tagged w/ Black Holes
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http://Space.com
For the first time, a black hole has been caught in the act of tearing apart and swallowing a star that got too close.
Scientists, who until now had witnessed only the aftermath of such events, say the observation is shedding light on "relativistic jets," bursts of matter that shoot out at nearly the speed of light.
At the centers of virtually all large galaxies are supermassive black holes. These monsters, which are millions to billions of times the mass of the sun, can rip apart passers-by, gravitationally pulling at stars in gigantic versions of how our moon tugs on Earth's oceans to generate tides.
Evidence for this destruction may come in the form of a bright flare of ultraviolet, gamma and X-rays, a flare that can theoretically last for years as the star is gradually consumed. Although scientists have observed the aftermath of such "tidal disruption" events several times, they had never seen the onset of one.
"Now we've seen the start of this event for the first time," study co-author David Burrows, an astrophysicist at Pennsylvania State University, told Space.com.
The Swift satellite observed a string of extremely bright bursts of gamma rays from outside our galaxy that began March 25 and lasted about two days. Scientists have detected gamma ray bursts in the past, but this pattern of light was completely different.
"It was nothing like we expected for a gamma-ray burst," said Ashley Zauderer, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who co-authored a different study on the event.
Additional observations by several radio telescopes suggested the flare occurred in the center of a galaxy, and that the source of this radiation was expanding at 99.5 percent the speed of light. This suggested the flare came from a relativistic jet released after a black hole ripped apart a star, which scientists named Swift J1644+57.
Based on the wavelengths of light emitted by the flare and the way it evolved over time, the scientists concluded that it originated from matter falling or accreting onto a black hole about 1 million times the mass of the sun, comparable to the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.
In the past, scientists had missed the fact that relativistic jets could form as black holes ripped apart stars. This helps explain why the flare had X-rays 10,000 times brighter than predicted for a tidal disruption event: Basically, relativistic jets are focused bursts of energy.
"It's not surprising that such an event would cause jets, but it was just never discussed in past publications," Burrows said.
Future research could reveal more outbursts of this kind. Knowing how often these occur will help scientists figure out just how many galaxies harbor supermassive black holes, what the properties of these monsters are, the density of stars in galactic cores, and how these jets form.
"There are a lot more surprises in space for us to discover, especially as we continue to make huge strides in the technical capabilities of our instruments," Zauderer said.
The scientists detailed their findings in two papers in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Nature.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44273287/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.TlZ8Yl34JVMhttp://Space.com
For the first time, a black hole has been caught in the act of... more
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https://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13435
PASADENA, Calif.—Water really is everywhere. Two teams of astronomers, each led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. Looking from a distance of 30 billion trillion miles away into a quasar—one of the brightest and most violent objects in the cosmos—the researchers have found a mass of water vapor that's at least 140 trillion times that of all the water in the world's oceans combined, and 100,000 times more massive than the sun.
Because the quasar is so far away, its light has taken 12 billion years to reach Earth. The observations therefore reveal a time when the universe was just 1.6 billion years old. "The environment around this quasar is unique in that it's producing this huge mass of water," says Matt Bradford, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and a visiting associate at Caltech. "It's another demonstration that water is pervasive throughout the universe, even at the very earliest times." Bradford leads one of two international teams of astronomers that have described their quasar findings in separate papers that have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
A quasar is powered by an enormous black hole that is steadily consuming a surrounding disk of gas and dust; as it eats, the quasar spews out huge amounts of energy. Both groups of astronomers studied a particular quasar called APM 08279+5255, which harbors a black hole 20 billion times more massive than the sun and produces as much energy as a thousand trillion suns.
Since astronomers expected water vapor to be present even in the early universe, the discovery of water is not itself a surprise, Bradford says. There's water vapor in the Milky Way, although the total amount is 4,000 times less massive than in the quasar, as most of the Milky Way’s water is frozen in the form of ice.
