#horizon for the semester. objectively i know this is because i was up later than i should have been doing astrophotography whiskey u can hi

[intertexts]

rattling at the bars of my cage let me outttttttt

[kotou97]

Looking for a purpose

The silence of this city is deafening. It leaves me alone with my thoughts and that’s something very dangerous. 

It’s been a long while since the last time I wrote something, and the reason is simple: I was happy enough. I didn’t need this as a method of coping with the struggles of life. 

So many things have changed: I’ve been to Iceland and it was amazing. Being one with nature was really refreshing and it gave me time to think, as well. Work kept me busy and gave me a purpose. I discovered so many new landscapes and made new friends. I found myself at a party, in Reykjavik, with other gay people, and while I was gazing at the horizon over the city, I thought “How amazing is it that I’m here?” How crazy that random events in my life led me to be there in that very moment. I started crying without even realizing. I was messaging my friend from the US (that I met in Japan) about my internalized homophobia and my other friend came outside on the balcony to console me. All of my “past lives” intertwining and still affecting me to this day. It’s crazy to think about. All of the experiences, the people I’ve met. They’ve all shaped what I am today and I miss them so fucking much. It’s true that I don’t suffer from homesickness too much, but I do have nostalgia. Nostalgia from all the places where I’ve lived. And all the amazing people that I’ve met. I think about them when I’m trying to fall asleep. I can’t help wishing I could teleport myself not just to different places, but to various periods of my life.

I’ve only started living when I arrived in the US. The first time I lived away from home. It was like I could finally breathe and I was craving air so much. New experiences fuelled me... then why am I not happy now?

I think it’s mainly because I’ve lost my target, a clear objective. Last semester I was studying for grades and passing the JLPT. What’s my goal, now? Is it a Summer internship? Is it working in Iceland again? Is it my future career that scares the shit out of me? It’s hard to say and it could be all of those things.

I took a well-deserved rest back in Italy, during the Winter holidays, but I feel like that still hasn’t ended. I couldn’t break my laziness spiral and couldn’t get back to being productive. I achieved 40 hours of productiveness last semester... and now I basically only go to class. What am I doing with my life? Should I try to break out of the cycle or should I just give in?

I feel best when I’m busy. When I have a routine and things to do. I have friends here, when I’m hanging out it’s great. It’s when I come home that I waste my days away and end up watching YouTube all day. It’s not even an exaggeration. I’m not proud of myself, right now. 

I think the university environment also doesn’t help when it comes to stimulating and inspiring me. I don’t hate my classes, but most of them are just not that remarkable and their teaching method is debatable, to say the least. 

In general, I think I’m just scared of the future and decisions are haunting me. I’m scared that if I don’t make the right decision, I’m going to regret it later and mess up my whole life. Maybe I should just be more confident; after all, my life turned out okay since I left home and started university.

The only goal I can think of is the JET program as Coordinator of International Relations. Although, it might be just too ambitious for me. Furthermore, I might have to choose it over the MEXT scholarship to study in Japan. I have the N1 (a whole new can of worms...), but I feel like I should be a lot more fluent in order to get the job. Maybe I should find an internship to improve my chances of getting the CIR position in the future... but it’s hard to choose that over a full-paying job.

I just wish things were clearer and that I had clear goals for my future. Maybe I’m just overthinking and I should just enjoy my experience here in Belgium. 

It’s hard to say, but things need to change if I’m going to enjoy this experience to the fullest. I’ll try studying more and maybe figure out what it is I want from life. But that’s easier said than done. 

I know this period is temporary and it’s just because I haven’t been active enough. I need to wake up and get off my ass. I need to get back to being my best self. 

