Black Hole Observed by X-Ray Satellite 143
eldavojohn writes "Scientists at JAXA and NASA used the Japanese Suzaku satellite to collect data and observations at a distance nearer to a black hole than we've ever been. From the article: 'The observations include clocking the speed of a black hole's spin rate and measuring the angle at which matter pours into the void, as well as evidence for a wall of X-ray light pulled back and flattened by gravity. The findings rely on a special feature in the light emitted close to the black hole, called the "broad iron K line," once doubted by some scientists because of poor resolution in earlier observations, now unambiguously revealed as a true measure of a black hole's crushing gravitational force.' Suzaku also has been providing images and data of super novas and their activities. It's always nice to see national space agencies working together, it almost gives me hope that the world might one day be united in space exploration."
Obligatory summary (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory summary - Exactly (Score:4, Funny)
not only is that why they didnt notice it, but confirms exactly what parent is saying.
Screenshot (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: No, really... (Score:2, Funny)
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Hey bozo, your post didn't contain anything. And for some reason you got modded up as funny.
Your post did contain something. And for some reason you didn't get modded up. I wonder why ;-)
If you still ain't got the joke, his post said "Screenshot", and all you see was nothing, because there's nothing to see when you look at a black hole.
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Your sig (OT) (Score:2)
Because it's cheaper for a manufacturer to make only one line of keypads that have Braille, and the ATM manufacturers know it's cheaper to use those mass-produced Braille-capable keypads than to have a company manufacture Braille-less ones.
Seeing into a black hole? (Score:1)
I'm impressed, they see something coming out of it. I thought we observed black holes by what they did to matter and space (bending light) and radiation emissions.
Exactly how much closer is this black hole and do we need to start worrying about it, now...
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Re:Seeing into a black hole? (Score:4, Funny)
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Using this process, gravity will pull the black hole away.
Now, this would take one hell of a lot of energy to do, but it is possible.
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lol, yeah, using a huge star. I'm not sure what your plan consists in anyways, but I think the best would be to "throw" the biggest star you can from where you stand to the side of the black hole, to have the black hole to capture the star (in its orbit, not inside of its event horizon) and become a binary system. If you throw your star fast enough you'll get the new binary system to move away from you.
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You could just throw it in the event horizon
Are you sure? I thought about that and it just didn't appear obvious to me, although it would make sense, I just thought making them a binary system was a safer bet.
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So the question is... (Score:1)
but wait... there is no gravity gun... WTF are we to do now? Call Dr Freeman!
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(note that this isn't what they're observing, but x-rays from just outside the blackhole, but I thought i'd point it out for interests sake)
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The exact border of a black hole is slightly imprecise, or fuzzy, and a particle pair which appears right on this border can have one particle get swallowed but have the other escape. So black holes actually radiate a small amount of this so-called Hawking radiation, and a tiny black hole (ie, one massing much less than the moon does), will eventually evaporate if it doesn't keep swallowing mass.
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it's a start (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a place to start. Every nation has scientists that are specialists in their own field, if we can get together and share information about space, imagine the possibilities.
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Why was this modded flamebait? It is absolute objective truth. Something like Cassini, a European mission with American instrumentation, guidance, control and coms will never happen again because of the pigheadedness of the current US administration. This is NOT "flamebait". This is NOT "a troll". This is simply the exact precise consequences of the actions of the Bush Whitehouse and the Republican Congress.
Anybody who imagines improving international scientific exchange is either deluded or lying. ITAR a
Serious Question (Score:2)
Can anyone help me out here?
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Re:Serious Question (Score:5, Interesting)
Electrons, neutrons, and so on don't really exist as volumes, but rather as forces. Think about a balloon filled with air; it takes up space, but the only reason it does is because of the pressure of the air inside pushes out on the surface.
Now, if you squeeze the balloon, it'll shrink. The more you squeeze, the smaller it gets. If you could squeeze as hard as you please, you can continue to shrink the balloon smaller and smaller.
Particles are like that. Gravity is unique in that it's a force that can get infinitely strong, so it can overcome any other force, and squeeze everything together down to an arbitrarily small point.
Interestingly, from the perspective of a star collapsing into a black hole, it never actually quite makes it, as time slows down as gravity becomes stronger. It's like Zeno's paradox: If you try to go from point A to point B, crossing half the distance each time, do you ever get there? Intuitively, you'd think no, but if you take an infinite number of steps, yes.
In other words, black holes, from the perspective of the black hole, take forever to collapse down to a singularity. However, from our perspective outside the black hole, the singularity forms essentially instanteously, as our subjective time speeds up relative to the black hole's subjective time.
(As a side note, we don't have a theory of quantum gravity, so we don't actually know what the absolute center of a black hole is like, but we do understand the physics up to and past the event horizon, all the way to the singularity, all of which is just subject to general relativity. All the effects with astronomical significance occur outside the event horizon, as information that goes past there is effectively meaningless.)
