Latest Tod Strohmayer Stories

Astronomers using NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have found the first fast X-ray pulsar to be eclipsed by its companion star. Further studies of this unique stellar system will shed light on some of the most compressed matter in the universe and test a key prediction of Einstein's relativity theory.The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star -- the crushed core of a massive star that long ago exploded as a supernova. Neutron stars pack more than the sun's mass into a ball nearly...

GREENBELT, Md., Nov. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- While astronomers have studied lightweight and heavyweight black holes for decades, the evidence for black holes with intermediate masses has been much harder to come by. Now, astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., find that an X-ray source in galaxy NGC 5408 represents one of the best cases for a middleweight black hole to date. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "Intermediate-mass...

While astronomers have studied lightweight and heavyweight black holes for decades, the evidence for black holes with intermediate masses has been much harder to come by. Now, astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., find that an X-ray source in galaxy NGC 5408 represents one of the best cases for a middleweight black hole to date."Intermediate-mass black holes contain between 100 and 10,000 times the sun's mass," explained Tod Strohmayer, an...

Astronomers using XMM-Newton and Suzaku have seen Einstein's predicted distortion of space-time and pioneered a ground-breaking technique for determining the properties of neutron stars.ESA's XMM-Newton and the JAXA/NASA Suzaku X-ray observatories have been used to see the distortion of space-time around three neutron stars. These objects contain the densest observable matter in the Universe.Neutron stars cram more than a Sun's worth of material into a city-sized sphere. This means that a cup...

ESA's XMM-Newton has helped to find evidence for the existence of controversial Intermediate Mass Black Holes. Scientists used a new, recently proven method for determining the mass of black holes.Nikolai Shaposhnikov and Lev Titarchuk, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), have used the technique to determine the mass of the black hole, Cygnus X-1, located in the constellation Cygnus (the Swan) approximately 10 000 light years away in our Galaxy, the Milky Way. The elegant technique,...

NASA -- A scientist using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has found evidence that two white dwarf stars are orbiting each other in a death grip, destined to merge. The data indicate gravitational waves are carrying energy away from the star system at a prodigious rate, making it a prime candidate for future missions designed to directly detect these ripples in space-time. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity predicted a binary star system should emit gravitational waves that rush away at...