[bodhisattvapath]

Varieties of Enlightenment

Back in the mid-seventies I was in the Air Force, and was stationed on Pope Air Force Base near Fort Bragg, a huge army base covering over 200 square miles of central North Carolina. I was 18 years old and bored out of my mind. The military had thoroughly corrupted the nearby town of Fayetteville and my only reprieve from boredom was to drive to the coast on Friday evening and spend the weekend on the beaches of Cape Hatteras and Okracoke Island. Laying on the beach at night listening to the ocean waves lulled my mind to a restful state just at the cusp of sleep. Even though I never seemed to fully fall asleep, I always seemed to rise with the first sunlight coming over the flat, watery horizon feeling refreshed. I felt very awake, aware, and alive. This feeling seemed to last throughout the day and even into the first day or two of the work week. By Friday, the effect had worn off and I was ready for another trip to the Outer Banks.

After I got out of the Air Force in May of ‘76, I moved out to Colorado Springs where my sister was living to look for a job. I wasn’t able to find a job but did go on some great back-packing trips with my brother-in-law. Up in the Rockies as you climb the trails, the wind blowing through the aspens and conifers sings enchanting songs, calming and pacifying the mind. There is no desire to think of anything but the sound of rustling leaves high above, whispers through fir needles, the scent of pine and loamy soil, and the slow, rhythmic pace of footsteps and breathing. It was effortless to be deeply settled in the present moment and more fully aware of self and environment. Running streams chanted in a thousand tongues all singing praise to each fleeting moment. I found these backpacking trips as necessary as sleeping and eating. They were healing, nature itself the doctor. They addressed a deep longing that I didn’t even know that I had and all I knew was that I wanted more of this sweet contentment that the mountains offered.

I briefly moved back to my home town in Illinois and found a job in a machine shop. I was a terrible mill operator and was soon let go, but while I was living there I went into the Karmel Korn shop I used to visit as a kid and saw a book called The TM Book. I was fascinated by the name, “Transcendental Meditation”. What does it mean? What would it be like to “transcend” thought? A few weeks later, I had returned to my pre-Air Force employer in Springfield, Illinois and as I was walking down the street, I saw a poster with Maharish Mahesh Yogi’s portrait on it and the words “Transcendental Meditation - Public Lecture”. It was that very evening. I attended the two introductory lectures and on Saturday morning found myself witnessing a puja to Guru Dev, Maharishi’s master, and was given a one syllable mantra to repeat to myself in a small room as I was sitting on a chair. Soon my hands folded on my lap seemed to be far below me and I could hear sounds from the neighborhood with fascinating clarity. The mantra seemed to be repeating in my mind automatically with no effort on my part and I felt completely serene, paralyzed. The teacher then asked how I was doing and I told him, “Fine.” He said, “This is how we meditate”. I continued to meditate using the mantra I was given for many years.

I missed Colorado and soon moved back. While there I took a “Science of Creative Intelligence” class at the Colorado Springs TM center. The people were unlike any I had ever met before and I felt so comfortable with them all -- a retired colonel, the wife of a surgeon, a college student, another retired couple, and couple that were TM teachers, along with Ron Carpenter, the head of the center. I saw a Maharishi International University catalog at the center and knew I had to go there.

In January of 1978, I started my freshman year at MIU (later renamed to Maharishi University of Management). In the summer of ‘79, I went on an extended retreat to learn the TM Siddhi program and soon found myself meditating twice a day with about a thousand other “siddhas” in the “Golden Dome”, a huge meditation hall (or flying hall as we called it). After doing a quick set of yoga asanas and pranayama in my dorm room, I would walk with all the other meditators to the dome and practice TM and the Siddhis. I remember mornings and afternoons in the dome when I felt that there was nothing more I need do in this life so great was the feeling of contentment during meditation.

While at MIU (MUM), I listened to hundreds of hours of Maharishi videos as part of “Forest Academy” retreats that were part of the curriculum. Maharishi delineated seven states of consciousness in some of the lectures:

Waking

Dreaming

Sleeping

Pure Consciousness - A state of “restful alertness” experienced during the practice of meditation when thoughts and mantra subside and consciousness is simply self-aware.

Cosmic Consciousness (CC) - A state when Pure Consciousness becomes infused into the waking state giving the rise to “unbounded awareness”. This is a state when the awareness of the Self is maintained during normal activity. It is called “cosmic” because it includes the awareness of the subject and object of perception, i.e., the experiencer is never “overshadowed” by perception and even dynamic activity.

