- Shredded Mark Wahlberg and bikini-clad Rhea Durham soak up the sun on Barbados vacation Page Six
- Mark Wahlberg and Rhea Durham Pose with All Four Kids in 2023 Holiday Card amid Christmas in Barbados PEOPLE
- Mark Wahlberg, wife enjoy Christmas beach vacation as he shares health tips: ‘No better way to start the day’ Fox News
- Mark Wahlberg Goes Shirtless for Another Barbados Beach Day, Reveals He Still Takes Ice Baths on Vacation Just Jared
- Mark Wahlberg, 52, and wife Rhea Durham, 45, show off their incredibly toned bodies as they hit the beach on B Daily Mail
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While a Black Hole Shredded a Star, NASA’s Hubble Was Watching
A black hole’s invisibility could be considered its greatest strength. Across the fabric of space, these silent beasts drink every drop of light trickling into their gravitational pulses, bottle these rays from the observable universe, and in darkness, wait for a helpless star to appear. Then, they attack.
Now, scientists have announced NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope caught what comes next in such a cosmic nightmare — also known as a tidal disruption event, during which a black hole feasts on its prey, or “accretes” a star. Astronomers shared the news Thursday at an American Astronomical Society meeting.
“Typically, these events are hard to observe. You get maybe a few observations at the beginning of the disruption when it’s really bright,” Peter Maksym of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, said in a statement. “We saw this early enough that we could observe it at these very intense black hole accretion stages.”
Caught in a chasm’s deathly gravitational embrace, this star’s spherical shape was seen aggressively mutated into a twisted strand of glowing matter. Before Hubble’s glassy eyes, the star was viciously ripped apart until it looked like a warped whirlpool of fairy dust, encircling its predator and leaving behind a flaming tail to illuminate the otherwise blank void of space.
Aptly, this is sometimes referred to as a black hole “spaghettifying” matter because even the strongest of objects with the misfortune of treading too close to the gravitationally extreme pit gets turned to flimsy, noodly shreds.
This sequence of artist illustrations shows how a black hole can devour a bypassing star. 1. A normal star passes near a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. 2. The star’s outer gasses are pulled into the black hole’s gravitational field. 3. The star is shredded as tidal forces pull it apart. 4. The stellar remnants are pulled into a doughnut-shaped ring around the black hole, and will eventually fall into the black hole, unleashing a tremendous amount of light and high-energy radiation.
NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)
Meanwhile, the black hole devoured its now-doughnut of a star — scientifically called a torus at this point — pulling in the tortured orb’s gasses while simultaneously spitting material out as though they’re bones of a scrumptious chicken dinner. For context, this torus is thought to be the size of our entire solar system.
“We’re looking somewhere on the edge of that donut. We’re seeing a stellar wind from the black hole sweeping over the surface that’s being projected towards us at speeds of 20 million miles per hour,” Maksym said, which translates to 3 percent the speed of light.
Not only is this huge because, well, it’s absolutely spectacular — but also because galaxies with quiet, or quiescent, black holes like the one Hubble analyzed are expected to devour a star only once every 100,000 years.
“We really are still getting our heads around the event,” Maksym said.
A simulation of a star being ripped to shreds after it approaches a black hole.
DESY, Science Communication Lab
But it didn’t look like a Hollywood movie
To be clear, Hubble didn’t literally capture footage of everything happening in real time. So no, this black hole didn’t look like the iconic Interstellar leviathan from the ‘scope’s vantage point.
I mean, after all, this whole situation occurred some 300 million light-years away from Earth — which also means it happened about 300 million years ago, yet light from the event just reached our planet so we’re seeing it in what we call “the present.”
However, what Hubble did to catch this scene pretty much allows scientists to deduce what it would look like if we could somehow watch the details unfold like a film.
The telescope’s powerful ultraviolet sensitivity was able to study light borne from the shredded star that traveled to Earth over millennia, and astronomers could basically trace all those light signals to draw out how the star contorted, crumpled and creased as it perished.
You can watch an imagining of the event below, per the team’s calculations.
“There are still very few tidal events that are observed in ultraviolet light given the observing time. This is really unfortunate because there’s a lot of information that you can get from the ultraviolet spectra,” Emily Engelthaler of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, said in a statement. “We’re excited because we can get these details about what the debris is doing. The tidal event can tell us a lot about a black hole.”
This event, formally dubbed AT2022dsb, was caught on March 1, 2022, by a network of ground-based telescopes called the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae.
That piqued the interest of Hubble astronomers, who immediately moved to try to get some ultraviolet readings on the violent tidal disruption for as long as possible, to pin down as much information as possible of the star’s evolution as it grew ripped apart by the black hole.
“You shred the star and then it’s got this material that’s making its way into the black hole. And so you’ve got models where you think you know what is going on, and then you’ve got what you actually see,” Maksym said. “This is an exciting place for scientists to be: right at the interface of the known and the unknown.”
Eat High-Protein, Varied Diet to Bulk up, Get Shredded: Dietitian
- A 30-year-old man submitted an average day of eating to be reviewed for Insider’s Nutrition Clinic.
- He told Insider he does intermittent fasting and wants to get “shredded but also bulk up.”
- If you’d like to have your diet reviewed by an expert, fill out this form.
Austin, 30, submitted his eating routine to Insider’s Nutrition Clinic, where qualified dietitians and nutritionists offer advice on readers’ eating habits.
He told Insider he wants to “get shredded but also bulk up.”
