Researchers Propose New Gravitational Wave Detector
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Exchange of electromagnetic energy is fairly well understood. The force carrier, the photon, is readily detectable and manipulated, making the physics of electromagnetic radiation...
Latest Black hole Stories
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel spacecraft has revealed that the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy is about to get a taste of some hot molecular gas. Sagittarius A has a mass of about four million times that of our Sun and sits about 26,000 light-years away from us. It is a few hundred times closer to us than any other galaxy with an active black hole at its center, making it ideal for studying these...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Stars sustain themselves by fusing elements in their core, producing even heavier atoms, releasing energy that keeps the immense force of gravity at bay. But eventually, the fusion process will no longer produce enough outward radiation pressure to sustain the star, and it will begin to collapse in on itself. In the grandest of cases, the progenitor is a truly massive object, perhaps tens or hundreds of times the mass of...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online In 2011, the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to a trio of researchers. Adam Riess, Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt were able to determine that the speed and scope of the expansion of the universe is not so uniform as once believed. This simple discovery threw the whole prospect of dating and measuring time in galaxies far from our own. However, this week saw a multi-national collaboration come together to detail just how we...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The entire Milky Way galaxy revolves around a supermassive black hole, which is surrounded by a turbulent expanse of space fraught with extreme gravitational forces. Despite the inhospitable nature of this region, a team of American astronomers has found jets of material that typically indicate star formation when found in less tumultuous sections of the universe, according to their report in the Astrophysical Journal Letters....
Watch the video "Black Hole Eats Super-Jupiter" Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers using the European Space Agency's (ESA) Integral space observatory have watched as a black hole woke up to feed on a low-mass object that strayed just a little too close. The team was using the Integral observatory to study a galaxy 47 million light-years away when they noticed a bright X-ray flare coming from another location. "The observation was completely unexpected,...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers using ground and space telescopes around the world have revealed a black hole and a star, intertwined in a cosmic tango together. Astronomers writing in Astronomy & Astrophysics say they have observed a black hole, known as MAXI J1659-152, and a red dwarf with a mass only 20 percent that of the Sun orbiting each other every 2.4 hours. The two cosmic bodies sit over half a million miles away from each other, but are...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Black holes are incredibly difficult objects to understand, partially because their very existence seemingly challenges the physical laws of the Universe. Because of their extreme nature, various peculiarities arise that give scientists pause. One such case was proposed by Stephen Hawking, the famed cosmologist, back in the 1970s. He noted that because of the extreme gravity that exists within the event horizon of a black...
[ Listen to the three-part interview with Prof. Holley-Bockelmann in RedOrbit’s Your Universe Today Podcasts ] John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online As astronomers peer out into the distant reaches of the Universe they find that some galaxies are emitting enormous amounts of radiation from their cores. Supermassive black holes at the center of these galaxies consume the surrounding gas and dust, heat it up, and thrust it into outer space at nearly the speed...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A rare explosion from a rotating star may have created the most recent black hole formed in the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory claim that matter was ejected at high speeds along the poles of a rotating star, creating a supernova remnant, W49B, which may contain a young black hole. "W49B is the first of its kind to be discovered in the galaxy," said Laura Lopez, who led the study at the...
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Unlike with some blockbuster films, the sequel to a movie from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is better than the first. This latest movie features a deeper look at a fast moving jet of particles produced by a rapidly rotating neutron star, and may provide new insight into the nature of some of the densest matter in the universe. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The hero of this Chandra movie is the...
Latest Black hole Reference Libraries
X-Ray Astronomy -- Although the more energetic X-rays (E > 30 keV) can penetrate the air at least for distances of a few meters (they would never have been detected and medical X-ray machines would not work if this was not the case) the Earth's atmosphere is thick enough that virtually none are able to penetrate from outer space all the way to the Earth's surface. X-rays in the 0.5 - 5 keV range, where most celestial sources give off the bulk of their energy, can be stopped by a few...
Quasar -- A quasar (from quasi-stellar radio source) is an astronomical object that looks like a star in optical telescopes (i.e. it is a point source), but has a very high redshift. The general consensus is that this high redshift is cosmological, the result of Hubble's law and that their redshift indicates that they are typically very distant from Earth; we observe them as they were several billions of years ago. Since we can see them despite their distance, they must emit more...
Cygnus X-1 -- Cygnus X-1 (often abbreviated to Cyg X-1) is an X-ray source in the Cygnus constellation considered to be one of the most likely black hole candidates. The optical counterpart (HDE 226868) is a variable 8.9 magnitude star (visible with good binoculars in good observing conditions.) at right ascension 19 h 56.5 min and declination of 35 deg 4 min (for 1950 epoch). Cyg X-1 is a binary star that contains a O9-B0 supergiant (with a surface temperature of 31000 Kelvin) and a...
![Artist\](/media/gallery/xmm-newton/thumbs/thumbs_xmm-newton_outflows_b_full.jpg "Artist\")
