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"Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have for the first time obtained a three-dimensional view of the distribution of the innermost material expelled by a recently exploded star. The original blast was not only powerful, according to the new results. It was also more concentrated in one particular direction. This is a strong indication that the supernova must have been very turbulent, supporting the most recent computer models.

Unlike the Sun, which will die rather quietly, massive stars arriving at the end of their brief life explode as supernovae, hurling out a vast quantity of material. In this class, Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) in the rather nearby Large Magellanic Cloud occupies a very special place. Seen in 1987, it was the first naked-eye supernova to be observed for 383 years and because of its relative closeness, it has made it possible for astronomers to study the explosion of a massive star and its aftermath in more detail than ever before. It is thus no surprise that few events in modern astronomy have been met with such an enthusiastic response by scientists.

SN 1987A has been a bonanza for astrophysicists. It provided several notable observational ‘firsts’, like the detection of neutrinos from the collapsing inner stellar core triggering the explosion, the localisation on archival photographic plates of the star before it exploded, the signs of an asymmetric explosion, the direct observation of the radioactive elements produced during the blast, observation of the formation of dust in the supernova, as well as the detection of circumstellar and interstellar material .

New observations making use of a unique instrument, SINFONI , on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have provided even deeper knowledge of this amazing event, as astronomers have now been able to obtain the first-ever 3D reconstruction of the central parts of the exploding material.

This view shows that the explosion was stronger and faster in some directions than others, leading to an irregular shape with some parts stretching out further into space. ... " (ESO)

box inside a box inside a box inside a....

Nikodem J. Poplawskim a theoretical physicist at Indiana University believes a cosmos might be found in every black hole. That's not a new idea, as there are many people speculating about universes into universes, black and white holes as gates to other realities et cetera. His stance on the matter however is a bit different.

Poplawskim calculates that at the heart of the black hole, at the singularity, torsion might become so strong it counteracts the gravity, and the singularity starts to expand again. This model gives a solution for a lot of phenomenon like the flatness and the horizon problem in cosmology.

I'not sure what the status of these ideas are as Arxiv can contain everything from peer reviewed stuff to scientific fun bunkum, but I am sure that if it's the latter, it's at least classy bunkum I'd wish I could come up with. Here's a generic explanation, and here's the Arxiv link.

Not your average magnifying glass

"Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have discovered the first known case of a distant galaxy being magnified by a quasar acting as a gravitational lens. The discovery is based in part on observations done at the W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaii's Mauna Kea. ..." (Astronomy.com)

Black hole blows bubble

"This composite image shows a powerful microquasar containing a black hole in the outskirts of the nearby (12.7 million light years) galaxy NGC 7793. The large image contains data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory in red, green and blue, optical data from the Very Large Telescope in light blue, and optical emission by hydrogen ("H-alpha") from the CTIO 1.5-m telescope in gold.

The upper inset shows a close-up of the X-ray image of the microquasar, which is a system containing a stellar-mass black hole being fed by a companion star. Gas swirling toward the black hole forms a disk around the black hole. Twisted magnetic fields in the disk generate strong electromagnetic forces that propel some of the gas away from the disk at high speeds in two jets, creating a huge bubble of hot gas about 1,000 light years across. The faint green/blue source near the middle of the upper inset image corresponds to the position of the black hole, while the red/yellow (upper right) and yellow (lower left) sources correspond to spots where the jets are plowing into surrounding gas and heating it. The nebula produced by energy from the jets is clearly seen in the H-alpha image shown in the lower inset. ..." (Chandra)

Out of a black hole

"Combining observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope, astronomers have uncovered the most powerful pair of jets ever seen from a stellar black hole. This object, also known as a microquasar, blows a huge bubble of hot gas, 1000 light-years across, twice as large and tens of times more powerful than other known microquasars. The discovery is reported this week in the journal Nature.

“We have been astonished by how much energy is injected into the gas by the black hole,” says lead author Manfred Pakull. “This black hole is just a few solar masses, but is a real miniature version of the most powerful quasars and radio galaxies, which contain black holes with masses of a few million times that of the Sun.”

Black holes are known to release a prodigious amount of energy when they swallow matter. It was thought that most of the energy came out in the form of radiation, predominantly X-rays. However, the new findings show that some black holes can release at least as much energy, and perhaps much more, in the form of collimated jets of fast moving particles. The fast jets slam into the surrounding interstellar gas, heating it and triggering an expansion. The inflating bubble contains a mixture of hot gas and ultra-fast particles at different temperatures. Observations in several energy bands (optical, radio, X-rays) help astronomers calculate the total rate at which the black hole is heating its surroundings. ..." (ESO)

Chomping chum

"Scientists have watched matter falling into a black hole for the first time ever.

Explosively brilliant light produced from a black hole's gobbling of matter has reached telescopes through a fluke of physics called gravitational microlensing.