“I’m six-foot-seven and have never really ‘filled in’ my massive wing span,” Austin said.
Austin is a courier who drives for a living but works out in the gym six to seven days a week. He lifts weights four times a week and rows or jogs for the other sessions, he said.
Austin also does intermittent fasting, which helped him lose 70 pounds in 2020, he said.
Registered sports dietitian Dr. Emily Werner reviewed Austin’s diet and told Insider that his training will help him to reach his goal, but he needs to fuel himself properly too, and his diet lacks variety.
Austin should make sure he’s training different body parts evenly and pushing himself hard enough to stimulate muscle growth, she said.
Austin does intermittent fasting
Austin doesn’t eat breakfast, he said.
Most days, he cooks one large meal made with 1.5-2 pounds of seafood and vegetables, and sometimes brown rice too, he said. Austin eats this over the course of the day. On lifting days, he eats some immediately afterwards.
Austin often takes an afternoon nap then eats the rest of his meal afterwards, he said.
On cardio days, he usually eats his one big meal around 3 p.m.
Austin tries to eat 150-200 grams of protein daily, mostly from fish, but he also snacks on granola and protein bars, he said.
“Occasionally because of work I eat a large amount of protein right before bed,” Austin said.
Austin’s diet lacks variety, Werner said
Trying to build muscle but also lose fat to “get shredded” is challenging as they have opposing caloric requirements, Werner said. Muscle-building requires a calorie surplus, while fat loss requires a deficit.
If Austin wants to maintain his muscle while losing fat, his high-protein diet is the right way to go, Werner said.
Austin shouldn’t rely too heavily on fish though.
“Although fish are a great lean protein source with additional health benefits like omega-3s, he should be careful not to over-consume fish because of the potential mercury content,” Werner said.
She recommended eating fish two to four times a week, and incorporating other protein sources on the other days.
Austin’s diet needs more variety overall because he is likely to be missing out on micronutrients, which could lead to nutrient deficiencies and negatively impact his training efforts, Werner said.
Getty
She recommended meals like salmon with broccoli and brown rice, chicken thighs with green beans and roasted root vegetables, or steak with roasted peppers and potatoes.
Austin might also benefit from varying his snacks, Werner said.
She recommended snacks that provide both protein and fruits and vegetables for fiber and antioxidants, such as Greek yogurt with fruit and nuts or seeds, cottage cheese with carrots, or a protein smoothie made with milk, whey protein, fruit, and ice.
These could be good before bed too if Austin likes to get some protein in at night, she said.
Recovery is key
“For someone who is working out habitually, energy and muscular recovery are huge,” Werner said, and diet plays a big role in this.
“His diet needs to include a variety of fruits and vegetables that contain the antioxidants and anti-inflammatory micronutrients to promote muscular healing and longevity,” Werner said.
While a balanced diet should provide all the nutrients Austin needs, he could consider supplements to boost recovery and thus his fitness.
“Collagen, creatine, and tart cherries have been utilized for years by elite athletes,” Werner said. “Incorporating these nutrients could help optimize his training sessions and adaptations to that training.”
The advice in this article isn’t a substitute for a professional medical diagnosis or treatment.
The ultimate fate of a star shredded by a black hole
In 2019, astronomers observed the nearest example to date of a star that was shredded, or “spaghettified,” after approaching too close to a massive black hole.
That tidal disruption of a sun-like star by a black hole 1 million times more massive than itself took place 215 million light years from Earth. Luckily, this was the first such event bright enough that astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, could study the optical light from the stellar death, specifically the light’s polarization, to learn more about what happened after the star was torn apart.
Their observations on Oct. 8, 2019, suggest that a lot of the star’s material was blown away at high speed—up to 10,000 kilometers per second—and formed a spherical cloud of gas that blocked most of the high-energy emissions produced as the black hole gobbled up the remainder of the star.
Earlier, other observations of optical light from the blast, called AT2019qiz, revealed that much of the star’s matter was launched outward in a powerful wind. But the new data on the light’s polarization, which was essentially zero at visible or optical wavelengths when the event was at its brightest, tells astronomers that the cloud was likely spherically symmetric.
“This is the first time anyone has deduced the shape of the gas cloud around a tidally spaghetiffied star,” said Alex Filippenko, UC Berkeley professor of astronomy and a member of the research team.
The results support one answer to why astronomers don’t see high-energy radiation, such as X-rays, from many of the dozens of tidal disruption events observed to date: The X-rays, which are produced by material ripped from the star and dragged into an accretion disk around the black hole before falling inward, are obscured from view by the gas blown outward by powerful winds from the black hole.
“This observation rules out a class of solutions that have been proposed theoretically and gives us a stronger constraint on what happens to gas around a black hole,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Kishore Patra, lead author of the study. “People have been seeing other evidence of wind coming out of these events, and I think this polarization study definitely makes that evidence stronger, in the sense that you wouldn’t get a spherical geometry without having a sufficient amount of wind. The interesting fact here is that a significant fraction of the material in the star that is spiraling inward doesn’t eventually fall into the black hole—it’s blown away from the black hole.”
Polarization reveals symmetry
Many theorists have hypothesized that the stellar debris forms an eccentric, asymmetric disk after disruption, but an eccentric disk is expected to show a relatively high degree of polarization, which would mean that perhaps several percent of the total light is polarized. This was not observed for this tidal disruption event.