Nevertheless, water vapor is an important trace gas that reveals the nature of the quasar. In this particular quasar, the water vapor is distributed around the black hole in a gaseous region spanning hundreds of light-years (a light-year is about six trillion miles), and its presence indicates that the gas is unusually warm and dense by astronomical standards. Although the gas is a chilly –53 degrees Celsius (–63 degrees Fahrenheit) and is 300 trillion times less dense than Earth's atmosphere, it's still five times hotter and 10 to 100 times denser than what's typical in galaxies like the Milky Way.
The water vapor is just one of many kinds of gas that surround the quasar, and its presence indicates that the quasar is bathing the gas in both X-rays and infrared radiation. The interaction between the radiation and water vapor reveals properties of the gas and how the quasar influences it. For example, analyzing the water vapor shows how the radiation heats the rest of the gas. Furthermore, measurements of the water vapor and of other molecules, such as carbon monoxide, suggest that there is enough gas to feed the black hole until it grows to about six times its size. Whether this will happen is not clear, the astronomers say, since some of the gas may end up condensing into stars or may be ejected from the quasar.
Bradford's team made their observations starting in 2008, using an instrument called Z-Spec at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO), a 10-meter telescope near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Z-Spec is an extremely sensitive spectrograph, requiring temperatures cooled to within 0.06 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. The instrument measures light in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum called the millimeter band, which lies between infrared and microwave wavelengths. The researchers' discovery of water was possible only because Z-Spec’s spectral coverage is 10 times larger than that of previous spectrometers operating at these wavelengths. The astronomers made follow-up observations with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy (CARMA), an array of radio dishes in the Inyo Mountains of Southern California.
This discovery highlights the benefits of observing in the millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, the astronomers say. The field has developed rapidly over the last two to three decades, and to reach the full potential of this line of research, the astronomers—including the study authors—are now designing CCAT, a 25-meter telescope to be built in the Atacama Desert in Chile. CCAT will allow astronomers to discover some of the earliest galaxies in the universe. By measuring the presence of water and other important trace gases, astronomers can study the composition of these primordial galaxies.
The second group, led by Dariusz Lis, senior research associate in physics at Caltech and deputy director of the CSO, used the Plateau de Bure Interferometer in the French Alps to find water. In 2010, Lis's team was looking for traces of hydrogen fluoride in the spectrum of APM 08279+5255, but serendipitously detected a signal in the quasar's spectrum that indicated the presence of water. The signal was at a frequency corresponding to radiation that is emitted when water transitions from a higher energy state to a lower one. While Lis's team found just one signal at a single frequency, the wide bandwidth of Z-Spec enabled Bradford and his colleagues to discover water emission at many frequencies. These multiple water transitions allowed Bradford's team to determine the physical characteristics of the quasar's gas and the water's mass.
The other authors on Lis's paper, "Discovery of water vapor in the high-redshift quasar APM 08279+5255 at Z=3.91," are Tom Phillips, Caltech's John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics and director of the CSO; David Neufeld of Johns Hopkins University; Maryvonne Gerin of the Paris Observatory and the French National Center for Scientific Research; and Roberto Neri of the Institute of Millimeter Radio Astronomy in France. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The authors on Bradford's paper, "The water vapor spectrum of APM 08279+5255: X-ray heating and infrared pumping over hundreds of parsecs," include Caltech's Hien Nguyen, a visiting associate and lecturer in physics; Jamie Bock, senior faculty associate in physics and scientist at JPL; and Jonas Zmuidzinas, the Merle Kingsley Professor of Physics and chief technologist at JPL. The other authors are Alberto Bolatto of the University of Maryland, College Park; Philip Maloney, Jason Glenn, and Julia Kamenetzky of the University of Colorado, Boulder; James Aguirre, Roxana Lupu, and Kimberly Scott of the University of Pennsylvania; Hideo Matsuhara of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Japan; Eric Murphy of the Carnegie Institution for Science; and Bret Naylor of JPL.
