emissions in the jet when astronomers look at it. 'This alignment causes a boost in brightness by a factor of 30 or more,' co-author and astronomer Jack Livingston added. 'At the same time, the jet appears to move slowly due to projection effects—a classic optical illusion.' The rare opportunity to look at the blazar head-on allowed the team to peer directly into the heart of its stunning jet. Using polarized radio signals, the team mapped out the jet's magnetic field and structure. The magnetic field might be shaped like a spiral (called helical) or doughnut shaped (called toroidal). The magnetic field's structure likely plays a major role in how the plasma flows out of a blazar's cosmic jet. [ Related: Astronomers now know how supermassive black holes blast us with energy. ] The discovery is part of the MOJAVE program, a decades-long effort to monitor jets in active galaxies. To monitor these jets, scientists use a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). VLBI connects radio telescopes across the globe to form a giant virtual telescope roughly the size of the Earth. Connecting all of these radio telescopes provides the highest resolution available in astronomy, giving us the fine details of distant cosmic jets. 'When we started MOJAVE, the idea of one day directly connecting distant black hole jets to cosmic neutrinos felt like science fiction,' said MOJAVE co-founder Anton Zensus 'Today, our observations are making it real.' Solve the daily Crossword
Daily Mail
13-08-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Scientists are baffled after spotting the 'Eye of Sauron' in deep space
The Eye of Sauron is an integral part of the Lord of the Rings series. The flaming, floating fiery eyeball, positioned atop a dark tower in Mordor, is a symbol of the Dark Lord's all–seeing power and vigilance. Now, experts have detected a similarly terrifying vision in real life. But rather than looking for Frodo or the Ring, it seems to be peering directly at us from deep space. The image is of a phenomenon called a cosmic jet, which is an extremely powerful stream of plasma and energy emitted from celestial objects. This particular one comes from a blazar – a type of galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole. The PKS 1424+240 blazar is one of the brightest in the sky despite being located billions of light–years away. And as well as a foreboding picture, the discovery may have helped researchers solve a decades–long cosmic puzzle. The blazar has long baffled astronomers as its cosmic jet appeared to move slowly, despite it being one of the brightest sources of high–energy gammas rays and cosmic neutrinos ever observed. This contradicted the belief that only the fastest jets could be behind such exceptional brightness. Using 15 years of ultra–precise radio observations from the Very Long Baseline Array – a system of 10 radio telescopes – researchers were able to stitch together a deep image of the jet at unparalleled resolution. 'When we reconstructed the image, it looked absolutely stunning,' lead author Yuri Kovalev, from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, said. 'We have never seen anything quite like it—a near–perfect toroidal magnetic field with a jet, pointing straight at us.' Since the jet is aligned almost exactly in the direction of Earth, its high–energy radio emissions are dramatically amplified. 'This alignment causes a boost in brightness by a factor of 30 or more,' co–author Jack Livingston said. 'At the same time, the jet appears to move slowly due to projection effects—a classic optical illusion.' This head–on view also gave scientists the extremely rare opportunity to peer directly into the heart of the blazar's jet. Radio signals helped the team map out the structure of the jet's magnetic field, revealing it is likely helical (a spiral) or toroidal (doughnut–shaped). This structure likely plays a key role in accelerating particles to extreme energies, the researchers said. The findings were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them - not even light. They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them. Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around. How they are formed is still poorly understood. Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole. Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are found at the centre of every known massive galaxy. Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun's mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses. When these giant stars die, they also go 'supernova', a huge explosion that expels the matter from the outer layers of the star into deep space.
