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WHAT DO YOU SEE WHEN YOU TAKE A PHOTO OF A BLACK HOLE?

     From Worldometer (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):

          DAY  USA  WORLD    Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9     1093     4732         1185        246       82
July    22      1205     7128         1293      1120     572
Aug    12      1504     6556        1242        835     130
Sept     9      1208      6222       1136       1168       82
Oct     21      1225      6849         571        703       85
Nov    25       2304    12025        620        518      118
Dec    30       3880    14748       1224       299      465
Jan     14        4142    15512         1151        189       712
Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398
Mar     2        1989     9490        1726       110      194
April   6         906     11787         4211       631       37
May    4         853    13667        3025      3786      59 
June   1         287    10637         2346      3205      95
 July   7          251      8440        1595         817     411
Aug    4          656    10120        1118         532     423 
Sept  22       2228      9326          839        279     124
Oct    6         2102      8255          543        315       59
Nov   3         1436      7830         186         458       23
Dec    1        1633      8475          266        477       28
Jan    7         2025      6729         148        285      140
       28          2732   10,516         779        862      133
Feb  2           2990   12,012         946        991      175
      24           1823     9,809        996        304       40
Mar     2        1778     7,756         335        173        28
         11        1022      6002         465           88       28
         16         982      5579         354           59       40
         18         721       5214         380           69       39
         23         771       4695         294           67         6

Summary:
  • The USA is not improving in new deaths/day, and we are the highest by far.  
  • Russia was #2 with 429 new deaths yesterday.
  • New cases and deaths yesterday (per million population in parentheses)
    • World  1,847,584 (237)  and 4695 (0.6) new deaths
    • #1  South Korea  490,707 (9565) and 291 (5.7) new deaths
    • #2  Germany  301,544 (3677) and 331 (3.9) new deaths
    • #3  France  145,560 (2222) new cases with 101 (1.5) new deaths
    • #4  Vietnam  127,883 (1294) new cases with 61 (0.6) new deaths
    • #10  Austria  53,071 (5897)  new cases with 43 (4.8) new deaths
    • #11  USA  32,023 (96) new cases and 771 (2.3) new deaths
    • Hawaii 110 (79) new cases and 5 (3.6) new deaths
  • Keep in mind that 61 million people die/year, or 167,123/day, which means that COVID-19 deaths were less than 3% of all deaths in the world yesterday.  
  • At what point will the World Health Organization declare that this pandemic is over?  Good question.
    • In an article from a year ago one statement was that the pandemic would have been over if other countries did what New Zealand and Vietnam did.  Well, these two countries are today among the worst.  You see above the data of Vietnam above, but regarding New Zealand, yesterday they had 20,154 new cases, almost as much as the USA, or a new cases/million rate of 4030, or 42 times that of the U.S.
    • The Delta variant had already caused turmoil, but who knew that a more contagious Omicron variant would appear, resulting in a new wave?  Now there is an Omicron subvariant, which should only result in a slight uptick of new cases.  Otherwise, deaths will more and more decline, especially as the world get vaccinated.
    • That same article indicated that a variety of reasons influenced WHO to end previous pandemics, but that those viruses did not go away.
      • The Spanish Flu H1N1 virus is still here today, but it has lost potency because human immune systems learned how to fend it off.
      • Most of those viruses today just contribute to the seasonal flu, as COVID-19 will too.
    • An article from earlier this year indicated other surmisals:
      • The pandemic will still be a pandemic even if there are only 1500 deaths/day, which yesterday was 4695.
      • The pandemic will just fade away and society will continue on at a new normal.
      • No doubt that the Omicron variant will HELP, because it is so contagious, with mild symptoms, especially for the vaccinated, plus emergence of treatment processes.
      • The unvaccinated world will probably mean that this pandemic could continue on for a while, especially if Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia and South Korea are examples of what could happen to Africa and other parts of the world.

The Hubble Telescope just released an image of NGC 1566, the Spanish Dancer Galaxy, around 40 million light years away in the constellation Dorado.  Actually astrophysics are guessing at the distance, for the estimate is more accurately 20 to 70 million light years.  At the center is that supermassive black hole, which confuses me because I thought it would be black.  Here is an article that tries to explain the color of a black hole.  The James Webb Space Telescope has this black hole on its list, so the matter will be later clarified.

Three years ago, The Event Horizon Telescope supposedly obtained the first image of a black hole, and this was black, and 6.5 billion times more massive than our sun, or a supermassive black hole at the center of  Galaxy Messier 87, located 50 million light years away.  Here is a You Tube explanation of what you are seeing.

So was this Spanish Dancer Galaxy black hole the second photo?  There are around a 100 black holes indicated by Wikipedia.  Here is another list of supermassive black holes.

Why has no photo ever been taken of our Milky Way black hole, which is located only about 25,000 light years away?  Apparently Earth is not positioned to do so using optical technology.  An analogy is like trying to see the center of a vast forest while standing along the fringe.  We need to send a spacecraft hundreds of light years to the face of our galaxy to take that photo.

But there is The Unicorn, a black hole only 1,500 light years away.  It is at this time the smallest known black hole in in our Milky Way Galaxy, three times the mass of our sun and in a binary relationship with a red giant star.  When you take this photo, you will only see that star.

Theoretically you can't take a photo of a black hole because it absorbs light.  So what should be the color image of a black hole?  Don't know.  So far, black and brightly white, as also depicted in these artists' renderings.

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