Funding for Z-Spec was provided by the NSF, NASA, the Research Corporation, and partner institutions. The CSO is operated by Caltech under contract from the NSF. CARMA was built and is operated by Caltech, UC Berkeley, the University of Maryland, College Park, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Chicago. CARMA is funded by a combination of state and private sources, as well as the NSF and its University Radio Observatories program.
Written by Marcus Woohttps://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13435
PASADENA, Calif.—Water really... more
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In late March, NASA's Swift satellite picked up a blast of gamma rays screaming past Earth.
Astronomers rushed to take a closer look, using powerful telescopes from Hawaii to the Canary Islands to check out the high-energy jet coming from a distant galaxy in the constellation Draco.
They initially speculated a collapsing star created the blast. Now they report that it appears a star the size of the sun was shredded by a massive black hole. Its "death rattle" was a high-energy flash or jet pointed straight at the Earth.
(more at link)In late March, NASA's Swift satellite picked up a blast of gamma rays screaming... more
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“Our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another universe.” In a remarkable paper about the nature of space and the origin of time, Nikodem Poplawski, a physicist at Indiana University, suggests that a small change to the theory of gravity implies that our Universe inherited its arrow of time from the black hole in which it was born.
Poplawski says that the idea that black holes are the cosmic mothers of new universes is a natural consequence of a simple new assumption about the nature of spacetime. Poplawski points out that the standard derivation of general relativity takes no account of the intrinsic momentum of spin half particles. However there is another version of the theory, called the Einstein-Cartan-Kibble-Sciama theory of gravity, which does.
(read the rest at link)“Our own Universe may be the interior of a black hole existing in another... more
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An international team, including NASA-funded researchers, using radio telescopes located throughout the Southern Hemisphere has produced the most detailed image of particle jets erupting from a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy.
"These jets arise as infalling matter approaches the black hole, but we don't yet know the details of how they form and maintain themselves," said Cornelia Mueller, the study's lead author and a doctoral student at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.
The new image shows a region less than 4.2 light-years across -- less than the distance between our sun and the nearest star. Radio-emitting features as small as 15 light-days can be seen, making this the highest-resolution view of galactic jets ever made. The study will appear in the June issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is available online.
(click on the link for the full article and the short video)An international team, including NASA-funded researchers, using radio telescopes... more
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Zero volume and near-infinite density are incompatible with three-dimensional space.
The Virgo Cluster harbors several galaxies that are listed in the early Messier catalog. Among them are M61, M90, and M100. M100 is particularly interesting to NASA scientists who, in conjunction with the Chandra X-ray Telescope team, called a special press conference on November 15, 2010 in order to announce the discovery of "the youngest black hole ever detected."
The object thought to be a black hole was identified by an excessively bright X-ray emission that has not varied in brightness for more than 12 years. According to consensus theories, the steady state of the radiation indicates that material is being superheated as it falls into the black hole's steep gravitational gradient.
SN 1079C, a supernova, is thought to have "given birth" to the black hole because when stars more than 5 times as massive as the Sun "explode," they are thought to leave behind compacted remains that can fall in on themselves until they attain near-infinite gravity in a zero volume. There are several opinions inherent in NASA's conclusion to which Electric Universe advocates would object.
First, what is a supernova? As previous Picture of the Day articles have argued, stars do not age and die in the way that conventional understanding proposes. Stars are not globes of hot gas under pressure, they are composed of plasma. Plasma is ionized and is an electrically charged substance. Since it is ionized, it does not behave like a pressurized gas, so shock waves and gravitational instabilities are insufficient when it comes to explaining the birth and death of stars.
As Electric Universe theory states, a supernova is an exploding star, but not in the conventional sense. Rather, it constitutes the explosion of a double layer in plasma. The power comes from external electric currents flowing through vast circuits in space, so the radiation from stars is due to discharges that vary in strength. It is those electric arcs that make up the stellar corona, chromosphere and photosphere of our Sun, for instance.
