Archive for the ‘Astrophysics’ Category
They have discovered new details about the birth of a famous black hole, a birth that took place over millions of years. The new and revealing information has been obtained by a team of scientists who analyzed data collected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory at NASA, as well as other optical telescopes, radio and X-ray
The Cygnus X-1 system contains a black hole, and new research on this has led to extremely accurate values of its mass, rotation and distance from Earth. With these key data, has managed to reconstruct the history of the black hole.
This new information can be deduced as born, its mass and how fast spinning shortly after its formation. It is an important achievement because, as emphasized by Mark Reid of the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) Read the rest of this entry »
An international team of scientists has observed an accumulation of gas that falls toward the black hole mass in the center of our galaxy. The moment of closest approach of the cloud will be mid-2013, but scientists have seen how the force of the black hole and is affecting you.
“It’s the first time we see a cloud falling into a black hole”, said Stefan Gillessen a researcher from Max Planck Institute and author of a study describing the early stages of this phenomenon. “This will allow us to learn much about these mysterious objects”.
The cloud has a mass three times that of Earth and moves into an area in the center of the Milky Way known as Sagittarius A. There is a very compact radio source and bright and also located, hypothetically, a supermassive black hole. Read the rest of this entry »
An international team of scientists has detected the highest energy gamma rays observed so far in a pulsar, a highly magnetized neutron star that spins at a speed unusual spoils.
Thanks to the VERITAS experiment has been able to measure gamma rays from the Crab pulsar, and have proved to be so large that energy can not be explained by current scientific models of the behavior of pulsars.
Pulsar photons were detected with energies of about 100,000 million electron volts, 50,000 million times the typical energy of visible light from the Sun. Read the rest of this entry »
Contradicting the findings of a recent study of Type Ia supernovae, which are violent stellar explosions whose brightness is used as reference to determine distances in the universe, the findings of another study, based on observations of distant supernovae of that type Ia suggests that many if not most of them occur when two white dwarfs merge and annihilate each other in a thermonuclear explosion.
White dwarfs are dead stars that have reached the end of their lives, having exhausted its nuclear fuel, but still retain much heat. They are very compact, a large mass concentrated in a discrete diameter.
The evidence suggests that Type Ia supernovae are caused by the merger of two white dwarfs have been accumulating over the past two years, thanks to observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and others. Read the rest of this entry »
Some astrophysicists have found new evidence of black holes tearing stars, a phenomenon long-sought, among other things, provides a new window on general relativity.
The study has been carried out mainly Glennys Farrar and Sjoert van Velzen at New York University’s Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, and has also had the collaboration of Linda Ostman of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain, Nidia Morrell and Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, among other scientists.
Cosmologists have calculated that, at times, the orbit of a star can be disturbed so that it runs from near the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy, but not so close that hole to capture it completely. The star that happens that is shattered by extreme tidal forces experience. Read the rest of this entry »
Astronomers have observed primordial gas clumps formed in the first minutes of the formation of the cosmos. The research, which confirms the predictions of the theory of Big Bang, is the first detection of this gas does not contain traces of heavier elements are forged in the stars.
Two giant clouds of gas containing only light elements, the only that existed before the formation of the stars have been observed for the first time. “So far only theorized about the existence of primordial clouds”, said John M. O’Meara, a researcher from Saint Michael’s College in Colchester (United States) participating in the study.
In the Big Bang created the lighter elements like hydrogen and helium. Millions of years later, when the primordial gas countess and formed the first stars forged heavy elements like carbon or oxygen. These components called “metals” have polluted all measurements made by astronomers until now. Read the rest of this entry »
Dark matter (the invisible material that apparently corresponds to the bulk of the mass of the universe) is perceived by its gravitational influence, but has never been detected directly. It does not interact with electromagnetic radiation.
Broadcast or reflect it as it makes it conventional matter or atomic, dark matter is not seen directly by using conventional techniques of astronomy. The gravitational effect of dark matter makes the galaxies rotated faster than expected. Also, the gravitational field of the dark matter deforms the light of the objects from the visual perspective of the Earth are located behind it, contributing to the so-called “gravitational lens effect”.
Measuring this kind of phenomena, physicists know that the universe is full of such intriguing material that you can not see. The current limitations can be derived for the range of dark matter properties show that the essence of dark matter can not be any of the known particles. Read the rest of this entry »
The analysis of data collected by the astronomical satellite NASA WISE revealed an unusual pattern of eruption in the jets of matter ejected at nearly the speed of light in the vicinity of a black hole.
Infrared vision of WISE, the team of Poshak Gandhi form Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency and Andrew Blain from the University of Leicester in the UK, has been able to capture the details of the innermost regions, close to the base of the black hole jet, for the first time.
The team not only physical characteristics measured with an unprecedented level of detail, but also saw how they changed over short periods of time. Read the rest of this entry »
A dwarf galaxy full of dark matter, and called Sagittarius, has already crossed twice through our galaxy, much larger than it, in the last 2,000 million years, according to data collected in observations by telescope and detailed simulations.
It is estimated that within only 10 million years it will return to do again. These are the conclusions reached by the team cosmologist James Bullock (University of California at Irvine) and Chris Purcell (now at the University of Pittsburgh). As galaxies collide, gravity and other perturbations send stars in long rows. Read the rest of this entry »
Type la supernova is violent stellar explosions whose brightness is used as a reference for determining distances in the universe. The observation of these objects billions of light years away led to the discovery that the universe is expanding at a rate accelerated based on the notion of dark energy.
Although all Type la supernova appear to be very similar, astronomers have lacked clear information about how the explosions occur and if they all share the same origin. Now a team of researchers has examined the detailed new observations of 41 of these objects, and has concluded that there is “signatures” clear gas flow from the stars describing the traits they had before bursting into a supernova. Read the rest of this entry »