Tech & Science super earth Black Hole supermassive black holes Black holes may shape a planet's destiny. According to new research, high-energy radiation outbursts from the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole can remove atmospheres from nearby Neptune-like planets. When that happens, say the researchers, these planets may be left with just their rocky core intact. “It’s pretty wild to think of black holes shaping the evolutionary destiny of a planet, but that very well may be the case in the center of our galaxy,” Howard Chen, a physicist at Northwestern University in Illinois, who led the study, said in a statement. The research was recently posted to the arXiv academic preprint server. Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now An artist’s impression shows The atmosphere of a Neptune-like planet is swept backward by powerful radiation from an outburst in the center of the Milky Way in this artist's … [Read more...] about Black hole outbursts could shape the evolution of planets
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Supermassive Black Holes: How Did They Form In The Very Early Universe?
Black holes that form due to the collapse of massive stars typically have masses 5-20 times that of the sun, but supermassive black holes — found in the centers of nearly all known sizeable galaxies — are far bigger, at about hundreds of thousands, or even billions, of solar masses. Given the 13.8 billion years that have passed since the Big Bang, it may be enough time for supermassive black holes to grow to their gigantic sizes, but how then do we explain that some of them formed less than 800 million years after the universe came into existence? Astronomers have struggled to answer that question since these oldest supermassive black holes, in the last decade or so, were determined to be over 13 billion years old. An associate professor from University of Helsinki, Peter Johansson, proposes a new theory to solve this enigma in a paper published Monday in the journal "Nature Astronomy". “The observations of extremely massive black holes in the very early Universe are … [Read more...] about Supermassive Black Holes: How Did They Form In The Very Early Universe?
Grant will help UA develop ways to handle massive data from black hole research
The Event Horizon Telescope, a global network of radio telescopes that aims to capture images of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, collected a petabyte of data every night of observation in 2017. That’s one thousand trillion or one million billion bytes of data. For perspective, the Library of Congress has archived more than 300 trillion bytes of data. The telescope collected more than three times that amount of data per night of observation, which was four nights in 2017. However, the collection of such larges amounts of data results in a problem for researchers. Right now, it’s more efficient to use airplanes to fly the hard drives storing that data in crates around the world for research purposes than it is to send it electronically. And to access that massive amount of data, researchers must travel to a site housing those hard drives. In 2018, the amount of data the network collects will almost double. This is just one logistical … [Read more...] about Grant will help UA develop ways to handle massive data from black hole research
Supermassive Black Holes Grow Faster In Larger Galaxies, Outpacing Star Formation
The relationship between black holes and stars is a complex one. Black holes are inevitably born from stars, but not all stars become black holes. And black holes, without a shred of sentimentality toward their former kin, would tear to shreds any star that made the mistake of venturing too close. When it came to growth, it was thought that supermassive black holes that lie at the centers of most galaxies accumulated mass at roughly the same pace at which new stars were being born in those galaxies. But two new studies have shown that the largest supermassive black holes (with masses billions of times the sun) which reside in some of the most massive galaxies in the universe grow much faster than the rate at which those galaxies form new stars. One of the studies focused on calculating the ratio between those two growth rates, which was thought to be roughly a constant for all galaxies, irrespective of their mass. The researchers took data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the … [Read more...] about Supermassive Black Holes Grow Faster In Larger Galaxies, Outpacing Star Formation
Supermassive Black Hole Binary Photobombs Andromeda Galaxy, Tightest Pair Ever Seen
While looking for an unusual star in the nearby Andromeda galaxy, astronomers instead found a pair of supermassive black holes. The binary system is the most closely orbiting pair of black holes of their kind we have ever seen. In a statement Thursday, NASA ascribed the finding to the black holes photobombing images of Andromeda (also called M31, after its position in the Messier catalog of non-cometary objects) that were taken by the agency’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, as well as optical data collected from Earth-based telescopes in Hawaii and California. Trevor Dorn-Wallenstein of the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the paper describing this discovery, said in the statement: “We were looking for a special type of star in M31 and thought we had found one. We were surprised and excited to find something far stranger!” Together, the two supermassive black holes have a mass of about 200 million times that of the sun, and are located about 2.6 billion … [Read more...] about Supermassive Black Hole Binary Photobombs Andromeda Galaxy, Tightest Pair Ever Seen
Following Galaxy Mergers, Supermassive Black Holes Swallow One Star Every Year: Study