God Consciousness (GC) - As one becomes established in Cosmic Consciousness, the senses continue to refine giving rise to greater and greater appreciation of subtler and subtler levels of perception. This eventually brings about the perception of the celestial or divine aspects present in the phenomenal world and causes the heart to expand in love for the divine.

Unity Consciousness (UC) - With the rise of God Consciousness, the separation between the subject and object, the knower and the known, eventually dissolves. One perceives the world without duality and feels one with the surroundings. As this state unfolds, one feels one with the entire universe and realizes the mahavakya “Aham Brahmasmi” -- I am Brahman. This realization is also know as Brahman Consciousness (BC).

Of course, we at MIU had no doubt that Maharishi and his teacher, Guru Dev (Swami Brahmananda Saraswati) were in Brahman Consciousness and took everything that Maharishi said as being unquestionably true. How could an enlightened being say something that was not true?

After graduating from MIU, I moved to Taiwan to learn Chinese and taught English for a living. While there, I met a Chinese monk, Venerable Master Sheng-yen, who had received dharma transmission from two different Chan lineages, the Caodong (Soto) and the Linjii (Rinzai) traditions of Chan (Chinese Zen) Buddhism, that is, his masters verified that he had the correct and authentic experience of self-nature and was qualified to teach others. I began attending his Sunday lectures and soon found myself on a seven day Chan retreat in New York City while I had briefly returned to the US. At first I was reluctant to give up the practice of TM and the Siddhis but became aware that I had become very attached to the practice. A nun reasoned with me, “If you can pick something up, you can also put it down -- and you can pick it up again.” I was reluctant. On the second day of the retreat, Master Sheng-yen (Shifu), asked me to just meditate by following my breath. I agreed, thinking that after 9 years of practicing TM, it would be easy. It wasn’t. Pain in my legs at times was unbearable and I was beginning to think that Chan Buddhists were masochists. But, something about Shifu made me fully trust him and I persisted with this practice for several years.

It was during this time that I experience inner conflict regarding seemingly opposing religious traditions I had been exposed to. I had grown up as a Catholic, pretty much became a Vedantic yogi while at MIU, and suddenly found myself very seriously desiring to become a Buddhist monk out of shear trust of my Shifu, Master Sheng-yen. Shifu was an incredible man. When he lectured, you always thought he was talking to you personally. And when he was talking to you, he seemed completely and genuinely interested in you, in your well-being without concern for himself. While I deeply admired this selfless quality, it ran contrary to my education from Maharishi. While the Maharishi proclaimed, “All love is directed toward the self”, the Buddha proclaimed that there is no independently existing person, self, or soul. All the Chan and Zen literature seemed to point to this as fact. My own Shifu seemed to be completely selfless and full of compassion for others. What would it be like to experience “no self”? I was intrigued and apprehensive at the same time. And how could Maharishi say that the ultimate reality was Brahman when the Buddha and my Shifu proclaimed that there is no such thing? How could there be no Creator? It was so obvious that there was intelligence of a supreme order in the universe. These questions gnawed at me for quite some time.

Eventually, my recourse was to look back at my own Christian tradition for answers. I went through a period where I read meditative and contemplative works by Thomas Merton, Fr. Basil Pennington, Thomas Keating, Catherine Doherty and others for answers. I eventually became interested in meditative tradition of Eastern Orthodox Christianity and even enrolled in a three year program to become a deacon. After the first semester, I faced quiet a crisis. I had read so many books that were required reading on the history of the church and its doctrines and while on vacation at Lake Tahoe, I suddenly realized that I simply didn’t believe in most of the Christian dogma. It was like a balloon was popped and Christianity just vanished before my eyes.

I began studying Buddhist and Indian literature much more seriously to find out how so many obviously enlightened masters could experience a different enlightenment than what Maharishi had laid out. How could there be multiple enlightenments? How can one person experience enlightenment and proclaim that it is Brahman and another experience enlightenment and say that it is void of Self? As I read more about the different schools of Buddhism, I found that even they didn’t agree on what the experience of Nirvana was. The Theravada Buddhist present Nirvana one way and the Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist present it other ways. So how can the experience of Nirvana be different?

