soundwaves

Bay Area readers are probably familiar with the group Amor Digital, which he helped form with DJs 99% Lean and the ever-illustrious Namasté Shawty. In a year + some change they’ve made significant waves across the Bay and the country at large through their Central American DJ collective. By staking their claim at long-standing local institutions which, like the Black, Brown, and queer folks who occupy them, must fight the nefarious forces of gentrification and oppressive capitalism each day, Amor Digital parties bring into a physical and aural context the most crucial reminders for our cities. These communities not only have every right to safely remain in the places they’ve called home over generations, but deserve the rights and autonomy to dictate their own futures and to move freely through different spaces without fear of violence or disenfranchisement for simply existing as they are.

GOLPE DE ESTADO brings this spirit of resistance and curiosity back to the digital realm. The EP offers a really enjoyable listening experience where the beats are just as suitable pounding from club speakers on the dance floor, as they are exuding from headphones to aid creative focus (see above ramblings for my own testament to the latter). The tracks progress from a dreamy and almost inquisitive state to one filled with decisive force and a fiery energy. What I love the most about it, though, is you can truly hear how much the dude enjoyed making each song. It’s an impressive and wavy little compilation to boast as a debut release, making it wild to think he didn’t even start learning production until sometime last year. Thankfully we have a chance to glimpse into that learning process as he continues to grow and thrive as an artist [insert blue butterfly emoji].

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science

a star is born

Did you know black holes could fuck?

Courting rituals for the massive gravitational vacuums are, in many ways, a mystery, but scientists understand that the process can take up to 100,000 years to finalize after the first date. Maybe this feels like a loooong stretch of time to be dating when compared to our blips of existence within this universe, but if we lived on a plane where time and space were infinite, I’m sure you’d take your sweet time to find your soulmate, too. This is because a one-night stand has a very different meaning for binary black holes. Once the two complete the merge, they literally birth another universe and become one for eternity. There’s no divorce court, no second-chances, no polyamory in space. You get one chance to choose a partner to whom you’ll be eternally bound by the laws of astrophysics. This is not a fucking game.

Sounds interesting enough, but what are the clues which may hint a couple of supermassive black holes are planning to consummate their union? Scientists are able to view black holes through what is known as their active galactic nucleis (AGNs). Even though black holes don’t emit any light, the crazy gravitational pull around them sucks in all the nearby gas, dust, and starry shit to display a swirling vortex consisting of bright lights and fireworks. Unsurprisingly, this chaotic energy is amplified in the event that two distinct AGNs approach one another. The sexual tension is palpable, generating a flare of light exuding from one of the AGNs, which can apparently be viewed by scientists here on Earth.

Astrophysics researchers at Harvard and the Smithsonian have indeed detected a supposed romantic flame faraway in space which may indicate that two black holes are about to turn it out. Researchers have nicknamed this visual flare “Spikey” because of how it showed up as an unusual spike on an AGN. Seems appropriate enough, since Spikey does kind of sound like a clever innuendo for an erection. If Spikey protrudes yet again in the spring, then the engagement between two holes will be officially official. For now, the answer is still uncertain.

The big question at the center of all this is whether or not supermassive black holes swallow each other in entirety like smaller ones do upon merging, or if by sheer force of personality (mass) they eternally orbit within a few parsecs (1 parsec ≈ 3.26 light years) of each other, thus retaining a semblance of their individuality once wed. Spikey has the potential to give researchers a novel insight into “the final parsec problem…where gravity is not strong enough to overcome the centrifugal force of each black hole’s orbit to pull the pair closer together. Without a steady influx of material to shake things up, the two may stop just shy of merging and remain in a holding pattern over the lifetime of the universe”.

This shit literally made my head SPIN and thus I’m incredibly proud of/impressed by the 23 year-old (!!!!) grad student/savant/all around bad bitch Betty Hu AKA “the first author of the preprint paper reporting Spikey’s discovery”. She and some of the other researchers were recently interviewed for Scientific American and I recommend you read the full article here to get a more accurate/insightful look into this groundbreaking research.