A transient phenomenon, gravitational microlensing is the curving of light around a star or galaxy due to the body's gravitational warping of space. In this case, the gravity acts like a lens that bends light from the distant black hole into a new focus for telescopes, temporarily magnifying the light source during an alignment of all the black hole, the massive object bending the light, and Earth.

Supermassive black holes like the one studied are about as wide as the distance from the Earth to the sun. At their immediate outskirts, swirling matter undergoes extreme compression and superheating, powering the hugely energetic displays of visible light known as a quasars.

"This technique can probe regions just a few times larger than the black hole at the center of a quasar in a matter of minutes, rather than decades," researcher David Floyd of the University of Melbourne in Australia told LiveScience. ..." (SPACE.com)

There a hole in the galaxy

A black hole to be precise, like in most "normal" galaxies. This one's from M31 and it shows some differences between 2006 and 2010. The small pics are in X-ray and taken by Chandra. We need long time observations to uncover the most intriguing things about our universe - Chandra is one of the satellites to provide us with such observations.

"The large image here shows an optical view, with the Digitized Sky Survey, of the Andromeda Galaxy, otherwise known as M31. The inset shows Chandra X-ray Observatory images of a small region in the center of Andromeda. The image on the left shows the sum of 23 images taken with Chandra's High Resolution Camera (HRC) before January 2006 and the image on the right shows the sum of 17 HRC images taken after January 2006. Before 2006, three X-ray sources are clearly visible in the Chandra image, including one faint source close to the center of the image. After 2006, a fourth source, called M31*, appears just below and to the right of the central source, produced by material falling onto the supermassive black hole in M31. ..." (Chandra)

Hungry Hungry Hippo

What a fun place galactic nuclei must be - no doubt more fun and more weird than Star Trek V The Final Frontier. Here's a picture of the nucleus of M82 and possibly two black holes about to be feeded to the central eat-it-all core black hole, escaping in the nick of time. Better to be a small free black hole than to drown out in the ... mass.

" New evidence from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton strengthens the case that two mid-sized black holes exist close to the center of a nearby starburst galaxy. These "survivor" black holes avoided falling into the center of the galaxy and could be examples of the seeds required for the growth of supermassive black holes in galaxies, including the one in the Milky Way. ..." (ScienceDaily)

Inside a black whole

I like this guy. His name is Nikodem Poplawski and he has a theory about the universe and its place in the greater scheme of things. That's enough to make me drooling. Go to Universe Today and read the simpletons entry. Below the article you can find a link to the version for the die hards. Good luck.

Let's suck Earth in

I love these thought experiments, especially when quantum physics are involved. And it would even be nicer if we could jot down the chance that the Earth would turn into a black LHC hole. Would there be enough space in this universe to write all the zeros after the dot? No doubt, the universe is big.

And how big would that Schrödinger cat really be?

More fun here. (Discovery)

Slow burn?

"A massive old star is about to die a spectacular death. As its nuclear fuel runs out, it begins to collapse under its own tremendous weight. The crushing pressure inside the star skyrockets, triggering new nuclear reactions, setting the stage for a terrifying blast. And then... nothing happens. ..." (SpaceDaily)

Flashy pulsars and gravitational waves

"Back in September, a fascinating paper appeared on the arXiv about a new way to search for gravitational waves to complement major endeavors such as LIGO and the planned space-based LISA collaborations. It's called the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), and it relies on how pulsars stretch and squeeze as gravitational waves wash over them -- basically, they should "shimmer" a tiny bit, and scientists should be able to detect that shimmer. This new way to search for gravitational waves is among the topics being presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C., this week. ... " (Discovery)

LHC - for all your black holes

Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

But hey, we just discovered a black hole a mere 7,800 light years from home. Close!

A series of unfortunate events?

What a weird vista. This is Centaurus A (NGC 5128) a nearby giant, elliptical galaxy, at a distance of about 11 million light-years. The picture was taken with ESO’s 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) at near-infrared wavelength.

Universe Today has an article about it and here's the original ESO press release.

You see a ring of stars and clusters and in the center there's a massive, 200 million solar mass black hole. The ring is probably a remnant of a collision with another galaxy, thus the designation "cannibal galaxy".

That makes me wonder. If a small galaxy bumps into you, and the whole shebang forms into a new merged galaxy, is that cannibalism or a highly unfortunate event, like one of those from mr. Lemony Snicket?

Calling Buffy, the Vampire Star Slayer

Even a collegae at the office had heard about it, not me. But the various feeds are coming in an unrelentless pace. So there it is, the Vampire Star. That's how you grab the attention of the uneducated masses :), at least for my co-workers !!

"Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope and its ability to obtain images as sharp as if taken from space, astronomers have made the first time-lapse movie of a rather unusual shell ejected by a “vampire star”, which in November 2000 underwent an outburst after gulping down part of its companion’s matter. This enabled astronomers to determine the distance and intrinsic brightness of the outbursting object. It appears that this double star system is a prime candidate to be one of the long-sought progenitors of the exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae, critical for studies of dark energy.

“One of the major problems in modern astrophysics is the fact that we still do not know exactly what kinds of stellar system explode as a Type Ia supernova,” says Patrick Woudt, from the University of Cape Town and lead author of the paper reporting the results. “As these supernovae play a crucial role in showing that the Universe’s expansion is currently accelerating, pushed by a mysterious dark energy, it is rather embarrassing.”

The astronomers studied the object known as V445 in the constellation of Puppis (“the Stern”) in great detail. V445 Puppis is the first, and so far only, nova showing no evidence at all for hydrogen. It provides the first evidence for an outburst on the surface of a white dwarf [1] dominated by helium. “This is critical, as we know that Type Ia supernovae lack hydrogen,” says co-author Danny Steeghs, from the University of Warwick, UK, “and the companion star in V445 Pup fits this nicely by also lacking hydrogen, instead dumping mainly helium gas onto the white dwarf.” "(ESO)

Why not to inhale on Cassiopeia A

You want weird? You'll get weird. The universe delivers:

" Evidence for a thin veil of carbon has been found on the neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, resolves a 10-year mystery surrounding this object.

"The compact star at the center of this famous supernova remnant has been an enigma since its discovery," said Wynn Ho of the University of Southampton and lead author of a paper that appears in the latest issue of Nature. "Now we finally understand that it can be produced by a hot neutron star with a carbon atmosphere." "(Chandra)

A nasty dive

"Black holes are invading stars, providing a radical explanation to bright flashes in the universe that are one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy today.

The flashes, known as gamma ray bursts, are beams of high energy radiation – similar to the radiation emitted by explosions of nuclear weapons – produced by jets of plasma from massive dying stars.

The orthodox model for this cosmic jet engine involves plasma being heated by neutrinos in a disk of matter that forms around a black hole, which is created when a star collapses.

But mathematicians at the University of Leeds have come up with a different explanation: the jets come directly from black holes, which can dive into nearby massive stars and devour them..." (ScienceDaily)

Intermediate size black holes found

Wow, July already. The year is flying by, as usual. A lot has happened on the astronomy front, and now there's a new find important in the development of theory about black holes: the intermediate mass black hole:

"Astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory have discovered a black hole weighing more than 500 solar masses, a missing link between lighter stellar-mass and heavier supermassive black holes, in a distant galaxy. This discovery is the best detection to date of a new class that has long been searched for: intermediate mass black holes." (ESA)

Be careful with your credit card when a magnetar comes along

The universe caters forces that makes our feeble attempts at power play like a microbe compared to the Sun's mass:

"An enormous eruption has found its way to Earth after travelling for many thousands of years across space. Studying this blast with ESA’s XMM-Newton and Integral space observatories, astronomers have discovered a dead star belonging to a rare group: the magnetars.

X-Rays from the giant outburst arrived on Earth on 22 August 2008, and triggered an automatic sensor on the NASA-led, international Swift satellite. Just twelve hours later, XMM-Newton zeroed in and began to collect the radiation, allowing the most detailed spectral study of the decay of a magnetar outburst.

The outburst lasted for more than four months, during which time hundreds of smaller bursts were measured. Nanda Rea from the University of Amsterdam led the team that performed the research. “Magnetars allow us to study extreme matter conditions that cannot be reproduced on Earth,� she says.

Magnetars are the most intensely magnetised objects in the Universe. Their magnetic fields are some 10 000 million times stronger than Earth’s. If a magnetar were to magically appear at half the Moon’s distance from Earth, its magnetic field would wipe the details off every credit card on Earth.

This particular magnetar, known as SGR 0501+4516, is estimated to lie about 15 000 light-years away, and was undiscovered until its outburst gave it away. An outburst takes place when the unstable configuration of the magnetic field pulls the magnetar’s crust, allowing matter to spew outwards in an exotic volcanic eruption. This matter tangles with the magnetic field which itself can change its configuration, releasing more energy. And this was where Integral came in..." (ESA)

Riddles from afar

Solving riddles is great. In the universe, solving them is even more complicated than here on Earth, where we can actually reach a great deal of riddles and observe them up close. Not so out there. Is it an object in the milky Way, just around the corner, or billions of light years away? Some similar problems arose with the Hubble mystery object, brightening and fading in a very unusual manner. Now the solution might be a bit closer: it looks like a carbon rich star ripped apart by a black hole about 2 billion light years away. Only problem is we can't see a galaxy it belongs to, and a massive pair of rogue stars are hardly to be expected in the intergalactic emptiness of space. Read more about the story in the Sky&Telescope News Blog.