I decided that the only way I would know the truth was to experience it myself. In 2005, I rededicated myself to practicing meditation and started attending Chan retreats at Dharma Drum Retreat Center in Pine Bush, New York. After several retreats, my experience and confidence in the Chan Buddhist tradition deepened significantly. I also went to Vipassina retreats held at the Chanmyay Satipatthana Vihara in Springfield, Illinois, which I felt were extremely helpful in understanding the experience of no self and loosing the fear of this experience. The last retreat I went on was in December of 2009, and this retreat brought about an experience that has made my faith in Buddhism unshakable.

So why am I on a traditional yoga teacher training course? After practicing meditation for many years, I reached a point where I could no longer bear to not help others learn to meditate. There is so much confusion and suffering in the world that is so unnecessary. Through meditation and adapting a lifestyle conducive to its practice, confusion and suffering begin to fall away. At the request of the former abbot of the Dharma Drum Retreat Center (DDRC), Ven. Guo Jun, I began leading a meditation group in Fort Wayne, Indiana (and now in Elk Grove, California). People get together and practice meditation together once every couple weeks or so. Meanwhile, I started practicing yoga again in Elk Grove after joining a fitness club to address health concerns and rediscovered that it was a great way to practice mindfulness and settle down before meditation. Yoga was incorporated into the Chan retreats at DDRC for this reason. The people that attend the meditation sessions I host have a lot of trouble with restlessness and I thought it would be great to incorporate yoga into our meditation practice. Then, I got laid off and was given a Borders Books gift card for my birthday. It was then that I found Srivatsa Ramaswami’s book, The Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga, and then found his website and the 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training course offered at LMU. So, hear I am!

Being on this course, I’ve run into a whole new set of philosophies to reconcile. In Ramaswami’s Yoga Sutras class, it became apparent that the Yoga of Patanjali was not the yoga I had learned from Maharishi years ago. Patanjali is said to have written the Yoga Sutras to clarify what had become a morass of conflicting yogic philosophies in India. It was also a reaction to challenges to “orthodox” Indian philosophy from Jain and Buddhist sources. But, in clarifying yoga, Patanjali actually set it apart from Vedantic Brahmanism while introducing a devotional path for those so inclined as well as a purely meditative path for those that do not accept the notion of a Creator God. Patanjali’s Yoga reaches its culmination in the realization of the individual self (atman) as separate from the universal Self. According to Patanjali, enlightenment is a state of duality in which the individual Self is separate from all other phenomena, including the universal Self. The Vedantic tradition sees this duality as the last vestige of ignorance and seeks to remove it. Circling back to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s teaching, the dualism of Patanjali is equivalent to the state of Cosmic Consciousness. It is a state of liberation, but not a fully enlightened state of Unity (or Brahman) Consciousness.

From the Chan Buddhist perspective, the experience of Unity Consciousness is also recognized as a state of liberation and a highly enlightened state. In fact, meditators on Chan retreats that I have attended have had clear experiences of Unity Consciousness, experiencing oneness with the environment. Yet this is not seen as the goal of Chan enlightenment. When meditators go to the retreat master with experiences of oneness with the environment or even the universe, they are told to go back and work harder.

There comes a time when even this oneness falls away and any attachment to the notion of self (individual or universal) evaporates. The Chan retreats use a meditation technique that is sometimes referred to as “The Method of No Method” (refer to my Shifu’s book of this name) or Silent Illumination (Chinese: Muo Zhao). This method requires that the meditator already be able to stay with the object of meditation without problem, i.e., Dhyana, from which the Chinese word Chan is derived. After following the breath and attaining what is referred to as “unifed mind”, the practitioner changes the object of meditation to the entire body and sits with full awareness of the body “just sitting”. As the meditator continues this practice, the distinction of where the body ends and where the environment begins becomes blurred and begins to evaporate completely. During this second stage, the meditator feels as though the body is the entire room. As sounds come from beyond the room, the distinction again falls away and what is beyond the room also is perceived to be all within ones own awareness. This continues until there is a feeling of complete oneness with the environment. Even as the meditator walks to the dining hall, washes the dishes, or lays down to rest, this feeling of oneness with the objects of perception can persist, even extending to the sun, moon, stars, and universe.

