Slashdot Mirror
Chandra Sees Black Hole Rip Star Apart
beeplet writes "Nasa just sent out this press release titled about an exciting Chandra observation. It states: "Thanks to two orbiting X-ray observatories, astronomers have the first strong evidence of a supermassive black hole ripping apart a star and consuming a portion of it.
The event, captured by NASA's Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray Observatories, had long been predicted by theory, but never confirmed."
There is more information on the Chandra home page, including the x-ray and optical observations that were involved in the discovery." Note that the star-ripping pictured on the front page is labeled an illustration, rather than an recorded image.
it was just unicron eating one of the autobot mooons.
Black hole rips star a new one!
This is just another conspiracy by the white man. First it's black holes distroying this, then dark matter touching that. What's a brother gotta do to earn a little respect in the universe?
Police investigation into the brutal act led to one eye witness, Chandra, who described the black hole's violent attack as "gruesome."
Clip at 11.
strong evidence of a supermassive black hole ripping apart a star and consuming a portion of it
The goatse jokes pretty much write themselves at this point.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
You must work for Fox.
cat star > /dev/null
i thought black holes were not proven to exist, or am i living in the past?
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
The heartburn after chowing down on one of these has to be brutal. Where do you find a Rolaids or Tums to quench that sucker?
There is this thing called the "slashdot effet". It is this massive site that suck all of the bandwith of smaller sites, although theorists also speculate that it cunsumes massive quanties of people's time at work. researchers on this issue are currently busy attacking the sco theory at said site....
In a twist, this time it was the hole tearing a new one.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
A radio telescope has captured a wave pattern of a loud burping noise comming from the direction of a supermassive black hole.
When Black Holes Attack!
Ideology is for ideots.
Thanks to Darl McBride, executives have the first strong evidence of IBM ripping apart SCO and consuming a portion of it. The event had long been predicted by theory, but never confirmed.
lexbaby
"Be Brave, Be Loyal, Be True." -- Hawkeye Pierce
Big deal. I could do this in my garage. A pair of pliers, some PVC pipe, and roll of duck tape.
This isn't news.
Blue 5 in corner pocket.
Pres. Bush announced today that the US will be the first to land on the black hole. "my fellow americans, it is imperitive that America stand on the forefront of space exploration" Mr. Dean immediately volunteered for the job saying "and we're gonna go to the moon, and mars, and europa and planet X, and then all the way to the black hole! YEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!"
After eating half a star does anyone suppose the Maitre D said "And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin mint" to the black hole?
This is not the sig you're looking for
This is great news for both NASA and the Bush administration, as they have now located their first Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Oh... false alarm.... wrong type of mass...
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
You say this as though anti-matter (also produced in labs) has any less planet-annihilating potential. Basically, we passed the threshold for potential self-annihilation as a species back in the 1940s. Every day we survive is little more than luck. Come to think of it, that we are here at all is a remarkable stroke of luck. Thus, our existence extinguished would be less of a loss to the universe than we would like to believe.
If we are to destroy ourselves, it would be nice if we could do it in such a way that our life-building components are thrown about the universe so that we might actually father an entire new population on some distant world. Couple billion years of my DNA floating around space and a whole lot of luck could even spawn a whole race of 'Me's!
I, for one, welcome our new planet-destroying scientist overlords!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
The same thing happened to Kurt Cobain
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments." Earl Wilson
Supermassive /. traffic ripped apart a Chandra server and consumed a portion of it.
What that black hole did to that star was just plain wrong!
Did you see that? That star rolled-up on that black hole, but that black hole wasn't messing aroung. It straight-up punked that star!
Let this be a lesson to stars everywhere: you better think twice before rolling up on some black hole's turf. Word.
I wouldn't worry about it. The current plan is to throw Neptune in the black hole as an appeasement offering long before it gets to us.
Crap. A perfectly good chance to make a Uranus joke, and I missed it.
Anti-matter goes away when it touches normal matter, there's not really any danger of run away chain reaction.
I guess there could have been fear of run away nuclear reactions destroying the world... Of course we know it won't happen now.
But fears that run away black holes could eat the planet seem a little more reasonable. Even if the physicists say they will exist for only short periods. It just makes me nervous.
It just reminds me of someone's conjecture that the reason we don't find any advanced extraterrestrial civilizations in the universe is because they all stumble upon the same technology or experiment that destroys their civilization. And we'll be finding it in the future.
Ah well... back to building my robot army. That couldn't cause any problems.
At least not until we've developed a better space access (space elevator perhaps).
It's already been done. You'll need a gold ticket for a ride in the glass elevator.
I don't know about you, but I find the phrase "the black hole is feeding" somewhat unsettling.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
attitude like yours are what piss off scientists.
you take keep saying "current physics still says faster-than-light TRAVEL is impossible".
I'm trying to tell you you are wrong. it does not say that, you are vastly oversimplifying it. I've just given you an explanation why, but you keep saying it!
the only way you could be right is if you're using "travel" in the sense of "go on holiday". that IS NOT a scientific defintion, and thus "physics" wouldn't say that.
I'm a physicist, you're not, so where the fuck do you get off telling me or anyone else what physics says!?
is your other hobby trying to explain what the law really says to judges?