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You know, I've been wandering about that and it feels a bit weird. Consider one
Re:Serious Question (Score:4, Informative)
No. Time flows normally from the perspective of the star. It's for the outside observer that time appears to slow down (it never really would appear to *stop* it would just approach infinitely slow.)
But for a hypothetical observer on the star, time would appear to proceed normally. Also, if I'm remembering right, for the star observer the *rest of the universe* would appear to slow down, as well, if there was some way to observe it. (I know that applies to high-percent of c velocities but can't remember if it applies to gravitational effects as well)
*snark*
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In some sense, you have to trust that physicists know what they're doing. Absent an un
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-Rick
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I think I saw them open for Godspeed You Black Emperor once.
Re:Serious Question (Score:5, Informative)
Good question. Short answer: we don't know.
Long answer: According to the General Theory of Relativity, black holes have all their mass contained in a geometric point called the "singularity". This singularity is surrounded by a finite-sized spherical boundary called the "event horizon" which is defined as the locus of points where not even light can escape the gravity of the singularity. Because nothing (that we know of) can travel fast than light, the event horizon is a seemingly impenetrable barrier to any investigation of the singularity itself.
So we're unlikely to view a singularity directly and measure its size. On the other hand, most physicists are convinced that the General Relativistic description of the singularity as a literal geometric point most be wrong. They believe this because very small objects are governed by quantum mechanics, and a new theory (which does not exist yet) called "Quantum Gravity" must take over at densities like those found in singularities.
I'm generally a fairly skeptical chap, and it took a long time to even convince me that event horizons exist. For the longest time, all "proofs" of black holes basically said "here is something that is more dense than a neutron star, and since the ONLY THING more dense than a neutron star is a black hole, this object must be a black hole." I was never really convinced that there weren't other objects denser than neutron stars that didn't actually have event horizons, so this argument never swayed me. These recent observations seem to conclusively prove that event horizons exist, but singularities are an entirely different matter. We'll have to wait for the final word on that subject...
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0
As in zero, the number. QED. They are a physical manifestation of this concept, and like mass/0 they have 'undefined' density. Incidentally, this is also the reason why we have String Theory (although that does not actually exist).
--
I don't think QED means that I think it means...
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A black hole is not a geometric point. It's an object with none of its matter outside of its schwartzchild radius (for a given mass, the schwartzchild radius is the distance at which escape velocity is c). It's never been a geometric point; the term singluarity is used because the volume of a black hole is quite small.
This 'infinite density' and 'zero volume' bullshit has been popularized by TV Sci fi.
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I wanted to add that string theory, I believe, has a solution to the problem of a singularity. I believe string theorists claim to have a way of representing black holes without a singularity.
The two well-established theories in physics are general relativity (GR) and the standard model of particle physics. Unfortunately these are not self-consistent. This is an unsatifsying situation for an
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It's conventional to treat the event horizon as the surface of the black hole - in which case, yes, it has a shape. The mathematically simplest black hole is the Chandrasekhar black hole, which is nonrotating and spherical. Realistically, however, a black hole will be formed by the collapse of a star, and conservation of angular momentum implies that it will be spinning very rapidly, at least to begin
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But the thing is that we don't know, just a while ago we where certain that the only thing that we could ever really know about a black hole are the characteristics of its event horizon (mass, angular momentum and electric charge).
Its just called "event horizon" because the only fastest way that information of an event can travel is the sp
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'No space between the smallest particles' is basically what a neutron star is. It's essentially a mass of neutrons edge to edge, held up by
Common Misconceptions about a Black Hole (Score:2, Interesting)
So why do black holes emit X-rays and Hawking radiation or why do they emit stuff at all?
The black holes don't emit anything per se. However, as particles close to the event horizon are ac
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Quantum Mechanics, on the other hand, doesn't l
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The disagreement can be quite scientific. Of course, what is beyond an event horizon cannot be observed, but that's not the point: a hypothesis which would provide an answer for what goes on there could, if it is sufficiently general (such as a general resolution of the conflicts between GR and QM), quite easily produce expirementally falsifiable predictions of events outside of the
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I favor the theory that they are in fact MECOs, not black holes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetospheric_eterna lly_collapsing_object [wikipedia.org]
Favorite quote: "[Quasar] Q0957+561 has a magnetic field, which a black hole cannot have."
If we find that 'black holes' have magnetic fields, then they are MECOs instead - at least until a better theory comes along.
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If you look at "particles" in an atom as being real physical objects (like raisons in an oatmeal cookie), it's hard to understand that they can be compressed. But you can't directly observe* a "particle" as small as an electron (or even smaller), because they don't behave like matter on
If this black hole actually emits xrays (Score:2, Insightful)
Could we consider our own sun a Yellow hole since we cannot see into the middle of it?
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Yes and no. Certainly that makes up the vast majority of the light shed from the region around an event horizon, but there are other sources of radiation. Hawking Radiation, for example.
