Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, November 10, 2018

8

FOOD & DRINK

Mountain Views-News Saturday, November 10, 2018 

TABLE FOR TWO by Peter Dills

thechefknows@yahoo.com


DILLS WINE PICKS FOR 
YOUR TURKEY PART 1

Thanksgiving is upon us and it is my sworn duty to 
come up with a handful of wines that will go with a 
traditional oven baked turkey /smoked turkey, even 
the duck substitution will go well with my list. First, 
sorry in advance for all my chardonnay loving readers 
(see blow for my apology) A high-acid, low-tannin 
Pinot, with bright cherry and cranberry flavors over 
rich spices, can do right by almost all the exuberant 
side dishes any turkey might require. B Side out of 
Sonoma makes a marvelous Pinot Noir under $20 it 
is a winner.

 My second choice, though, isn’t a surprise, at least if 
you love bubbles like I do. Two California Sparklers 
that I enjoy , Domaine Carneros Brut ($30) from the 
house of Taittinger, I have said that this wine from 
California comes as close to a ‘real” champagne that 
I’ve had, I picked up a bottle recently at Pavilions 
and it will also go great with Prime Rib. Newsweek 
Magazine selected the Roederer Estate their value for 
the New millennium and I agree, when I am shopping for that $20 wine it is my go to choice.

 How about a Rose, my friend Jason Valenzuela, wine steward par excellence recommends the 
Virage Rose it hails from Napa Valley and if you can find it for less than $20 buy it !!

Last but not least do consider a Cabernet, a favorite side kick of Prime Rib for years, our own 
Maddelena has an outstanding one and the price of $15 is perfect for the holidays, who does Prime 
Rib on Thanksgiving? I must admit the Dills household has been doing it for years. 

 My Chardonnay apology, all that sauce, butter, gravy will absolutely kill any hope of your favorite 
buttery Oaky Chardonnay, though I defend your right to drink what you like to drink at any holiday 
party!

B Side Pinot Noir

Maddelena Cabernet

Domaine Carneros Brut 

Virage Rose 

Roederer Estate

 Join me every Sunday at 12 Noon PM for Dining with Dills Plus coming soon to Spectrum Channel 
1 , follow me on twitter thekingofcuisine


Peering through thick walls of gas and dust 
surrounding the messy cores of merging galaxies, 
astronomers are getting their best view yet of 
close pairs of supermassive black holes as they 
march toward coalescence into mega black holes.

 A team of researchers led by Michael Koss of 
Eureka Scientific Inc., in Kirkland, Washington, 
performed the largest survey of the cores of 
nearby galaxies in near-infrared light, using 
high-resolution images taken by NASA’s Hubble 
Space Telescope (http://www.nasa.gov/hubble) 
and the W. M. Keck Observatory (http://
keckobservatory.org) in Hawaii. The Hubble 
observations represent over 20 years’ worth of 
snapshots from its vast archive.

 “Seeing the pairs of merging galaxy nuclei 
associated with these huge black holes so close 
together was pretty amazing,” Koss said. “In 
our study, we see two galaxy nuclei right when 
the images were taken. You can’t argue with it; 
it’s a very ‘clean’ result, which doesn’t rely on 
interpretation.”

 The images also provide a close-up preview 
of a phenomenon that must have been more 
common in the early universe, when galaxy 
mergers were more frequent. When galaxies 
collide, their monster black holes can unleash 
powerful energy in the form of gravitational 
waves, the kind of ripples in space-time that 
were just recently detected by ground-breaking 
experiments.

 The new study also offers a preview of what 
will likely happen in our own cosmic backyard, 
in several billion years, when our Milky Way 
combines with the neighboring Andromeda 
galaxy and their respective central black holes 
smash together.

 “Computer simulations of galaxy smashups 
show us that black holes grow fastest during 
the final stages of mergers, near the time when 
the black holes interact, and that’s what we have 
found in our survey,” said study team member 
Laura Blecha of the University of Florida, in 
Gainesville. “The fact that black holes grow 
faster and faster as mergers progress tells us 
galaxy encounters are really important for our 
understanding of how these objects got to be so 
monstrously big.”

 A galaxy merger is a slow process lasting more 
than a billion years as two galaxies, under the 
inexorable pull of gravity, dance toward each 
other before finally joining together. Simulations 
reveal that galaxies kick up plenty of gas and dust 
as they undergo this slow-motion train wreck.

 The ejected material often forms a thick curtain 
around the centers of the coalescing galaxies, 
shielding them from view in visible light. Some 
of the material also falls onto the black holes at 
the cores of the merging galaxies. The black holes 
grow at a fast clip as they engorge themselves 
with their cosmic food, and, being messy eaters, 
they cause the infalling gas to blaze brightly. This 
speedy growth occurs during the last 10 million 
to 20 million years of the union. The Hubble 
and Keck Observatory images captured close-
up views of this final stage, when the bulked-
up black holes are only about 3,000 light-years 
apart—a near-embrace in cosmic terms.

 The team first searched for visually obscured, 
active black holes by sifting through 10 years’ 
worth of X-ray data from the Burst Alert 
Telescope (BAT) aboard NASA’s Neil Gehrels 
Swift Telescope, a high-energy space observatory. 
“Gas falling onto the black holes emits X-rays, and 
the brightness of the X-rays tells you how quickly 
the black hole is growing,” Koss explained. 

 You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.com.


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