The Center Of The Milky Way, Rats At Play, And Geometry. Sept 13, 2019, Part 2

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🗓️ 13 September 2019

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

The Greek mathematician Euclid imagined an ordered and methodical universe, but his vision struggled to catch on for centuries, until Renaissance painters and French monarchs found a way connect the ancient science of geometry to the real world. Science historian Amir Alexander joins Ira to share the story of geometry’s rising global influence in his new book Proof!: How The World Became Geometrical. Plus, a million years ago, the black hole at the center of our galaxy burped. Now, scientists are exploring what the resulting bubbles might say about our kinship with other galaxies. And here on Earth, neuroscientists say they can learn a lot by observing brains at play—particularly those of rats playing hide and seek.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. A bit later in the hour playing hide-and-seek with rats.
0:06.7	We have a video this. You have to see this. This is really cool. How do you teach them to do that?
0:11.5	And we'll talk about, of course, what neuroscientists can learn by studying the brain at play.
0:17.7	But first, a journey to the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. There is a lot going on
0:23.1	at the center of most galaxies. You start with a hungry massive or supermassive black hole. You add some
0:30.0	gas and dust, and you get jets of plasma, x-rays, other great bursts of energy. And yes, our galaxy
0:36.9	in the Milky Way has a big black hole at the
0:39.0	center, and it's emitting at small bursts of energy a few times a day. But researchers writing in
0:45.5	the journal Nature this week say they have evidence of at least one big feeding frenzy over one
0:53.0	million years ago, a pair of bubbles towering above and below the galactic center.
0:59.5	Kind of mysterious.
1:01.1	Here to explain more about why this is exciting news for space science is Dr. Farhadsaday,
1:06.8	an astrophysicist at Northwestern University Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics.
1:13.6	He's also co-author of the research on this.
1:17.6	Welcome to Science Friday.
1:19.6	Thank you for having me here.
1:21.6	Can you give us a picture of what's going on at the center of the galaxy?
1:25.6	Take us on a tour, if you will.
1:33.7	Sure. We're about 25,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way.
1:38.5	And the Milky Way Center is really an interesting region.
1:44.6	There is obviously a massive black hole at the center of the galaxy.
1:50.9	And then you have a very large concentration of stars in there.
	...

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