New telescope imagery suggests that stars can survive encounters with black holes, a phenomenon that has been modeled but seldom observed, astronomers say. Using an X-ray telescope orbiting the Earth, astronomers peered 1 billion light-years into deep space and observed black holes partially destroying the same stars over and over, according to the European Space Agency.
“Putting together this 3D map of the Local Bubble will help us examine superbubbles in new ways.”
Did you know that we live in a bubble? Sure, some of us do, but we’re talking about another one. An enormous 1,000-light-year-wide “superbubble” called the Local Bubble. Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have now unveiled a first-of-its-kind map that reveals the bubble’s magnetic field.
Sounds incredibly fascinating.
Many of us might not have heard of superbubbles before. The Local Bubble isn’t the only one.
Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have unveiled a first-of-its-kind map that could help answer decades-old questions about the origins of stars and the influences of magnetic fields in the cosmos.
The map reveals the likely magnetic field structure of the Local Bubble—a giant, 1,000-light-year-wide hollow in space surrounding our Sun. Like a hunk of Swiss cheese, our galaxy is full of these so-called superbubbles. The explosive supernova deaths of massive stars blow up these bubbles, and in the process, concentrate gas and dust—the fuel for making new stars —on the bubbles’ outer surfaces. These thick surfaces accordingly serve as rich sites for subsequent star and planet formation.
Scientists’ overall understanding of superbubbles, however, remains incomplete. With the new 3D magnetic field map, researchers now have novel information that could better explain the evolution of superbubbles, their effects on star formation and on galaxies writ large.
A mix of computer simulations and gamma-ray burst observations shed new light on merging neutron stars.
Astronomers trawled through archival observations of short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and detected the rapid evolution of two merging neutron stars into a superheavy neutron star, which then collapsed into a black hole.
Two neutron stars merge to create a black hole.
While studying a nearby pair of merging galaxies using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)—an international observatory co-operated by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)—scientists discovered two supermassive black holes growing simultaneously near the center of the newly coalescing galaxy.
A new study finds that giant neutron stars can exist for a few milliseconds in a merger.
Everything you ever wanted to know about parallel universes, time, entropy, free will and more, explained by physicist Sean Carroll.
Up next, Michio Kaku: The Universe in a nutshell (Full Presentation) ► https://youtu.be/0NbBjNiw4tk.
Do you have free will? Is our Universe the only one, or do we live in one of many? And what does Einstein’s theory of relativity really say about the nature of reality?
These are some of the big questions that theoretical physicist Sean Carroll tackles in this Big Think video.
In this video, I explain why the anthropic principle is a good, scientific principle. First I explain the difference between the strong and the weak anthropic principle. Then I name some examples of the use of the weak anthropic principle and explain its relation to the multiverse. Finally I explain that the weak anthropic principle is merely a constraint on the laws of nature.
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Black holes form natural time machines that allow travel to both the past and the future. But don’t expect to be heading back to visit the dinosaurs any time soon.
At present, we don’t have spacecraft that could get us anywhere near a black hole. But, even leaving that small detail aside, attempting to travel into the past using a black hole might be the last thing you ever do.
