Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AFP) - For the first time ever, astronomers have detected sound waves coming from a massive black hole in space -- and believe the discovery may help resolve a major mystery, the US space agency said. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the Chandra X-ray Observatory had monitored for 53 hours noise coming from the central region of the Perseus galaxy cluster. The pitch of the sound waves, equivalent to a B-flat -- 57 octaves lower than a middle-C and at a frequency far deeper than the limits of human hearing -- is the deepest note ever detected...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reckless pulsars -- spinning searchlights in space -- might tear themselves apart if they whirled too fast, but ripples in the cosmic fabric first predicted by Albert Einstein may set a celestial speed limit. That limit is still extremely high, about 760 revolutions per second, astronomers said on Wednesday. But scientists figure some of the fastest pulsars could technically go two or three times that speed. Unfortunately, they would inevitably disintegrate if they did. What stops them is the phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity -- the rippling of the fabric of space and time. Known...