Supernovae are the result of a stellar "open circuit” in the galactic power supply. The result is the same as sometimes occurs in high-voltage switching yards, with extensive arcing.
In an exploding double layer, the energy of an entire circuit might flow into the explosion, increasing its expansion far from the surface of the star. Radiation from the double layer shines in ultraviolet or X-ray wavelengths, sometimes emitting bursts of gamma rays. It was those effects that should have been considered when SN 1979C was first identified.
Second, what is a black hole? Black holes are theorized to twist space and time so that velocity calculations yield impossible solutions. Matter inside a black hole occupies no volume at all, yet it retains gravitational acceleration so great that not even light can escape its attraction—the hole is "black" because it cannot be detected with optical telescopes.
Several previous Picture of the Day discussions about black holes determined that the language used by astrophysicists is itself problematic, relying on highly speculative explanations. Ambiguous lexical labels such as space/time, multiple universes, singularities, infinite density, and other ideas that are not quantifiable have introduced irony into what should be a realistic investigation.
It is assumed that matter falling into the intense gravity well of a black hole is accelerated and subsequently compressed. Material orbits the black hole at a faster and faster rate as it gradually spins closer to a point several times the mass of our Sun. The X-rays and ultraviolet light emissions are interpreted by astronomers as gas heating up from atomic collisions in the rotating disc.
Finally, hot gas, no matter how fast it moves, is not the principal cause of X-rays. Laboratory experiments most easily produce them by accelerating charged particles through an electric field. No gigantic masses compressed into tiny volumes are necessary; they are easily generated with the proper experiments.
There is no experimental evidence that matter can be compressed to “near-infinite density." Compression zones (z-pinches) in plasma filaments form plasmoids that can become stars and galaxies. Electricity is responsible for the birth of stars, and when the stellar circuit catastrophically releases its excess energy it appears as gamma ray bursts or X-rays or flares of ultraviolet light.
In the electric star hypothesis, no concentrated gravity from "singularities" is necessary. Classical understanding of electromagnetism reveals that it is more than able to create the phenomena we see, without recourse to the supernatural physics of black holes.
Meanwhile astrophysicists, untrained in the physics of double layers, treat supernovae remnants as a problem in fluid dynamics, using mechanical shockwaves and gravitational pressure to provide the observed energies. It is an approach that Hannes Alfvén warned, more than half a century ago, is doomed to fail.
Stephen SmithZero volume and near-infinite density are incompatible with three-dimensional space.... more
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The sad unplugging of the Allen Telescope Array due to lack of funding brings a screeching halt, at least temporarily, to the most ambitious search for "hello" radio transmissions from E.T.
But perhaps it's time to simply think far outside of the box regarding our preconceptions of how to find extraterrestrial civilizations, says Clement Vidal of the Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. And, the most advanced aliens may be the easiest to find.
In a recent paper, he emphasizes that we have to look at a variety of search strategies in solving the mystery of our cosmic loneliness -- that is, if we are satisfied with simply finding E.T. and not communicating with it.
Vidal's reasoning: The universe is so old there have to be far-advanced civilizations out there, billions of years more evolved than us. They have to be doing super-human engineering feats that are recognizable across intergalactic space. "Super-human" might also mean that the most advanced life-forms could very likely be post-biological. They have evolved far beyond being creatures of flesh and blood, as described in Arthur C. Clarke's "2001:A Space Odyssey."
What defines a super-civilization? In 1964, Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev proposed a scheme for classifying technologically advanced alien societies. A Type I civilization uses energy resources on a planet-wide scale, like us. A Type II civilization would have 10 billion times more energy available by trapping the total output of its central star -- perhaps by building a shell around it called a Dyson sphere. A Type III civilization would tap the energy resources of an entire galaxy -- only God knows how! This would give a further increase to power available by at least a factor of 10 billion.