To move beyond this experience of unity with the phenomenal world, some retreat masters will use a technique known as “Direct Contemplation” and have the practitioners focus on an object in the natural world with bare awareness. When the meditator is ripe for such a technique, even the unified subject/object relationship begins to melt. It’s as if perception pivots on itself and looses the need of a perceiver. The subject of perception fades and only the object remains. The phenomenal world becomes fully illumined by silence and all of nature comes alive, all things infinitely correlated with all other things, all speaking to all other with perfect fluidity. A cosmic orchestra of mutually supporting, ever changing phenomena penetrated by silence. It is a state of absolute perfection and contentment devoid of any attachment to self or any object of perception. In Chan literature, it is said to be beyond words, yet there are some very beautiful poems by Chan masters that beautifully give glimpses of this state.

So who is to say that the experience of Brahman is any different? Does the person that experiences the mahavakya, “Aham Brahmasmi”, experience anything differently that the Chan practitioner of the highest calibre? Does he still identify with a universal Self? Is there still attachment or clinging to Self? I leave this for you to ponder, or better yet to penetrate.

While there are different paths to enlightenment and different levels of enlightenment, ultimately at the highest level they cannot be different. Experiencing silence between waves at the sea shore or feeling a vague oneness with the wind and trees in the mountains could be called a dawning of awakening. Experiencing mind totally content to stay with the object of meditation is a level of enlightenment. Effortlessly maintaining constant awareness of oneself during activity is another level and loosing awareness of that self is yet another, higher level. When one has no more to do for oneself but can only think of helping others out of suffering, this is higher still. Realizing there is no suffering is still higher.

There cannot be different ultimate truths. I believe all spiritual paths may ultimately lead to one truth. As we say in the Mid-West, some paths may be “taking the long way around the barn”, but they all lead to the other side. My own path around the barn has been a long and winding one. May your path to the supreme truth be as direct and sweet as possible!

[111the--unknown--one111-blog]

Final Draft Research project

   The topic of my massive semester long research paper is Black holes. I have now been working on this for an entire semester of school and tonight was the last night of the class. This paper is going to cover all the research I have done and all the work I have put into this project as a hole. It has been one interesting journey with lots of learning and growth.

          I want this paper to be something that other people will be interested in, leaving lots of questions that they would want to seek the answers too but answering enough that they feel like the cup is almost full. I want to be able to teach people something new that doesn’t get shared or talked about as much. I want to talk about the origin of black holes and different the different types of holes and what they are. What happens when a star goes super nova and the different things that could happen to near by solar systems.

          Many don’t think that the study of space has any significance, and that it doesn’t really matter. Everyone is wrong that says that. Its our future. I want to convince people that the study of space and the fabric it lies in is interesting and important. There is a lot to learn and I want to share that with anyone that reads.

          One type of black hole would be a primordial black hole. Its a hypothetical type of black hole that was formed soon after what we call the Big Bang Theory. A Gravitational wave burst is a one-time event. These events are emitted in frequencies in the range of both LIGO and LISA (different frequency ranges) Using these different “events” as long as we capture them, we can then determine the mass, spin and spatial distributions of the Primordial Black hole. You also have normal black holes. These are larger in size and much more powerful. These black holes contain a material we call Cold Dark Matter. This is something that we currently don’t know much about but are in the process of finding out more information as we continue our research into the fabric of space the these monsters we call Black Holes. Black holes can also end up merging together and continue to grow as they do so. as they grow the gravitational waves emitted become immensely stronger. This source is all about these events and what they do. It gives a small insight on where black holes may have come from using the Big Bang theory as a backup but no one really knows where they originated from.

