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Submission + - Black holes blast starmaking material right out of galaxy (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: Think of it as solar wind on steroids. Powerful gales from supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies can blast gas and other raw materials right out of the galaxy, robbing it of the raw materials needed to make new stars, a new study suggests. The new findings should help astronomers refine their models of how galaxies evolve, the researchers say.

Comment Re:Hmmm .... (Score 1) 127

In Europe we're starting to move our GW detection into space with a Laser Interferometric Space Antenna (Lisa). To start with:

...Pathfinder's job is to prove the metrology.

To do this, it will try to put two small gold-platinum blocks into a perfect free-fall and then track their relative movement using lasers.

The intention is to get these blocks following a line that is defined only by gravity. To do that requires that all other forces that might interfere with the demonstration are removed.

This means, for example, carefully controlling the influence of temperatures and magnetic fields. Even the vacuum state will introduce "noise" into the system if some residual gas molecules are allowed to collide with the blocks.

The experiment has been designed such that disturbances to the blocks as small as just a few picometres should be noticed. One picometre is a small fraction of the width of a hydrogen atom.

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