In the new study, published today (Jan. 15) in the journal Nature , astronomers describe six mysterious objects swirling around our galaxy's central black hole. According to the authors, these anomalous objects (dubbed G1 through G6) look like oblong blobs of gas several times more massive than Earth. However, they behave like small stars capable of passing perilously close to the black hole’s edge without being ripped to shreds.
Are these peculiar space burps just gas, or are they stars? According to the study authors, the blobs may be a strange hybrid of both. Based on the six objects' shapes, orbits and interactions with Sgr A*, the researchers suggest that each G object is a pair of binary stars (two stars that revolve around each other) that got smashed together by the black hole's gravity millions of years ago and is still spilling out clouds of gas and dust in the messy aftermath of the collision.
While you're here, how about this:
Black hole breakthrough: Astronomers to 'buckle up' for next black hole
University of Birmingham researchers have told astronomers “to buckle up” for an exciting new period of black hole discovery. The announcement follows the European Space Agency (ESA) recently revealing its two major space observatories of the 2030s will have their launches timed for simultaneous use.
The next-generation X-ray space telescope Athena and LISA, the first space-based gravitational wave observatory, will be coordinated to begin observing within a year of each other.
Bad Astronomy | Weird dust clouds orbiting our galaxy's central black hole may be weirder than we
At the center of our Milky Way galaxy sits a supermassive black hole — which astronomers named Sgr A* — with over 4 million times the Sun's mass.
But it's not alone. Lots of other stuff is there, too, orbiting that black hole, including stars, gas, and dust. Over time, we can see these objects move, held sway by the incredible gravity of Sgr A*. In fact, the motions of several stars have told us a lot about the black hole itself .
But there is another class of objects there, something just recently discovered , and it's not clear what they are . If a team of astronomers is right, they could be among the more bizarre objects in the galaxy: Binary stars that, under the fierce influence of the black hole, have merged to become, something else. Single stars, but weird ones.
Massive Black Hole Collisions Illuminated by X-Rays and Gravitational Waves
The European Space Agency (ESA) has recently announced that its two major space observatories of the 2030s will have their launches timed for simultaneous use. These missions, Athena, the next generation X-ray space telescope and LISA, the first space-based gravitational wave observatory, will be coordinated to begin observing within a year of each other and are likely to have at least four years of overlapping science operations.
They include the collision of supermassive black holes in the core of galaxies in the distant universe and the “swallowing up” of stellar compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes by massive black holes harbored in the centers of most galaxies.
And here's another article:
Famous black hole has jet pushing cosmic speed limit
"This is the first time such extreme speeds by a black hole's jet have been recorded using X-ray data," said Ralph Kraft of the Center of Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass., who presented the study at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. "We needed the sharp X-ray vision of Chandra to make these measurements."
When matter gets close enough to a black hole, it enters into a swirling pattern called an accretion disk. Some material from the inner part of the accretion disk falls onto the black hole and some of it is redirected away from the black hole in the form of narrow beams, or jets, of material along magnetic field lines. Because this infall process is irregular, the jets are made of clumps or knots that can sometimes be identified with Chandra and other telescopes.
The mysterious giant blobs of gas around our galaxy's black hole are actually massive merger
Astronomers have finally figured out what the peculiar object known as "G2" orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is: a behemoth star created from the merger of two binary stars being stretched by the extreme tidal forces around the black hole.
The peculiar object has baffled scientists for years. The mystery deepened after a team of researchers led by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) uncovered other bodies behaving in a similar way to G2 elsewhere. They had stumbled across a new class of objects, but weren't quite sure what those things were exactly.
Massive Black Hole Mystery Solved With a Stripped Helium Star
The putative black hole was detected indirectly from the motion of a bright companion star, orbiting an invisible compact object over a period of about 80 days. From new observations, a Belgian team showed that the original measurements were misinterpreted and that the mass of the black hole is, in fact, very uncertain. The most important question, namely how the observed binary system was created, remains unanswered.
A team of astronomers from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and the University of Potsdam had a closer look at the archival spectrum of LS V+22 25, taken by the Keck telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. In particular, they were interested in studying the abundances of the chemical elements on the stellar surface.
The black hole where missing packages sent to Israel are idling - Business - Haaretz.com
Israelis love to complain about the postal service, which has a reputation for not delivering packages, and the situation worsened in November with a surge in international deliveries, driven in part by Amazon’s offer of free shipping on many orders topping $49.
International ordering was further boosted by the major international shopping days at the end of the year such as Black Friday and China’s Singles Day.
It turns out that in recent months, Israel Post has been renting warehouse space in the town of Zeitan near Ben-Gurion International Airport. The site is used for storing packages that arrive from abroad, amid the sharp increase in Israeli orders from foreign websites.
Happening on Twitter
The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is behaving strangely and eating voraciously. And now, astr… https://t.co/xzOr1OEtlw CNN Wed Jan 15 19:30:02 +0000 2020
Like having a supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy wasn't weird enough, now we're seeing dusty clump… https://t.co/K13lU0BexM BadAstronomer (from Boulder) Thu Jan 16 16:02:52 +0000 2020
A Nature paper shows the discovery of a new class of objects at the center of our galaxy, not far from the supermas… https://t.co/amc6fqu529 nature (from London) Thu Jan 16 22:49:12 +0000 2020
The black hole at the center of the galaxy is forging a strange new kind of star https://t.co/TM3yIv5J9X https://t.co/G9hIQ8g62s SPACEdotcom (from NYC) Wed Jan 15 23:44:04 +0000 2020
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