“One of the craziest things a supermassive black hole can do is to shred a star by its enormous tidal forces,” said team member Wenbin Lu, UC Berkeley assistant professor of astronomy. “These stellar tidal disruption events are one of very few ways astronomers know the existence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies and measure their properties. However, due to the extreme computational cost in numerically simulating such events, astronomers still do not understand the complicated processes after a tidal disruption.”
A second set of observations on Nov. 6, 29 days after the October observation, revealed that the light was very slightly polarized, about 1%, suggesting that the cloud had thinned enough to reveal the asymmetric gas structure around the black hole. Both observations came from the 3-meter Shane telescope at Lick Observatory near San Jose, California, that is fitted with the Kast spectrograph, an instrument that can determine the polarization of light over the full optical spectrum. The light becomes polarized—its electrical field vibrates primarily in one direction—when it scatters off electrons in the gas cloud.
“The accretion disk itself is hot enough to emit most of its light in X-rays, but that light has to come through this cloud, and there are many scatterings, absorptions and reemissions of light before it can escape out of this cloud,” Patra said. “With each of these processes, the light loses some of its photon energy, going all the way down to ultraviolet and optical energies. The final scatter then determines the polarization state of the photon. So, by measuring polarization, we can deduce the geometry of the surface where the final scatter happens.”
Patra noted that this deathbed scenario may apply only to normal tidal disruptions—not “oddballs,” in which relativistic jets of material are expelled out the poles of the black hole. Only more measurements of the polarization of light from these events will answer that question.
“Polarization studies are very challenging, and very few people are well-versed enough in the technique around the world to utilize this,” he said. “So, this is uncharted territory for tidal disruption events.”
Patra, Filippenko, Lu and UC Berkeley researcher Thomas Brink, graduate student Sergiy Vasylyev and postdoctoral fellow Yi Yang reported their observations in a paper that has been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A cloud 100 times larger than Earth’s orbit
The UC Berkeley researchers calculated that the polarized light was emitted from the surface of a spherical cloud with a radius of about 100 astronomical units (au), 100 times farther from the star than Earth is from the sun. An optical glow from hot gas emanated from a region at about 30 au.
The 2019 spectropolarimetric observations—a technique that measures polarization across many wavelengths of light—were of AT2019qiz, a tidal disruption event located in a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Eridanus. The zero polarization of the entire spectrum in October indicates a spherically symmetric cloud of gas—all the polarized photons balance one another. The slight polarization of the November measurements indicates a small asymmetry. Because these tidal disruptions occur so far away, in the centers of distant galaxies, they appear as only a point of light, and polarization is one of few indications of the shapes of objects.
“These disruption events are so far away that you can’t really resolve them, so you can’t study the geometry of the event or the structure of these explosions,” Filippenko said. “But studying polarized light actually helps us to deduce some information about the distribution of the matter in that explosion or, in this case, how the gas—and possibly the accretion disk—around this black hole is shaped.”
Death by spaghettification: Scientists record last moments of star devoured by black hole
More information:
Kishore C Patra et al, Spectropolarimetry of the tidal disruption event AT 2019qiz: a quasispherical reprocessing layer, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2022). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac1727
Kishore C Patra et al, Spectropolarimetry of the tidal disruption event AT 2019qiz: a quasispherical reprocessing layer, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2022). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac1727
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Jaw-Dropping Simulation Shows Stars Shredded as They Get Too Close to a Black Hole
We just got a little more insight into stellar death by black hole.
In a series of simulations, a team of astrophysicists has chucked a bunch of stars at a range of black holes, and recorded what happens.
It’s the first study of its kind, the scientists said, that combines Einstein’s theory of general relativity with realistic models of the densities of main-sequence stars. The results will help us understand what is happening when we observe the flares of light from distant black holes shredding unfortunate stars.
And the simulations, supporting a paper that was published last year, are also gorgeous as heck.
When a star ventures a little too close to a black hole, things turn violent pretty quickly. The extreme gravitational field of the black hole starts deforming and then pulling the star apart, due to what we call tidal forces – the stretching of one body due to the gravitational pull of another.
When a star gets so close to a black hole that the tidal force results in material being stripped from the star, we call that a tidal disruption event.
In the worst-case scenario for the star, there’s no escape. The disruption is total, and some of the star’s material gets slurped down onto the black hole like a spaghetti noodle.
But not every encounter between a black hole and a star ends this way. Some stars have been observed surviving. The simulations, led by astrophysicist Taeho Ryu of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, were designed to find out what factors contributed to a star’s survival.
The team created six virtual black holes, with masses between 100,000 and 50 million times that of the Sun. Each of these black holes then had encounters with eight main-sequence stars, with masses between 0.15 and 10 times that of the Sun.
They found that the main factor that contributed to a star’s survival was the initial density of the star. The denser the star, the more likely it is to survive an encounter with a black hole. In the video above, you can see these encounters play out around a supermassive black hole 1 million times the Sun’s mass. The stars with the highest density are yellow, and the lowest are blue.
The team also found that partial disruptions occur at the same rate as total disruptions, and the proportion of the star’s mass that is lost can be described surprisingly easily using a simple expression.
Future research to fill in the finer details will help model the effects of these encounters, including the heretofore relatively neglected partial disruption events, the researchers said.
This will reveal what can happen to a star after it survives an encounter with a black hole; whether it continues along the main sequence, or turns into a stellar remnant; and if it will continue in orbit around the black hole to meet total disruption at a later date.
