#it Feels Like Home

maybe the rain is there to teach us that falling is beautiful. some people are a map when you didn’t realize you were lost. you’re the ache that never left, the first line of an unfinished song. it doesn’t have to be a poem to be poetry.. have you seen how carefully the light can touch your face? and even though I’m an abandoned house in search of a ghost, I don’t need anything from you. I want everything with you.

you're not hard to love. you were only made to feel that way by someone who didn't know how.

Thoughts from the ledge

Standing on top of the tower one night,

Knees shaking from fight or flight,

Cold wind swishing past my numb face

As my heart starts picking up its pace.

I took a minute to look around

The shops, the people and the city's sound

Massive buildings standing upright

Others with their blue and red neon lights.

Then I stared at the ground below,

And how it would feel to finally let go

Twenty-something but I've felt enough

That I stand on the ledge and not to bluff.

I saw many streets that I still couldn't name

I've been here for two decades, what a shame!

That's when the irrational optimism kicks in

To hold on to the ledge, to find strength within.

So I step back and sit to clear my mind

To think of everyone I'd have to leave behind,

Places I'll never be, and moments I'll never seize,

And just maybe, in between life I'll find my peace.

HANDS.

Why did we collectively agree

that love is stored in our hearts?

Why did no one stand up to argue

that love is within the other person's hands?

Trust me not?

Palm on your forehead late at night,

Checking your temperature.

A reassuring hand on your knee

When you're shaking with anxiety.

A grip around your wrists

While crossing the road.

Calloused fingers suddenly soft

While brushing tears off your cheeks.

Protective arm around your shoulders

when all you want is to lean.

Brush of fingers while passing a dish

Over the dinner table.

I'll cease to exist

When my heart stops beating

But I'll give you that letter with scrawly writings

Only when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

in conclusion: it finished me

Black Holes: Seeing the Invisible!

Black holes are some of the most bizarre and fascinating objects in the cosmos. Astronomers want to study lots of them, but there’s one big problem – black holes are invisible! Since they don’t emit any light, it’s pretty tough to find them lurking in the inky void of space. Fortunately there are a few different ways we can “see” black holes indirectly by watching how they affect their surroundings.

Speedy stars

If you’ve spent some time stargazing, you know what a calm, peaceful place our universe can be. But did you know that a monster is hiding right in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy? Astronomers noticed stars zipping superfast around something we can’t see at the center of the galaxy, about 10 million miles per hour! The stars must be circling a supermassive black hole. No other object would have strong enough gravity to keep them from flying off into space.

Two astrophysicists won half of the Nobel Prize in Physics last year for revealing this dark secret. The black hole is truly monstrous, weighing about four million times as much as our Sun! And it seems our home galaxy is no exception – our Hubble Space Telescope has revealed that the hubs of most galaxies contain supermassive black holes.

Shadowy silhouettes

Technology has advanced enough that we’ve been able to spot one of these supermassive black holes in a nearby galaxy. In 2019, astronomers took the first-ever picture of a black hole in a galaxy called M87, which is about 55 million light-years away. They used an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope.

In the image, we can see some light from hot gas surrounding a dark shape. While we still can’t see the black hole itself, we can see the “shadow” it casts on the bright backdrop.

Shattered stars

Black holes can come in a smaller variety, too. When a massive star runs out of the fuel it uses to shine, it collapses in on itself. These lightweight or “stellar-mass” black holes are only about 5-20 times as massive as the Sun. They’re scattered throughout the galaxy in the same places where we find stars, since that’s how they began their lives. Some of them started out with a companion star, and so far that’s been our best clue to find them.

Some black holes steal material from their companion star. As the material falls onto the black hole, it gets superhot and lights up in X-rays. The first confirmed black hole astronomers discovered, called Cygnus X-1, was found this way.

If a star comes too close to a supermassive black hole, the effect is even more dramatic! Instead of just siphoning material from the star like a smaller black hole would do, a supermassive black hole will completely tear the star apart into a stream of gas. This is called a tidal disruption event.

Making waves

But what if two companion stars both turn into black holes? They may eventually collide with each other to form a larger black hole, sending ripples through space-time – the fabric of the cosmos!

These ripples, called gravitational waves, travel across space at the speed of light. The waves that reach us are extremely weak because space-time is really stiff.

Three scientists received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for using LIGO to observe gravitational waves that were sent out from colliding stellar-mass black holes. Though gravitational waves are hard to detect, they offer a way to find black holes without having to see any light.

We’re teaming up with the European Space Agency for a mission called LISA, which stands for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. When it launches in the 2030s, it will detect gravitational waves from merging supermassive black holes – a likely sign of colliding galaxies!

Rogue black holes

So we have a few ways to find black holes by seeing stuff that’s close to them. But astronomers think there could be 100 million black holes roaming the galaxy solo. Fortunately, our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will provide a way to “see” these isolated black holes, too.

Roman will find solitary black holes when they pass in front of more distant stars from our vantage point. The black hole’s gravity will warp the starlight in ways that reveal its presence. In some cases we can figure out a black hole’s mass and distance this way, and even estimate how fast it’s moving through the galaxy.

For more about black holes, check out these Tumblr posts!

⚫ Gobble Up These Black (Hole) Friday Deals!

⚫ Hubble’s 5 Weirdest Black Hole Discoveries

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

if there's anything tumblr has taught me it's that this guy named franz kafka was in agony 365 days a year

Hufflepuff: alright we need a plan. Does anyone have any ideas?

Slytherin: *raises hand*

Hufflepuff: that DOESN’T involve murder

Slytherin: *slowly lowers hand*

A weak week!

I buried my head in a pillow to bawl

Knees to my chest like a ball

I guess it was the Domino effect

Of being vulnerable, easy to affect

Sometimes my heart twists and wrings

Most often my head hurts and rings

I assure you it's not just a phase

I've tried but the feeling doesn't faze.

No one really saw the signs

Even if it's simple science

At last I cried out aloud

Louder than I was allowed.

(there's something so comforting about homophones. <3)

KINTSUGI

I learned kintsugi so I could fix my favorite broken mug.⁣

The art that meant golden joinery,⁣

Golden repair.⁣

But I never thought about what it meant.⁣

Why would I? I fixed my mug.⁣

⁣

Until I broke,⁣

Until I saw cracks within people that I love.⁣

That was the moment I realized⁣

Kintsugi isn't just for fixing ceramics⁣

It is not to say what didn't kill you made you stronger.⁣

It is to show what didn't kill you is now a part of your story.⁣

A significant piece of who you are.⁣

For better or worse,⁣

whether it made you stronger, weaker, or traumatized,⁣

It's. Still. You. ⁣

⁣

So we pick up the broken pieces of ourselves and the ones we love⁣

And we put it back together with golden glue,⁣

As best as we can.⁣

We assure our loved ones not to conceal their scars⁣

We promise them the glued parts aren't ugly.⁣

That the cracks are now like a golden vein,⁣

a vein through which ichor flows.⁣

The same ichor that Gods bled is now,⁣

Keeping us immortal for a while.⁣