Posted on 08/07/2012 3:26:22 PM PDT by null and void
ANN ARBOR — Astrophysicists have detected, for the first time, the oscillating signal that heralds the last gasps of a star falling victim to a previously dormant supermassive black hole.
Led by researchers at the University of Michigan, the team documented the event with the Suzaku and XMM-Newton orbiting X-ray telescopes. These instruments picked up semi-regular blips in the light from a numerically-named galaxy 3.9 billion light years away in the northern constellation Draco the dragon.
The blips, scientifically known as “quasiperiodic oscillations,” occurred steadily every 200 seconds, but occasionally disappeared. Such signals have often been detected at smaller black holes and they’re believed to emanate from material about to be sucked in, explained Rubens Reis, an Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow at UM and first author of a paper on the work published last week in Science Express.
“In order for the black hole to feed from a star that its gravity has broken apart, the remains of the star must form an accretion disk surrounding the black hole,” Reis said. “The disk gets heated up and we can see emissions from the disk very close to the black hole in X-rays. As this matter is falling in, it gives a quasiperiodic wobble and that’s the signal we detected.”
“You can think of it as hearing the star scream as it gets devoured, if you like,” added Jon Miller, astronomy professor at UM and a co-author of the paper.
The researchers liken the signal to a sound because it repeats at a characteristic frequency, which they say would sound like an ultra-low D-sharp.
Scientists were able to “see” this event with NASA’s Swift Gamma-ray Burst Telescope last year, but they didn’t detect the oscillations at that time. Oscillations have been documented in stellar mass black holes having masses about ten times that of the Sun in our own Milky Way Galaxy. They have also been observed emanating from a supermassive black hole at the core of a nearby active galaxy.
Scientists have never identified a quasiperiodic signal from a latent galactic core that had reactivated, nor had they ever observed an event like this so far away.
“Our discovery opens the possibility of studying orbits close to black holes that are very distant, and it could make it possible to study general relativity under extreme settings,” Miller said.
For Reis, the findings confirm the constancy of black hole physics.
“This is telling us that the same physical phenomenon we observe in stellar mass black holes is also observed in black holes a million times the mass of the sun, and also for black holes that were previously asleep,” he said. “It speaks to the invariant nature of physics, which I think is very beautiful.”
The researchers detected the quasiperiodicity in the signals from both the joint Japanese and NASA Suzaku and the ESA’s XMM Newton orbiting observatories. To confirm that the signal was not just noise, they created a power spectrum of the signals, which involved counting the number of photons the telescopes received from the source as a function of time. It’s a way to quantify slight fluctuations in the light that might not otherwise be detectable. Their power spectrum confirmed the existence of the quasiperiodic oscillations in the signal. The event was originally detected with NASA’s Swift Gamma-ray Burst Telescope operated by Goddard Space Flight Center.
The paper is titled “A 200 s quasi-periodicity following the tidal disruption of a star by a dormant black hole.” The work was funded by NASA.
For the record; I adhere to the electric/plasma universe theory (more precisely plasma/fractal universe theory).
And think, they did this movie on such a shoestring budget compared to today. They made so, so much money on that movie hundreds of times over what it cost to make it. Pinewood Studios in England. Couple million bucks back in 1976-77. Scott - a first time movie director then - picked a cast of no huge established stars. Most went on to become big stars.
Stellar farts, perhaps? No more of those cosmic burritos...
Ok, I’ll bite. What is a dormant black hole?
He would have loved this.
And how is the banning of Quix any different than the banning of Chick-Fil-A from Chicago, Boston or San Fran?
Isn't this all about Freedom of Speech?
Global Warming- is there anything it can’t do?
Nope, not gonna do it... Not one joke about Mooch Obama, not one...wouldn’t be prudent.
One that has absorbed all the local matter and isn’t actively feeding.
Impossible to see directly.
Very observable indirectly, we can see the orbits of stars near out galactic center. We know they are orbiting something VERY massive and small, and black.
We can see matter compressing and heating up as it tries to all fall into a tiny spot, like all the attendees in a flaming theater trying to get through a single door.
We can see gravitational lensing of background stars and galaxies that happen to to be in the same line of sight.
Because Quix would not (or perhaps could not?) follow the rules despite repeated reminders.
He would have loved this.
Yes he would have, and I would have pinged him.
And how is the banning of Quix any different than the banning of Chick-Fil-A from Chicago, Boston or San Fran?
Vastly. The mayors don't own Chicago, Boston, or San Fransisco.
Isn't this all about Freedom of Speech?
Almost. Quix is free to speak his mind on several other sites, and is free to set up his own site should he choose.
He is not free to say anything he wants on FR, as he does not own FR.
Look at it this way, I have freedom of speech, I can say anything I wish. Would you allow me to say anything I wanted to you, your wife, your kids and you over your dinner table, eating your food in your house?
If not, why not?
Oh, and just so you know, I called Quix after he was banned, and he seemed to be doing OK with it, is still active on other sites although he does miss FR.
Nope. That was just my wife after she found me at the computer instead of mowing the lawn.
Being eaten by a Black Hole
uh... keep it clean guys ;-)
The larger, the philosophical question, is...... does an accretion disk make noise while being packed into a black hole if there is no ear to hear it?
Gravy, man, gravy.
Well, the deeper question is was there a sound before we heard it?
What was the state of Curiosity in the time between when it landed or crashed and we found out which it had done?
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