Rubin Observatory discovers two hidden companions of the Milky Way. Hundreds more may be waiting

from ScienceDaily

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has already uncovered two previously unknown companions of the Milky Way using preliminary observations covering just 7% of the night sky. The discoveries include an extremely faint galaxy 355,000 light-years away and a star cluster hidden behind cosmic dust. Scientists suspect hundreds of additional satellite galaxies remain undiscovered, and Rubin's powerful telescope could finally bring them into view.

explained

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), is an astronomical observatory in Coquimbo Region, Chile. Its main task is to conduct an astronomical survey of the southern sky every few nights, creating a ten-year time-lapse record, termed the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (also abbreviated LSST). The observatory is located on the El Peñón peak of Cerro Pachón, a 2,682-meter-high (8,799 ft) mountain in northern Chile, alongside the existing Gemini South and Southern Astrophysical Research Telescopes. The base facility is located about 100 kilometres (62 miles) away from the observatory by road, in La Serena.

The observatory is named for Vera Rubin, an American astronomer who pioneered discoveries about galactic rotation rates. It is a joint initiative of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science and is operated jointly by NSF NOIRLab and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

The Rubin Observatory houses the Simonyi Survey Telescope, a wide-field reflecting telescope with an 8.4-meter primary mirror. It uses a variant of three-mirror anastigmat to deliver sharp images over a 3.5-degree-diameter field of view. Images are recorded by a 3.2-gigapixel charge-coupled device imaging (CCD) camera, the largest camera yet constructed.

From Wikipedia: Vera C. Rubin Observatory (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗

so what

The early results suggest the Milky Way has many more hidden neighbours than astronomers have seen so far, and Rubin's survey is expected to reveal them.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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