The paper accompanying the simulations was published in The Astrophysical Journal in 2020.
Stern raises ire saying in IDF he shredded anonymous complaints
Intelligence Minister Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid) stirred controversy on Sunday after saying he shredded anonymous complaints submitted against officers when he headed the IDF Manpower Directorate.
Stern, the coalition’s leading candidate to head the Jewish Agency, made the comment in a radio interview about an anonymous sexual harassment complaint that was leveled against “R,” the incoming head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency). People who have something to say about others should “do so openly,” he said.
“We cannot support a culture of anonymous accusations – not at the expense of encouraging the complaint,” Stern said.
A video of a female soldier complaining that Stern prohibited her from following through with a sexual harassment complaint aired later on Sunday on Channel 13.
“I was a soldier in Bahad 1 [the IDF’s officer school] between ’95-’97,” the soldier, who identified as G, said in the video in an electronically altered voice.
“One of the NCOs tried to come on to me and sexually harass me,” she said. “We were in the room, me, MK Elazar Stern, my personal commander and the NCO who tried to harass me. And [Stern said] in these words, ‘If you talk about what went on in this room, if you mention what went on in this room or what the NCO tried to do, your days in the army will be dark and bitter. You will be the worst off in the entire world. You will no longer stay in the army.'”
“There are no such things in the world,” Stern said in response to Channel 13’s query. “There is not one case that I know, and I am sure that there may be some now, that are made up. If you say that I summoned them into the room, both the harasser and him, then they did address the issue. Again, it could be that the incident was not handled well,” he said.
Stern added that he did not believe that he actually said those words to the soldier.
“The fact of the matter is that the incident was addressed. And I think the emphasis is on the treatment,” he said.
Stern’s office later issued an official response.
“Complaints brought before the Minister Stern were always treated. Furthermore, the army has a protocol for these complaints,” the response read, referring to the fact that every unit has a person assigned to treating any gender based issues, including complaints of sexual misconduct.
“[Stern] has always acted, and does so to this today, to curb the phenomenon of sexual harrasment, and Stern does not remember this specific case.”
Stern’s comments drew harsh criticism and raised speculation about the viability of his candidacy for the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency. Sources close to Stern said he had sent the text of the interview and spoken to numerous people on the agency’s selection committee, and everyone accepted his clarification.
A veto of two members of the 10-member committee is enough to disqualify a candidate. Stern already did not have a guarantee that he would receive the support of committee members from Likud, Blue and White and the religious-Zionist World Mizrachi movement.
An anonymous letter published on Wednesday accused “R,” who was approved to head the Shin Bet by the government’s vetting committee on Friday, of two unspecified incidents of misconduct. During Friday’s confirmation hearing, “R” managed to convince the committee that the allegations made against him were false.
Stern was quick to clarify that he always “encouraged every female or male soldier who was sexually harassed to complain.
“I have said many times in the past how the culture of sex in authority relations is destructive to the IDF’s moral resilience,” he said. “Every soldier’s complaint regarding sexual harassment was thoroughly investigated.”
MK Elazar Stern (credit: COURTESY/OFFICE OF MK ELAZAR STERN)
Later on Sunday, he elaborated and said: “I would like to apologize deeply for the way my comments have been understood, especially to those who might have felt hurt in any way by them. It is important to note that I never once said that I shredded sexual harassment complaints. The opposite is true.
“From my first day as head of the IDF Manpower Directorate, I completely overhauled the way and manner that sexual harassment complaints were dealt with and ensured that every single case was dealt with in the utmost seriousness. In the interview in question, I was referring to a culture of spurious complaints made against someone on the eve of their promotion after a completely clean record, completely unrelated to sexual harassment complaints,” Stern said.
Helena Glaser, former Women’s International Zionist Organization president and a member of the Jewish Agency chairmanship selection committee, said she intends to ask Stern about how he handled anonymous sexual harassment complaints in the IDF when he has his formal interview for the job on Wednesday.
“Elazar hasn’t been interviewed yet, and when he will, I will put the question before him,” Glaser said. “As a woman who worked most of my life to promote and protect women, I have done a lot. But I cannot voice my opinion now because it would not be fair. Further on, of course, I will.”
This was not the first time that Stern got into trouble for making a controversial statement. Three years ago, he heckled then-minister Miri Regev (Likud) in the Knesset, alleging that her military career was aided by sexual favors.
“I don’t want to talk about how you advanced in the army,” Stern said at the time.
Regev got her revenge on Sunday, saying it was now clear how he had advanced in the army. She called him “shallow, chauvinistic, lacking values and a shame to the kippah he wears.”
Regev said she was shocked that feminist, left-wing and centrist ministers and MKs had not come out against him.
The only coalition MK who came out against Stern was Gaby Lasky (Meretz). Joint List MK Aida Touma-Sliman, who will head the Knesset Committee on the Advancement of the Status of Women, tweeted: “The time has come for men in powerful positions to understand that when a woman complains about a powerful man, she is risking not only her entire future, but putting herself in a position of becoming a target of further assault and claims of denial.”
הגיע הזמן שגברים בעמדות חזקות יבינו שכשאישה מתלוננת על גבר חזק היא מסכנת את עתידה כולו, והופכת למטרה אפשרית לעוד הטרדות ולהכפשות.
תלונות אנונימיות צריכות להיבדק בקפדנות ובזהירות. אבל הן חייבות להיבדק. https://t.co/jhTGsCLvEl— MK Aida Touma-Sliman (@AidaTuma) October 10, 2021
Hagit Pe’er, who heads the Na’amat women’s organization, condemned Stern.
