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    Gravitational Waves created by Black Holes in the Center of most galaxies

    April 4, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our own galaxy. Credit: NASA/CXC/MIT/F. Baganoff et al.

    Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of our own galaxy. Credit: NASA/CXC/MIT/F. Baganoff et al.

    Gravitational waves may be forged in the heart of the galaxy, says a new study led by PhD student Joseph Fernandez at Liverpool John Moores University. He sets out the work in a presentation on 3rd April at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Liverpool. Gravitational waves (GWs) are small ripples in space-time that spread throughout the universe.

    When there is a change in air pressure on Earth, this change moves outwards in the form of sound waves. Analogously, when pairs of compact objects – like black holes (BHs) or neutron stars (NSs) – form binaries and rotate around one another, the gravitational field around them changes, producing GWs that also move outwards.

    This ...

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    Black holes’ Magnetism surprisingly Wimpy

    December 10, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An outburst from V404 Cygni. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

    An outburst from V404 Cygni. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

    Black holes are famous for their muscle: an intense gravitational pull known to gobble up entire stars and launch streams of matter into space at almost the speed of light. It turns out the reality may not live up to the hype. In a paper published today in the journal Science, University of Florida scientists have discovered these tears in the fabric of the universe have significantly weaker magnetic fields than previously thought.j

    A 40-mile-wide black hole 8,000 light years from Earth named V404 Cygni yielded the first precise measurements of the magnetic field that surrounds the deepest wells of gravity in the universe...

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    Do stars fall quietly into black holes, or crash into something utterly unknown?

    May 31, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Physics

    This artist's impression shows a star crossing the event horizon of a supermassive black hole located in the center of a galaxy. The black hole is so large and massive that tidal effects on the star are negligible, and the star is swallowed whole. Mark A. Garlick/CfA

    This artist’s impression shows a star crossing the event horizon of a supermassive black hole located in the center of a galaxy. The black hole is so large and massive that tidal effects on the star are negligible, and the star is swallowed whole. Mark A. Garlick/CfA 

    Astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University have put a basic principle of black holes to the test, showing that matter completely vanishes when pulled in. Their results constitute another successful test for Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Most scientists agree that black holes, cosmic entities of such great gravity that nothing can escape their grip, are surrounded by a so-called event horizon...
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    When Helium behaves like a Black Hole

    March 22, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space, Physics

    Scientists have discovered that a sphere of cold helium atoms (in green) -- interacting with a surrounding larger container of the same kind of atoms (in blue) -- follows a bizarre rule of physics, called an entanglement area law, also observed in black holes. This discovery points to a "deeper reality," says University of Vermont physicist Adrian Del Maestro and may be a step toward using superfluid helium as the fuel of a new generation of ultra-fast quantum computers. Credit: Adrian Del Maestro/Nature Physics

    Scientists have discovered that a sphere of cold helium atoms (in green) — interacting with a surrounding larger container of the same kind of atoms (in blue) — follows a bizarre rule of physics, called an entanglement area law, also observed in black holes. This discovery points to a “deeper reality,” says University of Vermont physicist Adrian Del Maestro and may be a step toward using superfluid helium as the fuel of a new generation of ultra-fast quantum computers. Credit: Adrian Del Maestro/Nature Physics

    A team has discovered that a law controlling the bizarre behavior of black holes out in space – is also true for cold helium atoms that can be studied in laboratories. “It’s called an entanglement area law,” says Adrian Del Maestro, a physicist at the University of Vermont...

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