          When it comes to the fabric of space, time plays a role in it. I am not sure how much of a role that it plays but this is something that I will want to do research on. I have a really good family friend that teaches astronomy at the Brigham young university and  I can use him as a source for information that I can use to further the understanding of the different things that I will write about for this assignment.

          One of my goals in this, would to not only teach and inform other people, but to learn more about space myself. There are a lot of different ways to appeal to a reader, and many readers only find interest in a given thing if your presentation of that appeals to them. Some people get hooked in a lot deeper if you use emotion and wonder right at the start, whereas some get pulled in by facts and statistics. I want to be able to use both in my research to try and snag both those groups of people. I feel that most people like to be moved by something but finding that something can be difficult for most. I don’t know how many people might be moved by this but the most important thing is that I will move myself. I will further my understanding, And hopefully begin to fill my glass that is seeking out the curios things in the universe.

          To truly cover “black holes” in a whole, I need to go more in depth about dark matter and dark energy as they both play a role on black holes and just about everything else in space. This is a source about both and I like it.

          When it comes to dark energy, there is more about it that is unknown that there is known by mankind. The only reason we know how much dark energy there is, is because of the way it acts on the expansion of the universe, other than that, dark energy is a complete mystery to us in a whole. It is a very important mystery though, as it makes up roughly 68% of the universe. Dark matter makes up about 27%. When it comes to all of the normal matter that we are all familiar with, like the earth, rock, metal, and everything made from any given planet only makes up 5% of all the mass in the universe.

          Dark matter, its dark, it’s not in stars or planets. All of our observations show that there is actually far too little visible matter in the universe to make up the 27% they say there is. It’s also not in the form of dark clouds of what we call “normal matter” things made up of particles called baryons. We know this because we can actually detect baryon particles by their absorption of radiation passing through them.

          Dark matter isn’t what some people call anti matter, that is a common misconception. Baryonic matter could still make up the dark matter if it were all tied up in brown dwarfs or in small, dense chunks of heavy elements. These are called “massive compact halo objects” But the most common view is that dark matter is not baryonic at all, but that it is made up of other, more exotic particles like axions or WIMPS (weakly interacting massive particles) truth be told, we just can’t confirm anything

          When it comes to the way this assignment is supposed to be graded and viewed, I am actually having a hard time trying to find a way to do this. No teacher has ever just said “there is no rules” to me. It makes it hard for me to stay focused and write what I should when there is no specific thing that I should be writing about. I feel like this will be a good learning experience for me and that I will be able to discover more of who I am as a writer instead of who my professor wants me to be. That’s how its been all through grade school and most of collage. I am suppose to write what the want me to write.

Formation of black holes may be constrained by intrinsic parameters characterizing them such as electric charge. Here we discuss the effects of a relatively minute excess of charge on extremal black hole formation and the horizon. We extend the implications of this argument to the formation of primordial black holes (PBH) in the early universe which gives a possible reason for the lack of detection of Hawking radiation. These charge limits also apply to dark matter (DM) particles that may form PHBs in the early universe. The constraint thus obtained on the electric charge of DM particles could also account for the required magnitude of the repulsive dark energy (DE) currently causing an accelerated universe which provides a possible unified picture of DM and DE.

I feel passionate about this subject and am glad I chose to continue studying this. When it comes to qualifications, is anyone really qualified to research  anything? I feel that the only boundaries in place when it comes to research and different things you want  to study are the ones that you put on yourself. As long as your trying that is good enough.

          When it comes to the questions I may have while I do research on the many topics of space, there is always a good place to turn. Nasa has plenty of articles and a question database that I can turn to for answers, and I hope to find a question to something that they have yet to answer.  I have a few articles that explain things really well that come straight from nasas website. In fact, we have now discovered a new black hole towards the center of our galaxy that is so big it shouldn’t exist. Its also doing something quite amazing! Its been spitting super nova starts out like candy and we cant explain what is going on with it.