“It is an embarrassment and a disgrace that a publicly appointed government minister chooses to propagate this message to the Israeli public,” she said. He “should remember that the law requires that sexual assault complaints be thoroughly investigated, even when they are anonymous.”
Yael Sherer, the head of Israel’s lobby against sexual violence, who served under Stern in the IDF’s Manpower Directorate, said she was “not surprised by his remarks. He confessed to breaking the law and cooperating with the offenders to prevent disciplinary action against them.”
How This Man Lost Weight and Got Shredded at 43 Years Old
Douglas Driscoll, a 43-year-old CEO from Sydney, Australia, shares his physical and mental transformation with Men’s Health.
As I’m sure is the case with most people, my weight gain happened gradually; I didn’t realize until it was too late. I was stuck in a bit of a rut and the combination of a poor diet, the pernicious affects of alcohol, and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle had a cumulative effect. I was actually still going to the gym three or four times per week, but I was just going through the motions and not putting in anywhere near enough effort.
I’m someone who has always kept myself in decent shape and taken pride in my appearance, so I definitely felt a sense of self-reproach. Rather than dwell on it and feel sorry for myself, however, I decided to take positive action. I knew that if nothing changes, then nothing changes. I found myself wasting far too much time looking at other people’s lives on social media, as opposed to getting up and getting after it myself.
I devised what I call my ‘brains and gains’ initiative, whereby I would spend at least one hour per day dedicated to academic development, and another hour dedicated to resistance training. Whether it be personally or professionally, I have always been very goal-orientated, so when I made the conscious decision to get back into shape, I knew that it needed to be tangible, as you cannot manage what you cannot measure. Rather than merely just having some vague fitness goal, I set myself the ambitious target of getting down to 8% body fat, while simultaneously increasing muscle mass.
Historically, I had always worked out on my own, but I realised that if I was to get into the best shape of my life, then I would need to enrol the help and support of the best in the business, which is why I turned to Nick Ellaway and the team at Ultimate Performance in Sydney. Although I have always been extremely self-motivated, they gave me that extra impetus and held me very accountable. I know that it’s a bit cliched, but I genuinely believe that motivation is what gets you started, but it’s discipline that keeps you going.
That meant making some serious sacrifices when it came to my diet, as it’s true what they say – a six-pack is made in the kitchen, not in the gym. As tough as it was, I immediately cut out all processed food and reduced alcohol consumption almost altogether. In consultation with professional nutritionists and the team at Ultimate Performance Sydney, we developed a tailored, protein-rich nutrition plan. I became very fastidious about everything I consumed and diligently tracked my calories and nutrients using the My Fitness Pal app.
Managing my appetite was certainly very challenging, so finding satiating food while adhering to a heavily calorie-controlled diet was essential. Thankfully, protein is shown to be the most satiating macronutrient and is thought to have the highest thermic effect. I tried my best to mix things up, but my staple diet became chicken. I started to eat so much chicken, I was worried that I might start sprouting feathers! I would always have a generous portion of greens every day as an accompaniment, as not only are they a healthy form of appetite suppressant, they also help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. When I got peckish between meals, I would snack on a punnet of berries.
As for my workouts, I was doing high-intensity resistance training five to six times per week, working with my trainer twice a week and then doing the remaining sessions on my own. Come rain or shine, I would also walk or run 12 km every day.
Let’s face it, everyone’s a self-professed health and fitness expert and I was no different, so it was really important for me to have an open mind and to trust the process; otherwise what’s the point in engaging a trainer in the first place. Nick is a stickler for detail, and helped eradicate any bad habits and soon had me executing every rep with perfect form. Not only would he explain the physical function of each exercise, he would also educate me on the mechanics, which was real eye-opener for me. The mechanics seem to be the most overlooked, misapplied and misunderstood aspect of performing any exercise, yet are arguably the most important.
Over the course of 14 weeks, I lost nearly 9 kgs (19.8 pounds) in fat mass and reduced my body fat by 8%, while adding around 1 kg (2.2 pounds) of lean muscle.
For me, this wasn’t just one of those body transformation challenges, it was more about making lasting changes to both my lifestyle and mindset. Being my own boss, self-motivation can sometimes be a challenge, so a welcome side effect is that I have become incredibly structured and disciplined again, not just in my training, but with my work. I have also seen an improvement in cognitive function – I just feel so much sharper.
I often say that I hate the thought of having to go to the gym, but I definitely hate the feeling of not going even more. Regular exercise definitely helps improve my mood and decreases any feelings of anxiety or stress. Whereas before I would have persistent fatigue, I definitely have more energy now and am just generally more positive.
I cannot stress how difficult it was to achieve my goal, but I’m so proud of myself for doing so. That said, it’s unrealistic to maintain that body composition year round, nor would I necessarily want to. Moving forward, it’s about finding that all important balance between lifestyle and fitness. My reverse diet has gone exactly to plan and five months on, I am pleased to report that I am still in fighting shape and now around 10% body fat. I now consume approximately 2,600 calories per day. I still work out four to five times per week, and now average 10 km a day.
