Posted on 04/10/2011 8:07:18 PM PDT by neverdem
Astronomers have observed possibly the biggest blast ever seen in the cosmos. When NASA's SWIFT space observatory first spotted it 10 days ago, observers thought it was a massive star blowing up as a supernova and expected it to fade within hours or even minutes. But the high-energy radiation from the source has shown no sign of dying down, which suggests that astronomers may have caught a star in the process of being ripped to shreds by a black hole.
The blast is actually a series of bursts, like a string of firecrackers going off one after another. "We know of objects in our own galaxy that can produce repeated bursts, but they are thousands to millions of times less powerful than the bursts we are seeing," says Andrew Fruchter of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. "This is truly extraordinary."
SWIFT's Burst Alert Telescope detected the source of the bursts on 28 March. The Hubble Space Telescope took an image of the source on 4 April, which located the explosions at the center of a galaxy 3.8 billion light-years away. On the same day, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory took a picture of the source by pointing at it for 4 hours. That image also showed that the source of the bursts was at the center of the galaxy imaged by Hubble.
The position of the source within the galaxy offered a clue that the bursts might be associated with a black hole, as nearly all galaxies have a black hole in the middle. "We think that there is a dormant black hole there that has accreted a lump of matter—probably a star that has fallen into it," says astrophysicist Neil Gehrels, the lead scientist for SWIFT at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
What could be going on is the following: A star flitting too close to the black hole has been grabbed by its gravitational pull. The star's gas has been falling into the black hole, causing enormous amounts of energy to be released in the form of high-energy particles shooting out like a jet.
Although this is not the first time astronomers have witnessed a star being gobbled up by a black hole, the bursts are putting out energy far greater than previously seen. One reason for the extreme brightness could be that the jet of particles shooting out of the black hole is pointing straight at Earth.
Astronomers all over the world are working round the clock to collect more data on the event, and Hubble is snapping more images of the source. "Some spectra have been taken; there's a lot more work to be done on how the spectrum changes over time," Gehrels says. "If it really is a star being torn up, then we'd expect it to fade away in the next few days. If it stays bright for several weeks or a month, that would tell us something different. I'm not sure what that would be."
Oh goody - I was going to send out next month’s mortgage payment tomorrow.
Maybe I’ll wait a few weeks!
Oh goody - I was going to send out next month’s mortgage payment tomorrow.
Maybe I’ll wait a few weeks!
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Somehow, this sounds vaguely racist... better have the bamster’s DOJ check it out.
by the time we see the first flash from it going Supernova it could well be too late to worry about.
The pisser is that it could have gone supernova 600 years ago, and the first flash could be here any second.....
Don’t you think Orion would have sent a flaming arrow with amessage?
Roberto Bolli discusses cardiac stem cell treatment for heart failure at Cannon Lecture
The Key to a Long Life: Conscientious Habits
Molecular fridge can reach millikelvin
FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.
One reason for the extreme brightness could be that the jet of particles shooting out of the black hole is pointing straight at Earth.
Oh, that sounds groovy, wonder what’s comes next?
Naked eye observers?
When the scientists tell you to look at it through
a half inch steel plate, you know it’s not going
to be good.
In real life, there is no such thing as a black hole, much less a “star-eating black hole
What a bright gal you are, I think black holes are areas where stuff are traveling faster than the speed og light, thereby rendering everything invisible to us, alas black hole. Got this idea some years ago when they started talking about black holes, but no one knew what they were,
I think not much has changed
>> and Hubble is snapping more images of the source.
Hubble bump.
>> This is almost certainly yet another artifact of mistakenly interpreting redshift as distance.
That reminds me of Einstein’s reference to observations of uniform spectral luminance of eclipsing objects supporting the constancy of light. I’m vague on the specifics, and need to revisit Relativity.
OK, Dr. Smarter-than Hubble1946 -- please share your calculations with us!
But don't waste our time with citing some Irish numbskull who died in 1656...
There are no galaxies in the Bible, either. But, if there were, how many could Moses have seen?
And if he saw any, could he have recognized what they were?
Care to expound? Something that postdates Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies?
And if you were an illuminated intelligence (and not even necessarily the Ontos-On) and wanted to explain cosmogony and cosmology to him, how would you go about it, in a way that his descendants wouldn't falsify later?
A tightly-packed cluster of white-dwarf stars falling into a black hole?
A really big star and accretion disk falling in?
>>”If it stays bright for several weeks or a month, that would tell us something different. I’m not sure what that would be.”<<
A tightly-packed cluster of white-dwarf stars falling into a black hole?
A really big star and accretion disk falling in?
—
A large scale, localized, building project by the Pan-Galactic Builders Association?
ps: I read your about page -- and with all due respect ... ((((( cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo )))))
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
