PASADENA, Calif. - Two space observatories have provided the first strong evidence of a supermassive black hole stretching, tearing apart and partially gobbling up a star flung into reach of its enormous gravity, astronomers said Wednesday.
The event had long been predicted by theory but never confirmed.
A powerful X-ray blast drew the attention of astronomers to the event, located near the center of a galaxy about 700 million light-years from Earth. The international team of astronomers believe gases from the star, heated to multimillion-degree temperatures as they fell toward the black hole near the heart of galaxy RX J1242-11, produced the blast.
It is pretty amazing when you think about it. A star literally ripped apart. :QOriginally posted by: Azraele
Wow.
Originally posted by: Fausto
It is pretty amazing when you think about it. A star literally ripped apart. :QOriginally posted by: Azraele
Wow.
Originally posted by: Fausto
It is pretty amazing when you think about it. A star literally ripped apart. :QOriginally posted by: Azraele
Wow.
Originally posted by: hypersonic5
I wonder if there was intelligent life on any of the planets that might have orbited that star...
HAA! HAA!
Originally posted by: gtsukada
bang bang . . . i'm rick james bitch
Evidently you did not look very well as there is a optical picture of the black hole eating up the star.don't take the pic at face value; its cool, but not real
It's an artist's concept, toolio.Originally posted by: Bleep
Evidently you did not look very well as there is a optical picture of the black hole eating up the star.don't take the pic at face value; its cool, but not real
Bleep
Originally posted by: Fausto
Now this is nerd pr0n.
PASADENA, Calif. - Two space observatories have provided the first strong evidence of a supermassive black hole stretching, tearing apart and partially gobbling up a star flung into reach of its enormous gravity, astronomers said Wednesday.
The event had long been predicted by theory but never confirmed.
A powerful X-ray blast drew the attention of astronomers to the event, located near the center of a galaxy about 700 million light-years from Earth. The international team of astronomers believe gases from the star, heated to multimillion-degree temperatures as they fell toward the black hole near the heart of galaxy RX J1242-11, produced the blast.
Wow.Because of the momentum and energy of the accretion process, only a few percent of the disrupted star's mass (indicated by the white stream) was swallowed by the black hole, while the rest of was flung away into the surrounding galaxy
Originally posted by: gtsukada
bang bang . . . i'm rick james bitch
Originally posted by: DrPizza
maybe what's different is that this time, the star was destroyed, rather than is being slowly "eaten" by the black hole? I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that stars being eaten by black holes is relatively common. Also, in the BBC article on this event, some scientist states that "Every galaxy contains a black hole, and there are millions or billions of galaxies. " Actually, it is believed that in our galaxy alone, there are many black holes, not just one. (But, it's believe that there's one at the center of the galaxy as well)
According to this source here.pdf there is a 95% certainty that there are between 2x10^8 and 4*10^9 black holes in the milky way. (that's between 20 and 400 MILLION blackholes in the milky way... I'm amazed at that number and am willing to question it... but it's not the first time I've read of there being many detected in our galaxy) So, to say there's one in each galaxy is quite an understatement.
edit: quite a number of other sources seem to confirm the many millions of black holes in the milky way... at least by looking at the summaries. It's late and I'm too tired to thoroughly read more of the articles. On a side note, it was thought that black holes would last indefinitely... Steven Hawking, I believe, has shown that black holes "evaporate." The data from SETI@Home would be able to search for the dying gasps of a black hole, but all the data would have to be reanalyzed (looking for a brief wide frequency signal, rather than a long lasting narrow frequency signal)