Black holes are the universe's monsters: voracious eating machines that swallow anything that ventures near them.
These compact behemoths pull stars and gas into a disk that swirls around them. The feeding generates a prodigious amount of energy, producing a powerful gusher of light from superheated infalling gas.
These disks are so far away that it's nearly impossible to discern any detail about them. But by a quirk of alignment, astronomers may be getting a glimpse of the structure of the disk around the black hole in nearby galaxy IC 5063. The Hubble Space Telescope has observed a collection of narrow bright rays and dark shadows beaming out of the blazingly bright center of the active galaxy.
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Earth faster, closer to black hole, in new map of galaxy -- ScienceDaily
Earth just got 7 km/s faster and about 2000 light-years closer to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. But don't worry, this doesn't mean that our planet is plunging towards the black hole. Instead the changes are results of a better model of the Milky Way Galaxy based on new observation data, including a catalog of objects observed over the course of more than 15 years by the Japanese radio astronomy project VERA.
VERA (VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry, by the way "VLBI" stands for Very Long Baseline Interferometry) started in 2000 to map three-dimensional velocity and spatial structures in the Milky Way. VERA uses a technique known as interferometry to combine data from radio telescopes scattered across the Japanese archipelago in order to achieve the same resolution as a 2300 km diameter telescope would have.
Earth is 2,000 light years closer to the Milky Way's supermassive black hole
A new map of the Milky Way created by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan shows Earth is spiraling faster and is 2,000 light years closer to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy than was previously thought.
In 1985, the International Astronomical Union announced that Earth was 27,700 light years away from the black hole, named Sagittarius A*. But a 15-year analysis through Japanese radio astronomy project VERA found that the Earth is actually only 25,800 light years away. They also found that Earth is moving 7 km/s faster than they previously believed.
New data reveals Earth is closer to a black hole - Big Think
A new study shows our planet is much closer to the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center than previously estimated.
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If you think Earthly matters haven't been going well already, it also turns out that our planet is much closer to the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy than we imagined. New observation data allowed researchers to improve the modeling of the Milky Way Galaxy, showing Earth is moving 7 km/s (~16,000 mph) faster and is 2,000 light years closer to the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*.
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Missing dark matter & shadows from a black hole, Hubble continues to unlock cosmic mysteries
It's a constant of the universe. Dark matter – a key ingredient for the formation and evolution of galaxies is present in whatever galaxy is observed.
That is until NGC 1052-DF2 was discovered – a galaxy missing most of its dark matter. A year later, galaxy NGC 1052-DF4 was discovered 45 million light years from Earth… and it too was missing most of its dark matter.
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Dark matter accounts for approximately 85% of the matter of the universe and 25% of its overall mass-energy density. As it does not interact in an observable way with electromagnetic fields and does not appear to interact in any way with electromagnetic radiation, it cannot be easily detected. Thus its name: "dark" matter.
Galaxy survives a ravenous black hole by birthing 100 stars a year - SlashGear
Lost in space in 'Black Hole Survival Guide' - The Boston Globe
" Black Hole Survival Guide " is Janna Levin's second book on the subject, following " Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space " (2016). Lately, it seems no single entity in space is more popular than the mysterious and exotic black hole, which stars in sci-fi books, movies, and television, and the word itself has become part of popular jargon. The Whatsits and Doohickey never get lost in the abyss anymore, they're sucked into a black hole on the dining room table.
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Her "Survival Guide," illustrated by painter and photographer Lia Halloran, is an exuberant, flashcard-size book of 13 chapters with, naturally, a black cover that draws you in, as it depicts an astronaut similarly attracted toward a mirror-like sphere, perhaps exploring it. Levin takes us on a virtual adventure to black holes, a safe trip that we can actually survive as long as we stay far enough away.
Galaxy Survives Black Hole's Feast – "Goes Against All the Current Scientific Predictions"
Illustration of the galaxy called CQ4479. The extremely active black hole at the galaxy’s center is consuming material so fast that the material is glowing as it spins into the black hole’s center, forming a luminous quasar. Quasars create intense energy that was thought to halt all star birth and drive a lethal blow to a galaxy’s growth.
“This shows us that the growth of active black holes doesn’t stop star birth instantaneously, which goes against all the current scientific predictions,” said Allison Kirkpatrick, assistant professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence Kansas and co-author on the study. “It’s causing us to re-think our theories on how galaxies evolve.”
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