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."
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possibly the biggest blast ever seen in the cosmos. When NASA's SWIFT space observatory first spotted it 10 days agoand SWIFT has been in orbit since 2004. The ozone hole over Antarctica was discovered, and was used for a variety of political ends based on the ridiculous claim that, because the capability of finding it was new, the ozone hole must be new.
Wow! That’s one nasty looking blast.
Glad that thing wasn’t anywhere near here when it went up.
Is it just me, or does it look like the cosmos is giving us the middle finger in the picture there ?
It’s not giving us the middle finger, just you. ;’)
If we are seeing the light from that 3.8 billion year old event just now I would imagine that arrival of the larger slower chunks are a long time off.
So are viruses but I want to know where they are, particularly when I'm unclothed, thank you very much.
D*mn fine graphic, SunkenCiv!!
So what I want to do is face the source of the radiation and absorb a part of the event. It is part of the joy of observing the heavens and the associated radiation one cannot see or feel.
it’s all a sham. The universe is electric. There are no black holes.
http://www.holoscience.com/
http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=7qqsr17q
As a naked-eye obsever of the cosmos, I can proudly answer that.
One. The Andromeda galaxy. If Moses could see the Pleiades, a well-known asterism in Taurus (the Bull: remember his brother Aaron make a golden calf and there's a really good astronomical/zodiacal reason for the selection but you'll have to figure that one out yourselves, hehheh), he could have most likely seen Andromeda with his naked-eye.
One. The Andromeda galaxy."
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Spotting M31 with my unaided eye is my personal measure of a night with "good seeing" worthy of dragging out the telescope.
You're right: M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) could have been seen by Moses.
But you're also wrong: he could have seen two galaxies:
Moses (like you) also certainly could have seen the Milky Way -- our own galaxy -- "from the inside looking out"...
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The point of my question was, "Even having seen those two galaxies, could he have recognized them (and written about them) for what they are: millions of stars bound into huge spiral structures by gravity (at vast distances from Earth)? No.
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The same holds true for Bishop Ussher: he had no concept of the universe as we (using tools we have made with our God-given talents) now do.
They could get by with writing, reading, and interpreting "Begats" to derive their (mis)interpretation of the age of the Universe. We have no such excuse...
"I believe that assumption is correct."
~~~~~~~~
Actually not...
Sunspots are only slightly cooler than the photosphere. We have to "stop down" or filter sunlight drastically to image the photosphere. In doing so, we also "darken" the suspots a like amount.
If sunspots were isolated and viewable without being surrounded by the photosphere (bright surface), they would appear to be extremely bright to earth-bound viewers...
IOW, sunspots are "dark" only in comparison with the rest of the sun's bright surface..
God the Father has revealed Himself in four ways: (1) through the Person of Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, (2) through the Person of the indwelling Holy Spirit, (3) through Scripture, and (4) through Creation both spiritual and physical.
As time goes by we obtain a clearer understanding of His revelations.
God's Name is I AM.
;^)
As a member of FreeRepublic, I am proud to acknowledge your excellent point.
Love your tagline, btw.
OTOH, this star is caught up in the same type of disaster scenario as our former Constitutional Republic..."Flitting" too close to marxism in it's communist persona and gradually being eaten up as it falls into a black hole of tyranny.
The outcomes in both cases are the same...No hope of being saved and permanent extinction...
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