Many people think of black holes as empty space or actual holes, but they are wrong. This source goes into detail about the matter of a black hole, and the size of said matter. A black hole is anything but empty space. Rather, it is a great amount of matter packed into a very small area. Think of a star ten times more massive than our sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of New York city. The result of that is a gravitational field so strong that nothing, not even light can escape its great pull. The idea of an object in space so dense and heavy that nothing could escape has been around since Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Which showed that when a massive star dies, it leaves behind a small, dense remnant core. If the cores mass is more than about three times the mass of the sun, the equations showed, the force of gravity would overwhelm all other forces and produce a black hole

Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes in 1916, with his general theory of relativity. The term “black hole” was coined many years later in 1967 by American astronomer John Wheeler. After decades of black holes being known only as theoretical objects, the first physical black hole ever discovered was spotted in 1971.

Black holes are very strange, and also very fascinating objects found in outer space. They are very dense, (the densest object known to man) and has the strongest gravitational attraction that man has ever known, strong enough that light itself cannot escape its grasp if it comes near enough to it.

In 2019 the “Event Horizon Telescope release an image of a black hole. This was the first image ever captured actually showing the hole itself. You can’t actually see the hole itself. Its black, but you can see that the image maps the sudden loss of photons, particles of light. It also opens up a whole new area of research in these space objects we call black holes. Now that astronomers know what a black hole looks like we can begin to further our study in them. So far we have been able to identify 3 types of black holes, stellar black holes, supermassive black holes, and intermediate black holes.

A seller black hole has a mass less that around 100X that of our sun, is made of one of the possible evolutionary endpoints of high mass stars. When the core of a star has burned into iron (finished itself off) energy production stops and the core rapidly collapses making a supernova explosion. If the core is big enough (about 2-3 solar masses – the max mass of a neutron star) the pressure of neutrons is not able to stop the force of the collapse and that is when a stellar black hole is formed. These holes are usually modelled as “Kerr black holes” these black holes usually have little electric charge to them.

          Using our instruments to look further into these massive holes, there are currently around 20 or so X-ray binary systems that possibly contain stellar black holes. This number does continue to grow as we develop better and more sensitive instruments.

This article goes into further detail about an intermediate mass black hole. This is a class of black hole with masses ranging from 10^2 – 10^5 solar mass. This is significantly more than a stellar black hole I previously mentioned. The super massive black holes are around 10^5 – 10^9 solar mass. There have been several intermediate mass black hole candidate objects discovered in our galaxy and in others that are nearby, based on the indirect gas cloud velocity and accretion disk spectra observes of various evidentiary strength.

          When it comes to discoveries for these intermediate mass black holes, we have only found a few. The first discovery happened just November 4 last year, a team of astronomers reported the discovery of what we call GCIRS 13E, this is the first intermediate mass black hole in our galaxy and right now it is orbiting  3 light years from Sagittarius A. this black hole is 1,300 solar masses and is sitting in a cluster of seven stars. This was possibly the remnant of a massive star cluster that had been stripped by its galactic center.

Works Cited

Garcia-Bellido, Juan, and Savvas Nesseris. “Gravitational Wave Energy Emission and Detection Rates of Primordial Black Hole Hyperbolic Encounters.” PHYSICS OF THE DARK UNIVERSE, vol. 21, pp. 61–69. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.dark.2018.06.001. Accessed 23 Oct. 2019.

     Science.nasa.gov. (2019). Dark Energy, Dark Matter | Science Mission Directorate. [online] Available at: https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy [Accessed 24 Oct. 2019].

Sivaram, C., et al. “Extremal Charged Black Holes, Dark Matter and Dark Energy.” Astrophysics and Space Science, no. 10, 2018, p. 1. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10509-018-3428-5.

“Black Holes.” NASA, NASA, https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/black-holes.

Redd, Nola Taylor. “Black Holes: Facts, Theory & Definition.” Space.com, Space, 11 July 2019, https://www.space.com/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html.

“Stellar Black Hole: COSMOS.” Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/S/Stellar Black Hole.

“Intermediate-Mass Black Hole.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 8 Oct. 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-mass_black_hole.