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Hubble finds black hole twisting captured star into donut shape
- blueflow 4y agoMore about these structures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accretion_disk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accretion_disk
- ck2 4y agoThe other day I was wondering what was coming after James Webb and if I'd be able to see the results in my lifetime. And then I stumbled across the 100-year-plan to build a "Solar Gravitational Lens" Would have resolution of 10 square kilometers per pixel for objects 100 light-years away. Blew my mind to the point I still think about it every few days https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2020_Phase_I_Phase_II/Direct_Multipixel_Imaging_and_Spectroscopy_of_an_Exoplanet/ https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2020_Phase_... https://phys.org/news/2022-10-solar-gravitational-lens-humanity-powerful.html https://phys.org/news/2022-10-solar-gravitational-lens-human... More "down to earth" (literally) is the Giant Magellan Telescope in 2029 which will have four times the resolution of James Webb but since it is earth-bound I guess atmosphere is going to limit details without AI enhancement Adding: ooh ELT is 2027, even better, look at Hubble/James Webb in comparison bottom left https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Comparison_optical_telescope_primary_mirrors.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Comparis... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope#Comparison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope#Comp...
- nmcveity 4y agoThere was a PBS SpaceTime on the solar gravitational lens proposal not that long ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d0EGIt1SPc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d0EGIt1SPc
- scrollaway 4y agoI started watching PBS SpaceTime recently and it really is an exceptionally entertaining channel.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y agoA bit more plausibly near future, but there was a story about how NASA was testing a method to cast perfect lenses from little more than a mold and a liquid material. If successful, a spacecraft could unfold a frame, release the lens mirror material, and create a surface tens of meters in diameter, all constructed in space. Undoubtedly significant engineering hurdles, but it could result in an order of magnitude improvement in telescope resolution for cheap. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/nasa-tries-new-ways-fluid-materials-to-build-giant-space-telescopes https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/nasa-tries-new-ways-fluid-...
- creativenolo 4y agoI often wonder when or if we might see a photo of a planet around another star and what might it take to do it.
- aardvark179 4y agoAlready been done. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exoplanets https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exop...
- floxy 4y agoHere is an awesome video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI ...and the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08421 https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08421
- fi-le 4y agofaint sound of topologists all over the world cheering
- taylorius 4y agoAdditional sound of Tokamak fusion designers joining in the cheering, and saying "See? See?"
- hsn915 4y agoJust in case anyone is fooled: the pictures are fake, they are not what Hubble saw. Hubble didn't see that picture. It's just some artist doing his thing. Might as well have been generated by one of the new AIs like MidJourney. What Hubble actually saw was some ultraviolet data that appears to be of such an event.
- NhanH 4y agoThey are illustrations, and clearly label as such. At no point they are called “photos of the event”, so I am not sure why they should be called fake.
- blowski 4y agoThe first words underneath the picture say: > This sequence of artist's illustrations…
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- luxoramonrising 4y agoWhere can one see color mapped versions of that UV data?
- hsn915 4y agoYou probably can't. If such a thing existed, they wouldn't make up some artist-made illustration. They probably detected the event by plugging in some mathematical equations based on general relativity. I'd imagine it has something to do with pattern of how pulse changes over time.
- mrtksn 4y agoHubble can't see data, it obviously captured some light which was analysed and the scientists believe the source is black hole twisting a captured star. Then someone visualised the process that illustrates the event and that's what the pictures are. Think of it as the investigators reconstructing a crime scene based on the bullet holes and blood found on the scene and a reporter re-enacting what happened based on investigation report.
- luxuryballs 4y agoHubble has really been showing off some muscle ever since the new guy showed up.
- pantulis 4y agoGlad to see the old rig still killing it. One cannot but wonder what the JWST will deliver.
- luxoramonrising 4y agoWhere are the real pictures? All I see are the artistic representations?
