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04 April 2010
Andromeda's Double Nucleus – Explained at Last?
In 1993, the Hubble Space Telescope snapped a close-up of the nucleus of the Andromeda galaxy, M31, and found that it is double. In the 15+ years since, dozens of papers have been written about it, with titles like The stellar population of the decoupled nucleus in M 31, Accretion Processes in the Nucleus of M31, [...]
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11 March 2010
World-wide Campaign Sheds New Light on Nature's "LHC"
In a manner somewhat like the formation of an alliance to defeat Darth Vader's Death Star, more than a decade ago astronomers formed the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope consortium to understand Nature's Death Ray Gun (a.k.a. blazars). And contrary to its at-death's-door sounding name, the GASP has proved crucial to unraveling the secrets of how [...]
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15 February 2010
Supermassive Black Holes Spinning Backwards Create Death Ray Jets?
Why do some of the supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei create back-to-back jets that can vaporize entire solar systems, while others have no jets at all? Dan Evans, a postdoctoral researcher at MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI) thinks he knows why; it's because the jet-producing supermassive black holes are spinning [...]
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15 May 2009
Is Everything Made of Mini Black Holes?
In 1971 physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that there might be “mini” black holes all around us that were created by the Big Bang. The violence of the rapid expansion following the beginning of the Universe could have squeezed concentrations of matter to form miniscule black holes, so small they can’t even be seen in [...]
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01 March 2009
Is There a Mysterious Black Hole Constant?
If you found yourself in the unfortunate situation of orbiting a black hole, you may be in for a rather dizzying and unpredictable ride. If the black hole is spinning, it will flatten out under centrifugal forces, much like the Earth bulges slightly at the equator, but the black hole's bulge will be radically greater. [...]
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26 December 2008
Studying Black Holes Using a PlayStation 3
If you're a PlayStation 3 fan, or if you just received one as a holiday gift, you may be able to do more with the system than just gaming. A group of gravity researchers have configured 16 PlayStation 3's together to create a type of supercomputer that is helping them estimate properties of the [...]
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08 May 2008
Stars Orbiting Close to Black Holes Flattened like Hot Pancakes
Playing with black holes is a risky business, especially for a star that is unlucky enough to be orbiting one. Assuming an unfortunate star hasn't already had all of its hydrogen fuel and other component elements stripped from its surface, the powerful tidal forces will have some fun with the doomed stellar body. First the [...]
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21 April 2008
Light Echo from X-Ray Flare Reveals Existence of a Molecular Torus Surrounding a Supermassive Black Hole
The light echo of an X-ray flare from the nucleus of a galaxy has been observed. The flare almost certainly originates from a single star being gravitationally ripped apart by a supermassive black hole in the galactic core. As the star was being pulled into the black hole, its material was injected into the black [...]
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