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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Study Predicts Black Hole Chirps occur in Two Universal Frequency Ranges

    August 1, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The universal sound of black holes
    Ripples in the spacetime around a merging binary black-hole system from a numerical relativity simulation. Credit: Deborah Ferguson, Karan Jani, Deirdre Shoemaker, Pablo Laguna, Georgia Tech, MAYA Collaboration

    They are mysterious, exciting and inescapable—black holes are some of the most exotic objects in the universe. With gravitational-wave detectors, it is possible to detect the chirp sound that two black holes produce when they merge, approximately 70 such chirps have been found so far.

    A team of researchers at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) now predicts that in this “ocean of voices” chirps preferentially occur in two universal frequency ranges. The study has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    The discovery of gravitational waves...

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    Astronomers Shed New Light on Formation of Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts

    July 31, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    China's FAST radio telescope

    More than 15 years after the discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs)—millisecond-long, deep-space cosmic explosions of electromagnetic radiation—astronomers worldwide have been combing the universe to uncover clues about how and why they form.

    Nearly all FRBs identified have originated in deep space outside our Milky Way galaxy. That is until April 2020, when the first Galactic FRB, named FRB 20200428, was detected. This FRB was produced by a magnetar (SGR J1935+2154), a dense, city-sized neutron star with an incredibly powerful magnetic field.

    This groundbreaking discovery led some to believe that FRBs identified at cosmological distances outside our galaxy may also be produced by magnetars...

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    Hubble sees Evaporating Planet getting the Hiccups

    July 31, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This artist’s illustration shows a planet (dark silhouette) passing in front of the red dwarf star AU Microscopii. The planet is so close to the eruptive star a ferocious blast of stellar wind and blistering ultraviolet radiation is heating the planet’s hydrogen atmosphere, causing it to escape into space. Four times Earth’s diameter, the planet is slowly evaporating its atmosphere, which stretches out linearly along its orbital path. This process may eventually leave behind a rocky core. The illustration is based on measurements made by the Hubble Space Telescope.
    Credits: NASA, ESA, and Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

    A young planet whirling around a petulant red dwarf star is changing in unpredictable ways orbit-by-orbit...

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    Astronomers Reveal New Features of Galactic Black Holes

    July 28, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist’s conception of microquasar event captured by FAST Telescope. (Courtesy of Professor Wei Wang, Wuhan University)

    International team of scientists reports on the first detection of a quasi-periodic oscillation signal in the radio band from a Galactic black hole system.

    Black holes are the most mysterious objects in the universe, with features that sound like they come straight from a sci-fi movie.

    Stellar-mass black holes with masses of roughly 10 suns, for example, reveal their existence by eating materials from their companion stars. And in some instances, supermassive black holes accumulate at the center of some galaxies to form bright compact regions known as quasars with masses equal to millions to billions of our sun...

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