- lisper 4y ago"Hubble can't photograph the AT2022dsb tidal event's mayhem up close, since the munched-up star is nearly 300 million light-years away at the core of the galaxy ESO 583-G004. But astronomers used Hubble's powerful ultraviolet sensitivity to study the light from the shredded star, which include hydrogen, carbon, and more. The spectroscopy provides forensic clues to the black hole homicide." - TFA
- luxoramonrising 4y agoThen the title should've been "Hubble smelled sulfur in the air"
- JusticeJuice 4y agoWhat in the title made you expect to see a photograph
- kortilla 4y agoLikely a correlation with a telescope that records photons frequently leading to photographs.
- creativenolo 4y agoIt's an immensely visual title in its description.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago- "Hubble" - i.e. that space telescope that's well-known by general public to shoot photographs. - "finds a <very specific and visceral description of an extraordinary phenomenon>" - kind of implies you have a little more to go on than a spectrogram and a shipload of PhD-level math used to divine conclusions from it.
- ekianjo 4y agoYet no pictures
- watersb 4y agoThis isn't an Einstein Ring, where gravitational lensing can make a star look like a donut. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_ring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_ring This is more like a ring galaxy, formation models of which usually involve a fast, dense galaxy smashing through the center of another, leaving behind a compact core and a turbulent, distant ring of active star formation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_galaxy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_galaxy Ring galaxy is an analogy. Another might be a ring of low pressure around the rapidly rising column of a mushroom cloud. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_cloud https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_cloud https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_ring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_ring https://youtu.be/zzQGMvIFD9o&t=15s https://youtu.be/zzQGMvIFD9o&t=15s And alas, this phenomenon does not include any actual donuts... although if there's enough money at the end of the month, your next astronomy department colloquium might feature some, if you arrive early.
- smcl 4y agoThe latest "Talk Python To Me" podcast episode features one of the people involved in producing the recent images of the M87 black hole that demonstrate the Einstein ring, in case anyone's interested: https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/398/imaging-black-holes-with-python https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/398/imaging-black-holes-...
- watersb 4y agoMy analogies were wrong: I was thinking of a small (radius) black hole disrupting a star like a bullet shot through an apple. The Hubble telescope observed a star that had been pulled out into a long stream, that ends in a massive donut around the black hole. The scale of this thing is huge.
- bell-cot 4y agoInteresting to see how anthropomorphic the language about the black hole is, in the first few para's - "...gatherers, not hunters. They lie in wait...sloppily devours...belching...gobbled...". Vs. the reality is that the the whole process is just as deterministic and conscious-free as water flowing downhill. And after para 3, the article's tone and language change to straight & sober science.
- jxf 4y agoWe remember facts better when they are in story form. For example, suppose I ask 100 people to memorize a list of fifty words, and then I ask you which word was a food item. Many people find this challenging. If I change the experiment so that I tell a story using all fifty words, and then ask you "what did the grandmother have for breakfast?", you're much more likely to do better.
- bell-cot 4y ago> We remember facts better when they are in story form... True, but orthogonal to my point. Outside of myth, fantasy novels, and children's stories, most writing about destructive natural phenomena does not anthropomorphize Mount St. Helens as it erupted, the asteroid which hit the Moon to create Tycho Crater, the solar flare which caused the Carrington Event, etc.
- jxf 4y agoI think you may just not be looking closely enough. Using your first example, here are things Mt. St. Helens is described as doing in just one contemporaneous article: - roaring - belching - "[knocked down] millions of trees [...] like a giant playing pick-up sticks" - slumbering - menacing That all sounds very anthropomorphic to me. [0] https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,924152,00.html https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/printout/0,8816,924...
- bell-cot 4y agoPoint, though my recollection (not gonna review 1,001 old articles on the eruption, to do stats) is that the anthropomorphic descriptions tended to be in "I was too damn close, and it was very scary" accounts. I won't look down at anthropomorphism in that case - it's likely a good reflection of the author's (or his source's) very human experience and emotional reactions to danger.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoFrom the (in)famous Star Trek fan canon, "The United Federation Of Fuck It Hold My Beer I Got This"[0]: > Also, they did turn that sun into a torus, and no one actually knows how. I guess that's how you do it. -- [0] - https://imgur.com/gallery/wpZ4w https://imgur.com/gallery/wpZ4w
- prettyStandard 4y agoEarth is the Texas of the Universe?
