Monday, July 6, 2020

For the 1st time, a visible light explosion from a black hole merger | Space | EarthSky

For the 1st time, a visible light explosion from a black hole merger | Space | EarthSky

In recent years, black hole mergers in our universe have been detected via ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves. Now, for the first time, astronomers believe they’ve observed visible light from a black hole merger, in a peculiar 3-black-hole system.

Astronomers long believed – and in recent years they’ve observed – that 2 black holes orbiting each other sometimes spiral closer and then merge. Until now, they’ve never seen visible light from such a merger. What they observe are elusive signals from black hole mergers called gravitational waves : ripples in spacetime. Meanwhile, theorists have proposed ways that black hole mergers might explode with visible light.

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Publisher: EarthSky
Date: 2020-07-03T06:25:00-05:00
Author: Deborah Byrd
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While you're here, how about this:

This Absolute Monster of a Black Hole Eats The Equivalent of a Sun a Day

One of the largest known black holes in the Universe has turned out to have an appetite to match its prodigious size. New measurements reveal that it's an absolute chonk, clocking in at around 34 billion times the mass of the Sun - and it devours almost one Sun's worth of mass every day.

This makes it the fastest-growing black hole we know of in the entire Universe; its enormity tips it into the category of ultramassive black holes.

"The black hole's mass is also about 8,000 times bigger than the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way," said astronomer Christopher Onken of Australian National University in Australia.

Publisher: ScienceAlert
Author: Michelle Starr
Twitter: @ScienceAlert
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Scientists now know how massive the fastest-growing black hole in the Universe is - SlashGear
Publisher: SlashGear
Date: 2020-07-06T12:54:09 00:00
Twitter: @slashgear
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There's a Black Hole With 34 Billion Times the Mass of the Sun, Eating Roughly a Star Every

In the 1960s, astronomers began theorizing that there might be black holes in the Universe that are so massive – supermassive black holes (SMBHs) – they could power the nuclei of active galaxies (aka. quasars). A decade later, astronomers discovered that an SMBH existed at the center of the Milky Way ( Sagitarrius A* ); and by the 1990s, it became clear that most large galaxies in the Universe are likely to have one.

Since that time, astronomers have been hunting for the largest SMBH they can find, in the hopes that can see just how massive these things get! And thanks to new research led by astronomers from the Australian National University , the latest undisputed heavy-weight contender has been found! With roughly 34 billion times the mass of our Sun, this SMBH (J2157) is the fastest-growing black hole and largest quasar observed to date.

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Publisher: Universe Today
Date: 2020-07-06T17:06:17-04:00
Author: https www facebook com Storiesbywilliams 205745679447998 ref hl
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And here's another article:

Powerful telescopes can spot the 'Photon Ring' of the first imaged black hole - Republic World

There is a high possibility that the faint photon rings surrounding black holes could be captured with future generations of telescopes. The first-ever image of a black hole was captured in April 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope. It was the black hole M87, which is approximately 55 million light-years away from Earth. Researchers and viewers spotted a faint doughnut-shaped glow around the singularity.

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It is a well-known fact that a black hole's gravity is so intense that few light particles called Photons circle the black hole partway or sometimes once, twice or multiple times before they escape it and are picked up by telescopes. Those orbiting photons are what researchers call 'Photon Rings'. These Photon Rings constitute a series of subrings or circles of light which appear to be getting successively thinner, hence, are harder for telescopes to pick out.

Publisher: Republic World
Date: 46255256F7B435C502CFADCCBD97D1C9
Author: Republic World
Twitter: @republic
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Looking Skyward: Black Hole Collisions Produce Light | WCAI
Date: 2020-07-06
Author: John Basile
Twitter: @wcai_npr
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Astronomers Might Have Seen a Star Just Disappear.

The evidence comes from a galaxy 75 million light-years away known as the Kinman Dwarf Galaxy. Between 2001 and 2011, several groups of astronomers were studying the spectra of this galaxy because it has a particularly low metallicity. Because the galaxy is small and far away, astronomers can’t see all the individual stars, but the galactic spectra allow them to identify some of the bright stars by particular emission lines. One of these was a luminous blue variable star.

Publisher: Universe Today
Date: 2020-07-03T15:07:16-04:00
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Bad Astronomy | A supermassive black hole in a distant quasar is a big problem

Astronomers have discovered the second-farthest quasar ever found , a mind-stomping 13 billion light years from Earth. It has a supermassive black hole in its heart that tips the cosmic scale at 1.5 billion times the mass of the Sun, making it the most massive black hole seen at that distance * .

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It was found in a survey of the sky looking for very distant galaxies like it, and then astronomers observed it more carefully with various very large telescopes to get a spectrum of it, confirming its distance .

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Publisher: SYFY WIRE
Date: 2020-07-06T09:00:00-04:00
Author: https www facebook com Phil Plait 251070648641
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