To anyone who is at the start of their own journey, I would say; the hardest thing about getting started, is actually getting started. My advice is to be very clear on your objectives from the outset and then set a series of mini-goals. These need to be realistic, measurable and achievable. I would highly recommend using an app that tracks your diet and exercise. If you have the financial means to do so, recruit a personal trainer to help you. This will immediately provide some accountability. If you’ve booked and paid for a session with a personal trainer, you are far more likely to turn up to the gym. Do your research though and look for one with a proven track record. And finally, do not underestimate how important your daily steps are. Taking a long walk each day is one of the easiest ways to improve your fitness. It doesn’t cost anything either.
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How I Lost Weight and Got Shredded at 43 Years Old
Douglas Driscoll, a 43-year-old CEO from Sydney, Australia, shares his physical and mental transformation with Men’s Health.
As I’m sure is the case with most people, my weight gain happened gradually; I didn’t realize until it was too late. I was stuck in a bit of a rut and the combination of a poor diet, the pernicious affects of alcohol, and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle had a cumulative effect. I was actually still going to the gym three or four times per week, but I was just going through the motions and not putting in anywhere near enough effort.
I’m someone who has always kept myself in decent shape and taken pride in my appearance, so I definitely felt a sense of self-reproach. Rather than dwell on it and feel sorry for myself, however, I decided to take positive action. I knew that if nothing changes, then nothing changes. I found myself wasting far too much time looking at other people’s lives on social media, as opposed to getting up and getting after it myself.
I devised what I call my ‘brains and gains’ initiative, whereby I would spend at least one hour per day dedicated to academic development, and another hour dedicated to resistance training. Whether it be personally or professionally, I have always been very goal-orientated, so when I made the conscious decision to get back into shape, I knew that it needed to be tangible, as you cannot manage what you cannot measure. Rather than merely just having some vague fitness goal, I set myself the ambitious target of getting down to 8% body fat, while simultaneously increasing muscle mass.
Historically, I had always worked out on my own, but I realised that if I was to get into the best shape of my life, then I would need to enrol the help and support of the best in the business, which is why I turned to Nick Ellaway and the team at Ultimate Performance in Sydney. Although I have always been extremely self-motivated, they gave me that extra impetus and held me very accountable. I know that it’s a bit cliched, but I genuinely believe that motivation is what gets you started, but it’s discipline that keeps you going.
That meant making some serious sacrifices when it came to my diet, as it’s true what they say – a six-pack is made in the kitchen, not in the gym. As tough as it was, I immediately cut out all processed food and reduced alcohol consumption almost altogether. In consultation with professional nutritionists and the team at Ultimate Performance Sydney, we developed a tailored, protein-rich nutrition plan. I became very fastidious about everything I consumed and diligently tracked my calories and nutrients using the My Fitness Pal app.
Managing my appetite was certainly very challenging, so finding satiating food while adhering to a heavily calorie-controlled diet was essential. Thankfully, protein is shown to be the most satiating macronutrient and is thought to have the highest thermic effect. I tried my best to mix things up, but my staple diet became chicken. I started to eat so much chicken, I was worried that I might start sprouting feathers! I would always have a generous portion of greens every day as an accompaniment, as not only are they a healthy form of appetite suppressant, they also help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes. When I got peckish between meals, I would snack on a punnet of berries.
As for my workouts, I was doing high-intensity resistance training five to six times per week, working with my trainer twice a week and then doing the remaining sessions on my own. Come rain or shine, I would also walk or run 12 km every day.
Let’s face it, everyone’s a self-professed health and fitness expert and I was no different, so it was really important for me to have an open mind and to trust the process; otherwise what’s the point in engaging a trainer in the first place. Nick is a stickler for detail, and helped eradicate any bad habits and soon had me executing every rep with perfect form. Not only would he explain the physical function of each exercise, he would also educate me on the mechanics, which was real eye-opener for me. The mechanics seem to be the most overlooked, misapplied and misunderstood aspect of performing any exercise, yet are arguably the most important.
Over the course of 14 weeks, I lost nearly 9 kgs (19.8 pounds) in fat mass and reduced my body fat by 8%, while adding around 1 kg (2.2 pounds) of lean muscle.
For me, this wasn’t just one of those body transformation challenges, it was more about making lasting changes to both my lifestyle and mindset. Being my own boss, self-motivation can sometimes be a challenge, so a welcome side effect is that I have become incredibly structured and disciplined again, not just in my training, but with my work. I have also seen an improvement in cognitive function – I just feel so much sharper.
I often say that I hate the thought of having to go to the gym, but I definitely hate the feeling of not going even more. Regular exercise definitely helps improve my mood and decreases any feelings of anxiety or stress. Whereas before I would have persistent fatigue, I definitely have more energy now and am just generally more positive.
I cannot stress how difficult it was to achieve my goal, but I’m so proud of myself for doing so. That said, it’s unrealistic to maintain that body composition year round, nor would I necessarily want to. Moving forward, it’s about finding that all important balance between lifestyle and fitness. My reverse diet has gone exactly to plan and five months on, I am pleased to report that I am still in fighting shape and now around 10% body fat. I now consume approximately 2,600 calories per day. I still work out four to five times per week, and now average 10 km a day.
To anyone who is at the start of their own journey, I would say; the hardest thing about getting started, is actually getting started. My advice is to be very clear on your objectives from the outset and then set a series of mini-goals. These need to be realistic, measurable and achievable. I would highly recommend using an app that tracks your diet and exercise. If you have the financial means to do so, recruit a personal trainer to help you. This will immediately provide some accountability. If you’ve booked and paid for a session with a personal trainer, you are far more likely to turn up to the gym. Do your research though and look for one with a proven track record. And finally, do not underestimate how important your daily steps are. Taking a long walk each day is one of the easiest ways to improve your fitness. It doesn’t cost anything either.
