What are light echoes? Using reflections of light to see even further back in time
When we look outward into space, we're looking backward in time. That's because light moves at the speed of light. It takes time for the light to reach us.
When we look outward into space, we're looking backward in time. That's because light moves at the speed of light. It takes time for the light to reach us.
Astronomy
Aug 7, 2019
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Like whirlpools in the ocean, spinning black holes in space create a swirling torrent around them. However, black holes do not create eddies of wind or water. Rather, they generate disks of gas and dust heated to hundreds ...
Astronomy
Jul 3, 2019
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If astronomers want to learn about how supermassive black holes form, they have to start small—really small, astronomically speaking.
Astronomy
Jun 10, 2019
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An international team has constructed the most detailed, highest resolution simulation of a black hole to date. The simulation proves theoretical predictions about the nature of accretion disks—the matter that orbits and ...
Astronomy
Jun 6, 2019
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A trio of researchers at Columbia University is suggesting that collapsar accretion disks might be the major source of the heaviest elements. In their paper published in the journal Nature, Daniel Siegel, Jennifer Barnes ...
Massive, ravenous, powerful beyond measure -– physicists are convinced that black holes exist, even if no one has directly observed one.
Astronomy
Apr 9, 2019
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Astronomers are poised Wednesday to unveil the first direct image of a black hole and the surrounding whirlwind of white-hot gas and plasma inexorably drawn by gravity into its ravenous maw, along with the light they generate.
Astronomy
Apr 9, 2019
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All massive galaxies are believed to host supermassive black holes (SMBH) at their centers that grow by accreting mass from their environment. The current picture also imagines that the black holes grow in size as their host ...
Astronomy
Mar 18, 2019
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On March 11, an instrument aboard the International Space Station detected an enormous explosion of X-ray light that grew to be six times as bright as the Crab Nebula, nearly 10,000 light years away from Earth. Scientists ...
Astronomy
Jan 9, 2019
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Most galaxies host supermassive black holes at their nuclei, each with millions or billions of solar-masses of material. There is thought to be a torus of dust and gas around the black holes, and an accreting disk that becomes ...
Astronomy
Jan 7, 2019
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