Re:If this black hole actually emits xrays (Score:5, Informative)
For practical purposes, the grandparent is correct, if a little simplified.
You may find it interesting though, that if small black holes actually do exist (they would have to be incidental products of the Big Bang), we may be able to detect their last moments of evaporation by Hawking radiation as x-ray/gamma ray bursts. Some researchers are plan to look use data from one of NASA's upcoming x-ray observatories to look for such flashes that can not be attributed to other known sources.
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Yes, but as I pointed out, that's just one of the better known forms of radiation eminating from the region of a black hole. Other forms include the extragalactic jet formed by the interaction between the black hole's magnetic field lines and its accretion disk
Great, now that's something else to be scared of.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great, now that's something else to be scared o (Score:1, Funny)
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Re:Great, now that's something else to be scared o (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great, now that's something else to be scared o (Score:2)
This post is brought to you as part of the Elect Channard to Kansas School Board campaign.
Getting closer.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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We can observe the full spectrum of x-rays already. By "getting closer" they mean we are now able to obtain data in a smaller radius, ie - closer to the black hole.
Broad iron K line (Score:2, Interesting)
The paper (Score:4, Insightful)
The most interesting thing about the paper is that Suzaku's Hard X-ray Detector (which operates in a comparatively poorly studied waveband) is consistent (based on the model of an accretion disc around a spinning black hole) with what's happening in the softer X-ray band.
The Japaneese have finally done it... (Score:3, Funny)
Relative distances (Score:1)
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You may hand over your geek badge at the nearest station.
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Just sayin'.
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That being said, the analogy is still bad, this is a space-based satelite. It is not subject to things like atmosphere and earth-based electromagnetic interference.
This is more like wearing
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Now that makes a lot of sense. The advantage is not in being closer to the b
International cooperation leads to stagnation (Score:2)
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Personally, I like the idea of cooperation towards a goal. It seems to improve the chances that we'll stay awhile. Heck, ISS has been manned for something like five years.
The obligatory question: (Score:2)
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Hope! What hope? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess you missed yesterday's story [slashdot.org] documenting the US' clear intention to be the single entity with control over access to space; 'The policy calls upon the Secretary of Defense to "develop capabilities, plans, and options to ensure freedom of action in space, and, if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."'
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By that same logic, the US has also announced a clear intention to be the "single entity with control over access to the air." After all, the Air Force's mission is more-or-less to "deve
Which galaxy (Score:1)
Time to update the Wiki (Score:2)
Someone better hurry. This is a fast-developing situation, and no one knows what'll happen to the article when the MECO [wikipedia.org] people get their hands on it.
Those aren't black holes. (Score:1)
What if two black holes collide? (Score:2)
Re:What if two black holes collide? (Score:4, Informative)
United != better (Score:1)
Soylent Engrish (Score:2)
Why gamma radiation can escape a black hole? (Score:2)
or maybe not (Score:2)
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More bullshit whiney rhetoric from the left.
What in that sentence gave you the impression that the author even supports high taxation of the rich to fund comprehensive public services, let alone workers' control of the means of production?
At any rate, you seem to have overlooked the word 'always' in the sentence, which strongly implies the existence of ot
There are black holes (and stop karma whoring) (Score:1, Informative)
I will repost my response:
The black hole will not form in any finite time since time there just stopped!
This is wrong. There is a finite set of events at which the horizon forms; we can just never see it form. See this FAQ [nasa.gov].
For the observer falling towards the "hole", time in the rest of the universe just speeds up. In a matter of minutes the universe will age billions of years,
This is also wrong. A
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Take a few seconds. Then take a deep breath, and try something new:
Think for yourself. Think outside the box.
Re:Black holes (Score:1)
A clock is falling towards a "future" black hole. The clock stops its fall (Or we compensate for his speed in our calculations) and compares its time with that of a our distant clock.
As the gravitional field increases he will see that:
(1) t*=t[1-(2GM)/(rc^2)]
Oviously, when
(2) r=2GM/c^2 => t*=0 (This is of course a limit expression, but you get my po
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You seem to be
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What you will see when looking at a "black hole" is just a region of space with the eventual event horizon of the hole just frozen in time, and as you move outside, time goes through the "molasses" stage, and as you get further away, gets normal.
Erm, no. See, the perception of time dilation is with respect to the frame of reference of the observer, not of the
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The basic principle is that things are spinning. In the case of a galaxy, the whole thing would originally have formed from a collapsing gas cloud. This cloud would have had some small overall spin, which would be magnified during collapse by cons
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I can see why water flowing out of a sink would have a disk shaped surface, but not really why black holes or even galaxies should.
Because of centrifugal force. As the material orbits the object at high speeds, it is thrown outwards perpendicular to its direction of travel. Like cooking a pizza, where the chef takes a sphere of dough and spins it around on his finger to make