Jets From Black Holes Cause Stars To Explode, Hubble Reveals (gizmodo.com) 20
Black hole jets, which spew near-light-speed particle beams, can trigger nearby white dwarf stars to explode by igniting hydrogen layers on their surfaces. "We don't know what's going on, but it's just a very exciting finding," said Alec Lessing, an astrophysicist at Stanford University and lead author of a new study describing the phenomenon, in an ESA release. Gizmodo reports: In the recent work -- set to publish in The Astrophysical Journal and is currently hosted on the preprint server arXiv -- the team studied 135 novae in the galaxy M87, which hosts a supermassive black hole of the same name at its core. M87 is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun and was the first black hole to be directly imaged, in work done in 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration. The team found twice as many novae erupting near M87's 3,000 light-year-long plasma jet than elsewhere in the galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope also directly imaged M87's jet, which you can see below in luminous blue detail. Though it looks fairly calm in the image, the distance deceives you: this is a long tendril of superheated, near-light speed particles, somehow triggering stars to erupt.
Though previous researchers had suggested there was more activity in the jet's vicinity, new observations with Hubble's wider-view cameras revealed more of the novae brightening -- indicating they were blowing hydrogen up off their surface layers. "There's something that the jet is doing to the star systems that wander into the surrounding neighborhood. Maybe the jet somehow snowplows hydrogen fuel onto the white dwarfs, causing them to erupt more frequently," Lessing said in the release. "But it's not clear that it's a physical pushing. It could be the effect of the pressure of the light emanating from the jet. When you deliver hydrogen faster, you get eruptions faster." The new Hubble images of M87 are also the deepest yet taken, thanks to the newer cameras on Hubble. Though the team wrote in the paper that there's between a 0.1% to 1% chance that their observations can be chalked up to randomness, most signs point to the jet somehow catalyzing the stellar eruptions.
Though previous researchers had suggested there was more activity in the jet's vicinity, new observations with Hubble's wider-view cameras revealed more of the novae brightening -- indicating they were blowing hydrogen up off their surface layers. "There's something that the jet is doing to the star systems that wander into the surrounding neighborhood. Maybe the jet somehow snowplows hydrogen fuel onto the white dwarfs, causing them to erupt more frequently," Lessing said in the release. "But it's not clear that it's a physical pushing. It could be the effect of the pressure of the light emanating from the jet. When you deliver hydrogen faster, you get eruptions faster." The new Hubble images of M87 are also the deepest yet taken, thanks to the newer cameras on Hubble. Though the team wrote in the paper that there's between a 0.1% to 1% chance that their observations can be chalked up to randomness, most signs point to the jet somehow catalyzing the stellar eruptions.
Low Rent District (Score:2)
Who wants to live anywhere near neighbours like that?
Re: Low Rent District (Score:2)
Death Star (Score:2)
Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational Battle Station!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7-tskP0OzI [youtube.com]
scary as f* (Score:1)
Ignition energy (Score:2)
Besides delivering fuel faster the velocity of the particles adds enough energy to kick off the reaction.
Missing option? (Score:2)
My first thought on reading the summary was that it might well be caused by (interactions with) the magnetic fields of the jets, rather than any direct physical interaction. Of course I'm not an astrophysicist, but I find it slightly odd that this wasn't mentioned as a possible explanation.
Re: Missing option? (Score:1)
How certain are you that any magnetic fields would be as weak as unicorn prevalence?
great but meanwhile people are starving (Score:2)
Meanwhile, we spend billions on vanity science for upper class kids.
This isn't science, this is classism, corruption and economic exploitation.
Re: great but meanwhile people are starving (Score:2)
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It's not a zero-sum game. There are plenty of ways to help the needy.
Of course it's a zero sum game, poverty is exactly that a, "Zero Sum" and yes, it's a game; and the game is called monopoly, and most people are 'owned', as in economic slavery. This is classism without a doubt, just look around with honest eyes and you will see class structures in all our institutions, public and private. Most people are born into debt and remain so most of, if not all of, their lives.
When everyone has fair and equal access to capital, than you can talk, until then all the pseudo-conservat
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>We can't have capitalism when 85% of all capital is being hoarded by the upper class.
Actually, that's just the natural end state of capitalism. It can be delayed by heavy regulation but not stopped.
I've come to believe the only way to handle it is to accept that, and then add a wealth tax to start returning money to the poor whenever someone starts getting too many standard deviations beyond the average wealth.
Of course, it's already too late - too much wealth concentration already exists, wealth is po
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that's not capitalism, that's pseudo-capitalism, if our public institutions weren't corrupted by class influence we could start there
the public needs to reclaim its institutions non-violently, the problem is scale, decentralization is inevitable, the problem is this rarely happens non-violently as the powerful are loath to give power back to the people
people get the governance we deserve, greedy, selfish and irresponsible people get greedy, selfish and irresponsible governments and unethical and unrestraine
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'Class' is a synonym for 'power'. Money is an abstract measure of power. Capitalism is allowing people to own stuff and profit from it. Capitalism inevitably leads to fewer and fewer people owning more and more of the stuff that matters to society. More money. More power. Eventually you have a ruling class that owns everything, and a renting class of workers who survive at the whim of the ruling class.
Unfettered, capitalism is just as bad as communism for the average person, it just takes a bit longer
Re: great but meanwhile people are starving (Score:1)
"We can't have capitalism when 85% of all capital is being hoarded by the upper class."
Why not print money faster than prices rise and distribute it equally via an indexed basic income (to avoid the Cantillon effect)?
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Because the wealth the rich have is not idle money, it's invested in growth mechanisms. So as more people have more money they spend more and this makes their investments grow in value, meanwhile the people on the bottom trying to save get their savings eaten by inflation which makes it harder for them to pull themselves out of their lower social class.
Wealth redistribution tends to create bulwarks around the social classes, free market tends to let people go from poor to middle to rich but it comes at the
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Because the wealth the rich have is not idle money, it's invested in growth mechanisms. So as more people have more money they spend more and this makes their investments grow in value, meanwhile the people on the bottom trying to save get their savings eaten by inflation which makes it harder for them to pull themselves out of their lower social class.
Wealth redistribution tends to create bulwarks around the social classes, free market tends to let people go from poor to middle to rich but it comes at the sizeable cost that a great many people will get left behind. A functioning society needs to balance the needs of the poor AND the needs of the rich, because if you don't help the poor they are fucked and will turn to crime and if you don't convince the rich they are benefiting from your society they will use their wealth to figure it out for themselves in a way you can't touch.
First off, yes, most of that capital is not 'reinvested' in the 'poor', if it was, the rest of us would have reasonable and affordable access to capital via decent pay and affordable credit. Clealry the opposite is true as the rich hoard wealth in offshore tax shelters and lavish lifestyles. Real conservatives live conservatively and invest in their communities. An entitled upper class seeks to hoard wealth and consolidate power, which leaves the rest of us broke and powerless, just look around, clearly thi
Re: great but meanwhile people are starving (Score:2)