(click on the link for the full article)The sad unplugging of the Allen Telescope Array due to lack of funding brings a... more
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A Korean satellite has caught an eye-catching view of an island in Mexico known for a deep, rocky hole and waters so dark that they earned it the name Holbox, a name that means "black hole."
The photo was taken by the Korea Multi-purpose Satellite 2, or Kompsat-2, and shows Holbox Island and its Yalahau lagoon at the northeast corner of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. [Photo of Earth's "black hole"]
Holbox Island is a 26-mile-long (42-kilometers) strip of land separated from the mainland by the lagoon.
http://members.beforeitsnews.com/story/563/518/Satellite_Photographs_Black_Hole_on_Earth.htmlA Korean satellite has caught an eye-catching view of an island in Mexico known for a... more
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As the Japanese nuclear crisis sheds light on nuclear safety, one issue, in particular, has been nudged into the spotlight. Since Nevada has balked at storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, spent fuel rods are piling up in U.S. nuclear plants.As the Japanese nuclear crisis sheds light on nuclear safety, one issue, in... more
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Extra dimensions are old news. The newest mind-bending descriptions of reality dreamed up by the world’s smartest physicists, and explained by superstar superstring theorist Brian Greene in his latest book The Hidden Reality, include untold numbers of extra universes. A million universes isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Ten to the 500th power universes. Greene likes to drop you into the middle of the action first and then explain the backstory (and sometimes it does feel like a full-scale intellectual invasion is happening), but he has an elegant knack for anticipating questions and immediately dealing with any confusion or objections. http://www.makeahistory.com/index.php/your-details/32324-superstring-theorist-brian-greene-and-his-idea-of-an-infinite-number-of-universesExtra dimensions are old news. The newest mind-bending descriptions of reality dreamed... more
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An international group of astronomers and physicists has found that rotating black holes leave an imprint on passing radiation that should be detectable using today's most sensitive radio telescopes. Observing this signature, they say, could tell us more about how galaxies evolve and provide a test of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.
link: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110213/full/news.2011.90.htmlAn international group of astronomers and physicists has found that rotating black... more
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There are a multitude of celestial bodies, and all of them spin.
Any substance that contains charged particles is a form of plasma: electrons, positive ions, electrically charged dust particles, neon lights, lightning, Earth’s magnetosphere, the solar wind, stars, and even galaxies are plasma.
In energetic regions of plasma, filaments of electric current flow in closed circuits, otherwise the charged particles would accumulate and the flow would stop. The existence of electric circuits in space is what distinguishes Electric Universe theory from most, if not all, conventional viewpoints. As Electric Universe advocates insist, it is the behavior of electricity that explains phenomena that appear "mysterious" to space scientists.
X-ray emissions from planets, braided plasma filaments, hourglass-shaped nebulae, and jets of charged particles erupting out from galactic axes provide observational evidence for the existence of plasma circuits. Celestial bodies are not isolated from one another, but are connected across vast distances.
Electromagnetic forces squeeze those conductive channels into filaments that tend to attract each other in pairs. Electric fields that form along the long strands generate an attractive force that can be 39 orders of magnitude greater than gravity. However, when they get close to each other, instead of merging, the plasma "cables" twist into a helix that rotates faster as it compresses tighter. It is those "cosmic transmission lines" that make up galactic circuits.
Astronomers maintain that galaxies are condensed clouds of hydrogen and dust that have been compressed by gravity until they ignite with multiple thermonuclear fireballs. Since there is not enough luminous mass to account for their large angular momentum estimates, theories that involve "haloes of dark matter" around galaxies, or "supermassive black holes" in their centers have been proposed for why galaxies spin.
The cosmos appears to be interlaced with untold numbers of interacting circuits that occur in nested hierarchies. Each of those circuits appears to be composed of untold numbers of twisting filaments of plasma called Birkeland currents. At the largest observable scale there are power-consuming objects, or loads in the various circuits, that appear to be converting electrical energy into rotational energy.
