Tram of Thought: Comic strip about psychology, philosophy, society, engineering, and just life in all its gory glory

Real astronomers

Caption: 'Astronomers might seem like a boring bunch, but sometimes they let their guard down and you can glimpse how they really are.' On the first image, a boring-looking, dorky-glasses-wearing Triangle-professor is shown in the middle of a lecture, saying '...discovered these ultra-bright flashes...'. Projector screen shows a photo of a night sky with one object highlighted and there is audience in front. On the second image professor continues '...relativistic jets of electromagnetic radiation...', the screen shows a galaxy shooting jets of light and the audience is partly asleep. Next, they say '...either BL LAC or a QUASAR, so we decided to call them...', the screen shows BL LAC + QUASAR with BL and ASAR underlined and the audience is firmly asleep. The final image shows the professor suddenly holding an electric guitar, making a two-finger gesture with their hand and screaming at the top of their lungs 'BLAZARS!' - the audience has awoken shocked and yells 'Sweet as', 'Wow' and 'High five'

Blazars are actually a real thing. According to the article “Relativistic jets of blazars”, the name was coined 45 years ago in a conference, and I bet it looked like in the comic above.

The name is given to a violent, variable radiation source which shines all across the electromagnetic spectrum, including visible light and radio. It appears violent because one of the jets of matter these blazars emit is directed towards us here on Earth, and also because the jet is relativistic (traveling close to the speed of light) which causes a lot of weird side-effects.

Blazar jets don’t come from stars but from active galactic nuclei. We think these are supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies, and that the bright flashes occur when matter is sucked in and ripped apart meeting its violent end.

#science