When it comes to an appetite that is both indiscriminate and voracious, there is probably only one thing that can beat a black hole: a supermassive black hole. And a new study suggests these enormous objects that reside at the centers of many large galaxies could be consuming even more matter than was previously thought. Black holes absorb everything that comes within their event horizon, even light, giving them their name. Sometimes, a passing star is unfortunate enough to get too close to a supermassive black hole, which does to the star the same things as it does to anything else within its event horizon — spaghettification. Called a tidal disruption event, the phenomenon of a supermassive black hole ripping a star to shreds has been observed only a few times. But the new study says the actual incidence of TDEs could be a lot more frequent, when looking at galaxies that have recently undergone mergers. In this artist's illustration depicting the record-breaking tidal … [Read more...] about Following Galaxy Mergers, Supermassive Black Holes Swallow One Star Every Year: Study
Supermassive Black Hole Ate A Dying Star For Over A Decade In The Longest Tidal Disruption Event Observed
When it comes to abject and complete destruction, few things can compare to the impact black holes have on objects unfortunate enough to come within their reach. Those objects can be spacecraft, planets or even stars; the black hole will treat them all the same way — ripping them apart. When a supermassive black hole does exactly that to a star — sphagettifying the burning ball of gas into shreds and devouring it as it comes too close to the black hole’s event horizon — the phenomenon is called a tidal disruption event. Numerous instances of TDE have been observed in the past, distinguished by multi-wavelength X-ray flares that are produced as the stellar material falls into the black hole and gets heated up. Most TDEs last about a year, with the flare becoming very faint over time. But in a paper published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers have described a TDE that is over 10 times longer in duration than previous observations. A supermassive … [Read more...] about Supermassive Black Hole Ate A Dying Star For Over A Decade In The Longest Tidal Disruption Event Observed
Spinning Black Hole Swallowing A Passing Star Mistaken For Brightest Supernova Event
When the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) detected a massive explosion in 2015, astronomers pored over the data and categorized the event as a superluminous supernova, the brightest-ever recorded in history, which was twice as bright as the second in the list. Called ASASSN-15lh, it was, at its peak, 20 times brighter than the light produced by the entire Milky Way galaxy. But now, it turns out it may not have been a supernova — an explosion, one of the last stages of the evolution of massive stars much bigger than the sun — at all. Instead, according to a statement on the website of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), it was something far more rare: a spinning black hole consuming a passing star. An international team led by Giorgos Leloudas at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, studied the data recorded by ASAS-SN from the galaxy, about 4 billion light-years away, where the ASASSN-15lh event took place. “We observed the source for 10 … [Read more...] about Spinning Black Hole Swallowing A Passing Star Mistaken For Brightest Supernova Event
‘There are black holes in my memory.’ Victims testify against more of Larry Nassar’s horrors
Larry Nassar is in Eaton County Circuit Court in Charlotte, Mich., for a sentencing hearing on three counts of sexual assault. (Matthew Dae Smith/Lansing State Journal via Associated Press) Katherine Ebert was 15 years old in 2013 when she first visited Larry Nassar, then an acclaimed sports physician, at Michigan State University for an injured knee. His office had signed photos of Olympians all over the walls. He’d treated those athletes personally. Ebert pestered him about Jordyn Wieber, a member of USA Gymnastics’ “Fierce Five” at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. He was smart and patient and funny, and then his physical examination began. Nassar, sentenced last week to up to 175 years in prison for sexually assaulting gymnasts under the guise of medical treatment, is back in court Thursday for three more counts of sexual assault he admitted to committing at Twistars, a gymnastics center owned by John Geddert, coach of the 2012 Olympic women’s … [Read more...] about ‘There are black holes in my memory.’ Victims testify against more of Larry Nassar’s horrors
Black Hole In Massive Star Cluster Revealed By Orbiting Star’s Weird Motion
For the first time, scientists have discovered a stellar-mass black hole in a globular star cluster by detecting its gravitational pull on another object. An inactive black hole was discovered in the star cluster NGC 3201 because of the erratic motion being displayed by a star that was orbiting it. The observations were made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. The MUSE instrument on VLT showed the odd behavior of a star — it was "being flung backwards and forwards at speeds of several hundred thousand kilometres per hour, with the pattern repeating every 167 days," according to a statement Wednesday by ESO. The star itself was determined to be 80 percent of the sun’s mass, while the black hole that is throwing it into a tizzy was calculated to have a mass of about 4.3 suns. Given the absence of an accretion disk and no matter being swallowed, that the latter object is a black hole is not certain, but highly likely. ESO … [Read more...] about Black Hole In Massive Star Cluster Revealed By Orbiting Star’s Weird Motion