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Lone high-energy neutrino likely came from shredded star in distant galaxy
Enlarge / The remains of a shredded star formed an accretion disk around the black hole whose powerful tidal forces ripped it apart. This created a cosmic particle accelerator spewing out fast subatomic particles.
Roughly 700 million years ago, a tiny subatomic particle was born in a galaxy far, far away and began its journey across the vast expanses of our universe. That neutrino finally reached the Earth’s South Pole last October, setting off detectors buried deep beneath the Antarctic ice. A few months earlier, a telescope in California had recorded a bright glow emanating from the friction of that same distant galaxy—evidence of a so-called “tidal disruption event” (TDE), most likely the result of a star being shredded by a supermassive black hole.
According to two new papers (here and here) published in the journal Nature Astronomy, that lone neutrino was likely born from the TDE, which serves as a cosmic-scale particle accelerator near the center of the distant galaxy, spewing out high-energy subatomic particles as the star’s matter is consumed by the black hole. This finding also sheds light on the origin of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, a question that has puzzled astronomers for decades.
“The origin of cosmic high-energy neutrinos is unknown, primarily because they are notoriously hard to pin down,” said co-author Sjoert van Velzen, a postdoc at New York University at the time of the discovery. “This result would be only the second time high-energy neutrinos have been traced back to their source.”
Neutrinos travel very near the speed of light. John Updike’s 1959 poem, “Cosmic Gall,” pays tribute to the two most defining features of neutrinos: they have no charge and, for decades, physicists believed they had no mass (they actually have a teeny bit of mass). Neutrinos are the most abundant subatomic particle in the universe, but they very rarely interact with any type of matter. We are constantly being bombarded every second by millions of these tiny particles, yet they pass right through us without our even noticing. That’s why Isaac Asimov dubbed them “ghost particles.”
That low rate of interaction makes neutrinos extremely difficult to detect, but because they are so light, they can escape unimpeded (and thus largely unchanged) by collisions with other particles of matter. This means they can provide valuable clues to astronomers about distant systems, further augmented by what can be learned with telescopes across the electromagnetic spectrum, as well as gravitational waves. Together, these difference sources of information have been dubbed “multi-messenger” astronomy.
The majority of neutrinos that reach the Earth come from our own Sun, but every now and then, neutrino detectors pick up the rare neutrino that hails from further afield. Such is the case with this latest detection: a neutrino that began its journey in a faraway, as yet-unnamed-galaxy in the constellation Delphinus, born from the death throes of a shredded star.
Enlarge / A view of the accretion disc around the supermassive black hole, with jet-like structures flowing away from the disc. The extreme mass of the black hole bends spacetime, allowing the far side of the accretion disc to be seen as an image above and below the black hole.
DESY, Science Communication Lab
As we’ve reported previously, it’s a popular misconception that black holes behave like cosmic vacuum cleaners, ravenously sucking up any matter in their surroundings. In reality, only stuff that passes beyond the event horizon—including light—is swallowed up and can’t escape, although black holes are also messy eaters. That means that part of an object’s matter is actually ejected out in a powerful jet. If that object is a star, the process of being shredded (or “spaghettified”) by the powerful gravitational forces of a black hole occurs outside the event horizon, and part of the star’s original mass is ejected violently outward. This in turn can form a rotating ring of matter (aka an accretion disk) around the black hole that emits powerful X-rays and visible light.
Tidal disruption describes the large forces created when a small body passes very close to a much larger one, like a star that strays too close to a supermassive black hole. “The force of gravity gets stronger and stronger the closer you get to something. That means the black hole’s gravity pulls the star’s near side more strongly than the star’s far side, leading to a stretching effect,” said co-author Robert Stein of DESY in Germany. “As the star gets closer, this stretching becomes more extreme. Eventually it rips the star apart, and then we call it a tidal disruption event. It’s the same process that leads to ocean tides on Earth, but luckily for us, the moon doesn’t pull hard enough to shred the Earth.”
TDEs are likely quite common in our universe, even though only a few have been detected to date. For instance, in 2018, astronomers announced the first direct image of the aftermath of a star being shredded by a black hole 20 million times more massive than our Sun, in a pair of colliding galaxies called Arp 299 about 150 million light years from Earth. And last fall, astronomers recorded the final death throes of a star being shredded by a supermassive black hole, publishing the discovery in Nature Astronomy.
The glow from this most recent TDE was first detected on April 9, 2019 by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at California’s Mount Palomar observatory, which has spotted more than 30 such events since it came online 2018. Nearly five months later, on October 1, 2019, the IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole recorded the signal from a highly energetic neutrino originating from the same direction as the TDE. Just how energetic was it? Co-author Anna Franckowiak of DESY pegged the energy at over 100 teraelectronvolts (TEV), 10 times the maximum energy for subatomic particles that can be produced by the Large Hadron Collider.
Enlarge / Artistic rendering of the IceCube lab at the South Pole. A distant source emits neutrinos that are then detected below the ice by IceCube sensors.
Ice Cube/NSF
The likelihood of detecting this solitary high-energy neutrino was just 1 in 500. “This is the first neutrino linked to a tidal disruption event, and it brings us valuable evidence,” said Stein. “Tidal disruption events are not well understood. The detection of the neutrino points to the existence of a central, powerful engine near the accretion disc, spewing out fast particles. And the combined analysis of data from radio, optical and ultraviolet telescopes gives us additional evidence that the TDE acts as a gigantic particle accelerator.”