Consensus opinions suggest that galaxies, stars, and planets spin because of how they formed. A comparatively large cloud of gas and dust is said to contract, causing its spin rate to increase. Although, why a randomly moving cloud of particles should have a net spin rate is both illogical and unexplained. In the case of a galaxy, spiral arms form, a disk of material surrounds the central nucleus, and eddy-currents inside the disk condense into stars. The spinning cloud is supposed to overcome its internal gravitational attraction with centrifugal force, flinging out material like drops of paint.
In the same way, stellar systems develop within eddies that form in discrete bands around fusion-hot gravity wells that, in turn, become planets, moons, comets, and asteroids. Since they are all supposed to share a similar genesis, they are all believed to spin for the same reason.
Hannes Alfvén's "electric galaxy" hypothesis, on the other hand, states that galaxies (and by extension, stars and other objects) are more like a device invented by Michael Faraday, the homopolar motor. A homopolar motor is driven by magnetic fields induced in a circular, conductive metal plate. The plate rotates between the poles of an electromagnet, causing it to spin at a rate proportional to the input current.
Since galaxies exist within a filamentary circuit of electricity that flows through the cosmos, they and their attendant stellar and planetary offspring most likely spin because of electricity flowing through them like it does through Faraday's motor.
Stephen SmithThere are a multitude of celestial bodies, and all of them spin.
Any substance that... more
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In the nearly eight years since the website Thunderbolts.info has gone online, perhaps the most common request we've received from readers is that we address the innumerable misrepresentations of the Electric Universe hypothesis on the Internet. Newcomers to the theory face an arduous task of sorting through the considerable confusion created by pseudoskeptics. It's not reasonable to expect proponents of "mainstream" theory to immediately embrace the EU; but it is reasonable to ask that EU critics make the effort to learn what the theory actually proposes before loudly denouncing it. Unfortunately, the most vocal opponents of the EU have consistently failed on this front. (A few responses by Professor Don Scott, Thunderblog editor and forum administrator Dave Smith, and Thunderbloggers Michael Gmirkin and Michael Goodspeed appear on these pages. More responses will be coming in the weeks ahead.)
The above interview with Wallace Thornhill is the first of a series of Q and A's with members of the Thunderbolts team, many of which will also be devoted to addressing misconceptions about the EU. It is the newcomer to EU for whom this first interview is mostly intended. Viewers who wish to suggest further questions or draw our attention to other issues calling for discussion may send their message(s) to Dave Smith.
One misconception not addressed in the above interview should be mentioned here. For years the Internet has been cluttered with reckless dismissals of the Thunderbolts group by self-proclaimed authorities. They would have their readers believe that only those uneducated in "real science" could be attracted to the Electric Universe.
A leading contributor and former administrator of physicsforums.com says: "Thunderbolts is a well-known crackpot site - not only is their material full of venom and vitriol towards the people who do real research, but their own 'science' doesn't even get to first base."
It's not clear to what extent such comments have discouraged curious folks from pursuing questions on their own. But one thing is undeniable -- the Electric Universe and the Thunderbolts group are attracting exceptionally well-educated readers, the best foundation for an enduring movement.
more at link...In the nearly eight years since the website Thunderbolts.info has gone online, perhaps... more
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The magnetar (magnetic star) is a rare discovery for astronomers and when studying the one located in the Westerlund 1 cluster they found issues with its mass and how black holes are formed.
"For this newly discovered magnetar, astronomers calculated that the mass of the progenitor must have been at least 40 times greater than that of our Sun.
Continue reading the main story
Collapsing stars of this size should form a black hole. The fact that this one resulted in a neutron star, challenges established theory."-BBCThe magnetar (magnetic star) is a rare discovery for astronomers and when studying the... more
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While your computer is running idle, it could be finding new pulsars and black holes in deep space.Three volunteers running the distributed computing program Einstein@Home have discovered a new pulsar in the data from the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope. Their computers, one in Iowa (owned by two people) and one in Germany, downloaded and processed the data that found the pulsar, which is in the Milky Way, approximately 17,000 light years from Earth in constellation Vulpecula.
