A neutrino that plowed into the Antarctic ice offers up a cautionary message: Don't stray too close to the edge of an abyss.
The subatomic particle may have been blasted outward when a star was ripped to pieces during a close encounter with a black hole, physicists report May 11 at arXiv.org. If it holds up, the result would be the first direct evidence that such star-shredding events can accelerate subatomic particles to extreme energies. And it would mark only the second time that a high-energy neutrino has been traced back to its cosmic origins.
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Student Clears Up "Massive" Black Hole Confusion
Black holes are among the most enigmatic objects in our universe. These mysterious celestial bodies do not emit any light of their own and are thus incredibly difficult to spot. In fact, one can only detect black holes based on the effects that they have on their surroundings.
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The system in question, LS V +22 25 or LB-1 in short, was claimed to be a double-star system consisting of an 8 solar mass star and a 70 solar mass black hole that orbit around one another in just 80 days, very much the same way as planets orbit around stars.
Did the Black Hole in the Centre of Milky Way Just 'Blink' at Us? Scientists Think So
According to a study , the scientists studied the black hole using ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array), which is an extremely powerful telescope. The black hole, which is said to be four times more massive than our sun, was seen "flickering".
The black hole at the center of the Milky Way is blinking at us - CNET
"This emission could be related with some exotic phenomena occurring at the very vicinity of the supermassive black hole," said Tomoharu Oka, a co-author on the study.
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The team thinks the flickering signal has to do with the innermost edge of Sgr A*s accretion disk. The edge is very close to the black hole, which is spinning the gas and debris around at near light-speed. During this process hot spots arise that blast out millimeter and submillimeter light -- and that's the signal they're detecting. The flickering is amplified when the hot spots are moving toward us in space.
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States and Cities Continue Plunge into Financial Black Hole
State and local officials are well aware that they face the most dire fiscal circumstances in decades. They still don't know just how bad it will be.
In Minnesota, a surplus of $1.5 billion turned into a shortfall of $2.4 billion within two months. The freefall may well continue. “It’s the uncertainty that is so difficult,” says Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman. “We’re all anxious because we know it can get way worse.”
Why Mysterious Cosmic Clouds Form Near Black Holes
Once you leave the majestic skies of Earth, the word “cloud” no longer means a white fluffy-looking structure that produces rain. Instead, clouds in the greater universe are clumpy areas of greater density than their surroundings.
But black holes aren’t truly like vacuum cleaners; they don’t just suck up everything that gets too close. While some material around a black hole will fall directly in, never to be seen again, some of the nearby gas will be flung outward, creating a shell that expands over thousands of years.
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