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Star-Eating Black Hole May Be Producing Universe's Biggest Blast
ScienceNOW ^ | 7 April 2011 | Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

Posted on 04/10/2011 8:07:18 PM PDT by neverdem

Enlarge Image
sn-galaxy.jpg
Breathing fire. A distant cosmic explosion detected 28 March (left) continues to put out a series of high-energy flares (right). Astronomers believe it's a star being consumed by a black hole 3.8 billion light-years away.
Credit: (left, galaxy) ASA/Swift/Stefan Immler; (right, diagram) NASA/Swift/Penn State/J. Kennea

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."


TOPICS: Extended News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: blackhole; catastrophism; haltonarp; hubble; nasa; stringtheory; swift; xplanets
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To: KevinDavis; annie laurie; Knitting A Conundrum; Viking2002; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Mmogamer; ...

Thanks neverdem.
 
X-Planets
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61 posted on 04/12/2011 5:55:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Thanks Cincinna for this link -- http://www.friendsofitamar.org)
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To: 75thOVI; agrace; aimhigh; Alice in Wonderland; AndrewC; aragorn; aristotleman; Avoiding_Sulla; ...

Thanks neverdem.
 
Catastrophism
 
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62 posted on 04/12/2011 5:55:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Thanks Cincinna for this link -- http://www.friendsofitamar.org)
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To: AdmSmith; bvw; callisto; ckilmer; dandelion; ganeshpuri89; gobucks; KevinDavis; Las Vegas Dave; ...

Thanks neverdem.

· String Theory Ping List ·
721 posted on 04/24/2007 8:14:42 PM PDT by DocRock
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63 posted on 04/12/2011 5:55:36 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Thanks Cincinna for this link -- http://www.friendsofitamar.org)
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possibly the biggest blast ever seen in the cosmos. When NASA's SWIFT space observatory first spotted it 10 days ago
and 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.


64 posted on 04/12/2011 5:58:53 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Thanks Cincinna for this link -- http://www.friendsofitamar.org)
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To: neverdem

Wow! That’s one nasty looking blast.

Glad that thing wasn’t anywhere near here when it went up.


65 posted on 04/12/2011 6:00:19 PM PDT by KoRn (Department of Homeland Security, Certified - "Right Wing Extremist")
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To: SunkenCiv

Is it just me, or does it look like the cosmos is giving us the middle finger in the picture there ?


66 posted on 04/12/2011 6:25:34 PM PDT by MetaThought
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To: MetaThought

It’s not giving us the middle finger, just you. ;’)


67 posted on 04/12/2011 7:55:22 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Thanks Cincinna for this link -- http://www.friendsofitamar.org)
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To: lurk
We are in so much trouble when that blast hits us.

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.

68 posted on 04/12/2011 8:18:33 PM PDT by Mike Darancette (The heresy of heresies was common sense - Orwell)
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To: Elsie
PUt yer clothes back on and go inside, as it's WAY to faint for a human eye to pickup.

So are viruses but I want to know where they are, particularly when I'm unclothed, thank you very much.

69 posted on 04/13/2011 7:10:27 AM PDT by Zuben Elgenubi
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To: SunkenCiv

D*mn fine graphic, SunkenCiv!!


70 posted on 04/13/2011 7:11:32 AM PDT by Zuben Elgenubi
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To: tet68
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.

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.

71 posted on 04/13/2011 7:17:10 AM PDT by Zuben Elgenubi
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To: neverdem

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


72 posted on 04/13/2011 7:20:16 AM PDT by Skeez (O)
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To: TXnMA; tet68; Elsie
There are no galaxies in the Bible, either. But, if there were, how many could Moses have seen?

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.

73 posted on 04/13/2011 7:32:09 AM PDT by Zuben Elgenubi
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To: Zuben Elgenubi; Alamo-Girl; betty boop
"As a naked-eye obsever of the cosmos, I can proudly answer that.

One. The Andromeda galaxy."

~~~~~~~~~

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"...

~~~~~~~~~

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.

~~~~~~~~~

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...

74 posted on 04/13/2011 8:32:09 AM PDT by TXnMA ("Allah": Satan's current alias...)
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To: UCANSEE2; wendy1946
I’d assumed sunspots were plasma-physics dead spots of some sort.

"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..

See "Shown in ultraviolet light, the relatively cool dark regions have temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius."...

75 posted on 04/13/2011 8:50:46 AM PDT by TXnMA ("Allah": Satan's current alias...)
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To: TXnMA; betty boop
Truly said, dear brother in Christ!

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.

76 posted on 04/13/2011 10:30:49 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Zuben Elgenubi

;^)


77 posted on 04/13/2011 11:15:19 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: TXnMA
But you're also wrong: he could have seen two galaxies

As a member of FreeRepublic, I am proud to acknowledge your excellent point.

78 posted on 04/13/2011 12:22:58 PM PDT by Zuben Elgenubi
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To: Elsie
Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...

Love your tagline, btw.

79 posted on 04/13/2011 12:24:24 PM PDT by Zuben Elgenubi
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To: neverdem
Good thing our dear ruler hadn't heard about this before his glorious speech or he would have blamed Bush for this too.

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...

80 posted on 04/13/2011 3:18:57 PM PDT by SuperLuminal (Where is another agitator for republicanism like Sam Adams when we need him?)
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