- breckenedge 4y agoWhy else would the Space Center be in Houston?
- delecti 4y agoEven more than that, our space missions launch in Florida and are managed in Texas. What we bring to space is Cowboys and Florida man.
- bryanrasmussen 4y agoEarth Man is Florida Man to everyone off Earth.
- Intermernet 4y agoI'd just like to point out that the whole time travel thing was done in a Klingon bird of prey. The ships are beholden to the whims of the crew, no matter the level of inbuilt space magic.
- tomrod 4y agoThere is no depth to how much I love the idea in your screenshot.
- GravitasFailure 4y agoIf you haven't already, give r/hfy a gander. There's no shortage of stories that can be summed up as, "The human did WHAT?" Plenty of variety, though.
- Sebb767 4y ago> Black holes are gatherers, not hunters. They lie in wait until a hapless star wanders by. Not that it matters much, but lying in wait until prey wanders by is behavior I'd associate with hunters, not gatherers.
- account-5 4y agoI think it's just a bad analogy. Blackholes lie in wait the same way quicksand does. There's no intent on the part of either, not gathering or hunting, they just do what they do.
- tomrod 4y agoAye. Anthropomorphizing leads people to essentialism and its unnecessary to both describe the phenomenon and to learn more about it.
- korroziya 4y agoYou're the kind of person who read Terry Pratchett's "Reaper Man" and thought The Auditors were correct to fire Death.
- tomrod 4y agoI might be! You've identified a very bright gap in my scifi reading. Not sure what I'm saving Pratchett for, but I appreciate the reminder to read his works.
- korroziya 4y agoOh you're in for a treat. I personally like the Audiobooks read by Stephen Briggs, but Penguin just last year redid the whole set with an all-star cast. Great time to get into Discworld.
- earthling8118 4y agoAt what point is the intent defined. Do all of the animals out there not just "do what they do"? I can see how the analogy isn't great but I think it's closer than it initially seems
- fjbandu2 4y ago[flagged]
- imtemplain 4y ago[dead]
- moloch-hai 4y agoThese accretion discs are always described as emitting extreme amounts of energy, but it is never clear what makes them do this. We know stars convert mass to energy by fusion under extreme pressure and temperature in their cores. Does this accretion disc have extreme pressure domains where fusion happens? Or is it more like streams of matter being accelerated to collide like a synchrotron, with no pressure and only massed velocity driving nuclei to fuse, a beam striking a target? Or are we getting extreme pressure via confinement in twisted magnetic fields, like what is attempted in Tokamaks? And, is the energy coming from fusion at all? Could gravitation alone account for the energy released, without fusion occurring in the disc?
- nh23423fefe 4y agofrom Foundations of Black Hole Accretion Disk Theory https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrr-2013-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.12942/lrr-2013-1 > The radiation we receive from quasars and microquasars comes not from the black holes themselves, but instead originates in the accretion disks which surround themFootnote6 (see Figure 1). In these accretion disks, angular momentum is gradually removed by some presumably (although not necessarily [48]) dissipative process, causing matter to spiral down into the black hole, converting its gravitational energy into heat, and then, by various processes, radiating this energy.Footnote7 The radiation subsequently leaks through the disk, escapes from its surface, and travels along trajectories curved (in space) by the strong gravity of the black hole, eventually reaching our telescopes. So not fusion, the energy is gravitational potential.
- moloch-hai 4y agoIt seems implausible, on its face, that the by-far most energetic processes in the universe are driven by the by-far weakest force in the universe. We know that electromagnetic fields are deeply involved in focusing the jet -- beam, really -- coming out. It beggars imagination to insist they can have no further role. Do we have any reason to believe no fusion is occurring in the process?
- pfdietz 4y agoLIGO has detected black holes swallowing neutrons stars. If the black hole is small (~3 solar masses) the neutron star is ripped apart, but if the BH is much larger it's swallowed whole. https://www.ligo.org/detections/NSBH2020.php https://www.ligo.org/detections/NSBH2020.php