I’m sure by now you watched or listened to my interview with Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Andrea Ghez. If you haven’t yet, drop everything and go check it out.
In this interview, she explains how she and her team determined that there’s a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. One of the reasons they were successful was that they discovered a star called SO-2 which has an incredibly short orbit around the center of our galaxy – only 16 years. That means that they were able to track its entire orbit during their study, and it means that even more science will come from observing it during its most rapid movement at either end of the elliptical orbit.
During the interview, when Andrea said that SO-2 was her favorite star, I asked her whether her team has t-shirts. She enthusiastically said, “No, but there SHOULD be shirts!”
Steve and I decided to take matters into our own hands and designed SO-2 t-shirts. Andrea’s team had already done the work of mapping several stars orbiting the Milky Way center, so I simply replicated the orbits, making all of the stars’ orbits white except for SO-2 which I made in yellow so it stands out.
You too can own one of these coveted t-shirts, by ordering them through our online store at Cotton Bureau. Because science should be open source, we removed any profit option on the shirts so the $27 is purely the Cotton Bureau pricing. We also wanted to make the shirts as inexpensive for Andrea’s team as possible. We shipped shirts to her and her assistant who helped me get the interview, and I can’t wait to find out if she likes it!
Since everything good starts with podfeet.com, go to podfeet.com/shop to buy your very own SO-2 Is My Favorite Star t-shirt for $27. We chose tons of different colors. I love the tri-blend shirt options but you do you. We also made an iPhone case that runs $27 for the MagSafe version and $23 for the slim, non-MagSafe version.
My favorite thing about the shirts is that pretty much no one will ever know what they mean. But if you know, you know!