All posts tagged: Disintegration

Mysterious comet disintegration caught by telescope after lucky break

Mysterious comet disintegration caught by telescope after lucky break

Published by skeptic

Comet K1 captured by the Hubble Space Telescope NASA, ESA, Dennis Bodewits (AU) By a stroke of luck, we have seen a comet just days after it cracked into four pieces. This could provide a crucial window into the history of the solar system. John Noonan at Auburn University in Alabama and his colleagues had planned to observe a different comet with the Hubble Space Telescope, but limitations to the spacecraft’s ability to turn quickly made that impossible, so they found a new target: a comet called C/2025 K1 (ATLAS). When they pointed Hubble at K1, they saw not a single comet but four fragments. “We have seen comets break up before – we’ve seen them break up from the ground all the time – but this one wasn’t known to have broken up when we looked at it,” says Noonan. “The amount of sheer luck that came into acquiring these images cannot be overstated.” We have never taken such clear pictures of a comet that’s just broken up before, because it is hard to …

‘We watched 9/11 from the rooftop, blasting the music out’: how The Disintegration Loops became a requiem for the attacks | Music

‘We watched 9/11 from the rooftop, blasting the music out’: how The Disintegration Loops became a requiem for the attacks | Music

Published by Sam Flores

‘Do you remember me phoning and saying, ‘Get over here! You won’t believe what’s happened!’” William Basinski is reminiscing with his old friend Anohni about the summer of 2001, when he made a startling discovery. Out of work and at a loose end, the experimental composer had decided to digitise some recordings he’d made in the early 1980s – snippets of orchestral music and muzak he found on shortwave radio stations. He was planning to add his own instrumentation, but as the tapes started playing on a loop he noticed something else was happening: the music was gradually degrading. The recordings were so old that the iron oxide particles were falling off the tape as they played. Soon, there would be nothing left but crackles and then silence. It was every musician’s worst nightmare. But for Basinski it was like striking gold. “Luckily,” he says, “by that point in my career, I was mature enough to know when to just get out of the way and see what happens.” Basinski spent two days recording a …