It’s yet one more example of all the new knowledge to be gained by combining multiple data sources to get different perspectives on the same celestial event. “The combined observations demonstrate the power of multi-messenger astronomy,” said co-author Marek Kowalski of DESY and Humboldt University in Berlin. “Without the detection of the tidal disruption event, the neutrino would be just one of many. And without the neutrino, the observation of the tidal disruption event would be just one of many. Only through the combination could we find the accelerator and learn something new about the processes inside.”
As for the future, “We might only be seeing the tip of the iceberg here. In the future, we expect to find many more associations between high-energy neutrinos and their sources,” said Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was not directly involved in the study. “There is a new generation of telescopes being built that will provide greater sensitivity to TDEs and other prospective neutrino sources. Even more essential is the planned extension of the IceCube neutrino detector that would increase the number of cosmic neutrino detections at least tenfold.”
DOI: Nature Astronomy, 2021. 10.1038/s41550-020-01295-8
DOI: Nature Astronomy, 2021. 10.1038/s41550-021-01305-3 (About DOIs).
Ghost particle that crashed into Antarctica traced back to star shredded by black hole
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A star being ripped to shreds after it approaches a black hole. Scientists have detected a neutrino — the “ghost particle” — from such an event for the first time.
DESY, Science Communication Lab
On Oct. 1, 2019, Earth was struck by an invisible, high-energy cosmic bullet moving at almost the speed of light. Trillions of these intergalactic bullets pass through our bodies every second without us even knowing, so there’s no great concern for the planet — but this particular projectile was special. At the bottom of the world, the ghostly particle met its end after colliding with an ice molecule. Fortunately, it did so right next to an extremely sensitive detector embedded underneath the South Pole.
The detection set off an intergalactic hunt for the celestial gunslinger. What had fired the bullet?
In new research, published in the journal Nature Astronomy on Monday, scientists detail the detection of a subatomic particle — known as a neutrino — at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. Using data from the Zwicky Transient Facility at California’s Palomar Observatory, researchers were able to trace the origins of the subatomic bullet back to an extreme event some 700 million years ago: the cataclysmic destruction of a star as it was shredded by a black hole.
It’s the first time such an event has been linked to a neutrino detection.
Neutrinos are often described as “ghost particles” because the have no electric charge and have vanishingly small masses. Like light, they travel in basically a straight line from their destination. Other charged particles are at the mercy of magnetic fields, but neutrinos just barrel through the cosmos without impediment. We know they pour out of the core of the sun in huge quantities, and on Earth we can create them in nuclear reactors and particle accelerators.
In April 2019, the Zwicky facility detected a bright glow around a black hole some 700 million light-years away. The flare of light was produced when a star traveled too close to the black hole, which is around 30 million times more massive than the sun. The immense gravity of the black hole stretched the star and eventually it was spaghettified, ripped apart by the extreme forces. This is known as a “tidal disruption event,” or TDE.
The violent end for the star is a brilliant beginning for astronomers. They were able to link the TDE to the detection of the neutrino by IceCube. The researchers theorize the TDE threw about half of the shattered star into space while the rest settled around the black hole in a gigantic “accretion disc” of hot, bright dust, gas and debris. The wild energies around the black hole in the disc result in huge jets of matter being shot out of the system. These jets can last for hundreds of days and could explain the small lapse in time between seeing the TDE and detecting the neutrino at IceCube.
Astrophysicists reason this shows the existence of a “central engine” that operates like a natural particle accelerator and can create high-energy neutrinos, some of which may collide with the Earth.
“The neutrino emerged relatively late, half a year after the star feast had started,” said Walter Winter, a theoretical astrophysicist with the German Electron Synchrotron, or DESY. “Our model explains this timing naturally.”
Winter and co-author Cecilia Lunardini published their modeling in the same issue of Nature Astronomy on Monday.
Here’s what the accretion disc around a supermassive black hole looks like. Jets flow away from the central black hole. The light on top of the black hole is actually from the opposite side of the hole — the black hole bends spacetime so it appears as if it’s ringed with light.
DESY, Science Communication Lab
The discovery of a neutrino emanating from a TDE is a breakthrough for astronomers hoping to understand the universe in new ways. Scientists have only been able to trace a neutrino back to its source once previously. It was IceCube that made that detection, too. In 2017, researchers at the observatory detected the telltale signature of a neutrino and alerted astronomers to the phenomenon. Telescopes were able to trace the source of the neutrino back to a distant galaxy that housed a “blazar” — a huge black hole surrounded by an accretion disc with a jet aimed directly at the observer.
The two detections both show that black holes are intergalactic gunslingers, firing ghost particles from deep space across the universe. This could help give astronomers insight on the processes occurring close to a black hole and could even begin to solve a mystery that’s haunted astrophysics since the 1960s: where do the ultra-high-energy cosmic rays that sometimes smash into Earth’s atmosphere come from?
Researchers have detected a number of TDE’s since the Zwicky Transient Facility began surveying the skies, and in the future more sensitive telescopes may be able to further link these high-energy particles to the events. IceCube will also be critical for improving our understanding. The observatory is set to get an upgrade during the 2022 and 2023 Antarctica seasons, pandemic notwithstanding, which should increase the number of neutrino detections by a factor of 10.
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