Time of India
09-08-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Trump's ‘gorilla' approach has actually made it harder for India to do a deal
When Dmitry Grozoubinski started writing 'Why Politicians Lie About Trade', Joe Biden was in the White House. 'I did not see the present developments coming,' he laughs. 'It's been great for my book sales, but not so great for the world.' The former Australian trade negotiator and diplomat who has trained officials from several countries, including India, speaks to Shruti Sonal about how trade policy became a frontline political weapon Trump has doubled tariffs on India to 50% and even halted trade negotiations. Did you think that it would play out this way? I have been following this negotiation and right from the start, one of the consistent things has been the lack of consistency. In a traditional negotiation — for example, between India and the UK — you had an Indian team who knew roughly what its govt wanted and would accept, and you had a UK team that knew what London would accept. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now They would negotiate and then bring the final big questions to the leaders. In this case, the US negotiating teams do not know for a fact what Donald Trump will accept. At the end of a phone call, there is a 50% chance of an announcement where everyone's happy, and a 50% chance of a tariff escalation. When all of this kicked off, I had some optimism that India could do a reasonably good deal, or at least one that sort of turns the Trumpian 'Eye of Sauron' away from India and onto other targets because of the close personal relationship between Modi and Trump, and also because the Indian system itself is quite protectionist. I also naively thought that the US had a real strategic interest in making sure that they have a close working relationship with India. From the US perspective, India would be a natural ally in China's neighbourhood that should be courted and should certainly not be pushed into deepening its engagement with the BRICS. What we saw this week is that none of that was enough. In a recent podcast, you described Trump as the world's 'apex predator' when it came to deals. What did you mean by that? I think that Trump fundamentally believes that any negotiation is effectively kind of a power dynamic, where one side maximises the concessions it can extract and the weaker side gives up what it has to in the face of that power. To butcher a nature metaphor, it's sort of him saying, 'I am going to use US power to go and get things from others because we are the gorilla and they're the monkeys'. The problem with that approach is that it puts other leaders in a position where they have to politically justify any concession they make because it is a national humiliation. Some countries will understand a degree of national humiliation. But when you come to someone like Modi, whose personal image is that of someone who is tough and who fights for India, you actually make it hard for him to do a particularly one-sided deal. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now It would be much, much easier for him to sell a deal with Trump if the latter did not have a tendency to then go on TV and be like 'we own them'. That makes it harder for other countries to give up too much. And if you look at what Trump has actually managed to gain from most countries, it's either fairly made-up stuff or not that much. Given your Ukrainian roots, how do you see Trump's criticism of India buying Russian oil? I was born in Kharkiv, and was there just three months ago, sitting as drones crashed down around me in Kyiv. I don't love the fact that India is buying Russian oil, but I have so much sympathy for the Indian govt because three months ago, I don't think anyone knew what side of that war the US was even on. So, to turn around today and say, 'As we've said all along, India's purchases of Russian oil are unconscionable' feels like a U-turn. Europe was able to wean itself off a lot of Russian oil and gas by throwing an insane amount of money at the problem, and even then, they've still got a huge amount of import. The idea that India can suddenly just flip a switch now that the Trump administration has decided that Russia's not a friend is an insane prospect. Even if my politics are fairly loudly anti-Russian, it feels like Russia's just an excuse. Long before Trump, populist leaders have used tariffs and sanctions. How are his tactics different? The scale is just nowhere close. It is a little bit like comparing nuclear war to a fistfight. The Trump administration finds tariffs appealing for a couple of reasons. First, they are one of the few levers of power that it can wield unilaterally due to a series of weird quirks of past legislation. If they wanted to raise taxes on anything in America, they would have to pass an Act of Congress and get it through the Senate. It would take months and be messy. On the other hand, he is able to wield tariff announcements like a scalpel or a flame-thrower to punish his enemies and reward his friends. Second, he believes he has a story that the American people have bought — that tariffs are paid by foreigners. And the reason tariffs and protectionism will always be rhetorically attractive is that politicians can pretend that the choice that's being made is between locals and foreigners. You've negotiated complex agreements at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Is this the end of the rules-based order in world trade? The WTO, if you strip away all the pageantry, is a series of promises govts made to one another. It has always only been as strong as their commitment to those promises and to the premise those promises are built on. What we saw even before Trump's second term is govts increasingly reassessing some of that calculation. India is among those countries that have said these promises require us to give up too much sovereignty and too much policy space in exchange for the predictability that they give. A legitimate debate that's been raging at the WTO for 25 years. Obviously, it is bad for the system that the US is now just doing whatever it wants. I think the system, however, is holding on to the fact that he probably won't be president forever…but who knows? (laughs) The more important thing to keep in mind here is that other countries haven't started doing the same thing. You don't see India and Sri Lanka start using tariffs as weapons against each other in violation of WTO rules because Trump is doing it. That's giving people confidence that other countries still see value in the rules, especially now that they see what a lawless world might look like. India, for instance, was already making a bit of a trade policy push before Trump came in, but I think there's been a real acceleration in concluding more free-trade agreements than ever. It has also put the spotlight back on BRICS… Regional integration organisation models are really hard to crack, and there's a reason it's only ever really been done in Europe, and even that was considered a minor miracle. The five core BRICS members are not comfortable pooling sovereignty in that way. I keep having to remind people that China and India have literal border skirmishes, while Brazil's on the opposite side of the world. You're never going to get that same level of integration. With that being said, we've just seen the first visit by an Indian leader to China in decades. The US is in real danger of making BRICS work —despite itself.