LINK : http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/citizen-scientist-pulsars/While your computer is running idle, it could be finding new pulsars and black holes... more
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RedIceRadio — March 20, 2010 — Author and researcher Wallace Thorhill joins us to discuss his work and book "The Electric Universe". He has been working closely with David Talbot over at thunderbolts.info and he's one of the voices in the "Thunderbolts of the Gods" DVD. Previously we've had Donald Scott and Rens van der Sluijs with us on the program, also contributors to thunderbolts.info, now Wallace joins us for an excellent two hour program as we explore the exciting theory of the electric universe. Topics Discussed: Immanuel Velikovsky, The Saturn Myth, Ancient Solar system, Gravity, Electricity, Journal of Classical Physics, Einstein, the Electric Universe Theory, Quasars, Black Holes, The Standard Model of the Sun, Solar Activity, Anode, Glow Discharge, Photosphere, Magnetism, Twisted Pairs, DNA shape of a Galaxy, Dark Currents, Fractal, The Nature of Gravity, Infinite Speed, Nerve Signaling Speed, Tom Van Flandern, The Origins of the Universe, Longitudinal System, Tesla, Free Energy and more.
I'm loving Red Ice Radio. www.redicecreations.comRedIceRadio — March 20, 2010 — Author and researcher Wallace Thorhill... more
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John Roach
for National Geographic News
Published May 7, 2010
A mystery object in a galaxy far, far away could be a supermassive black hole that got booted from its home galaxy's center, according to a new study.
Then again, the strange body could be a rare type of supernova or an oddball "midsize" black hole—more massive than black holes born when single stars explode but "lighter" than the supermassive ones at the centers of galaxies.
"All three of those [options] are exotic and have something peculiar to them," said study co-author Peter Jonker, an astronomer with the Netherlands Institute for Space Research in Utrecht.
Off-center Black Holes Wanted
Jonker and his colleagues found the mystery object while on the hunt for off-center supermassive black holes that are thought to form when two galaxies merge. (Related: "Colossal Four-Galaxy Collision Discovered.")
Most, if not all, galaxies are thought to have supermassive black holes at their cores. Recent computer simulations suggest that when two galaxies merge, so do their central black holes.
But the newly formed black hole combo "actually receives a kick" from gravitational forces generated by the galactic merger, Jonker said. The kick, according to the models, "launches this newly formed black hole out of the center of the galaxy." (See "Hundreds of 'Rogue' Black Holes May Roam Milky Way.")
Sorting through archived data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the team found an interesting candidate in a galaxy half a billion light years away from Earth. The extremely bright x-ray object is about ten thousand light-years from its galactic center.
Based on the Chandra data, however, the astronomers couldn't rule out the possibility that the newfound object actually lies behind the galaxy in question.
So the team compared their x-ray information with archived optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope. They found that the mystery object emits a bright blue light in visible wavelengths. (See NASA astronomer's picks for the top Hubble pictures of the past 20 years.)
"If you look through [a] galaxy toward something in the background, you go through a layer of material"—interstellar dust—"that preferentially takes out the blue light," so you wouldn't see it, Jonker explained.
The object's blue hue helps confirm that it belongs to the galaxy in question, the team reports in a paper accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"Having ruled out the background source, then the question is, OK, what then can it be?" Jonker said.John Roach
for National Geographic News
Published May 7, 2010
A mystery... more
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The phenomenon of time dilation is a strange yet experimentally confirmed effect of relativity theory. One of its implications is that events occurring in distant parts of the universe should appear to occur more slowly than events located closer to us. For example, when observing supernovae, scientists have found that distant explosions seem to fade more slowly than the quickly-fading nearby supernovae.
(more at link)The phenomenon of time dilation is a strange yet experimentally confirmed effect of... more
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