Black Hole Particle Jets Explained

Screaming Cactus writes "A team of researchers led by Boston University's Alan Marscher have apparently worked out the physics behind the particle streams emanating from many black holes. According to the researchers, 'twisted, coiled magnetic fields are propelling the material outward.' By watching an 'unprecedented view' of a black hole in the process of expelling mass, they were able to confirm their theory, predicting where and when bursts of energy would be detected."

Comments

This is how science works

[smooth wombat]

'By watching an 'unprecedented view' of a black hole in the process of expelling mass, they were able to confirm their theory, predicting where and when bursts of energy would be detected."

Note to all ID supporters, this is how real science works. Propose a theory which can be tested, then go about trying to disprove the theory.

Now go ahead, flame me. My karma can take it.

Re:This is how science works

[jav1231]

Well, except global warming, obviously. That just gets accepted as is, since anyone who suggests otherwise is probably an oil company shill. It's called "climate change" now. That way if the current trend of lower temps continues and we go into another mini ice age (as some are predicting) they're still right!

BRILLIANT!

Re:This is how science works

[Anonymous Coward]

'By watching an 'unprecedented view' of a black hole in the process of expelling mass, they were able to confirm their theory, predicting where and when bursts of energy would be detected."

Note to all ID supporters, this is how real science works. Propose a theory which can be tested, then go about trying to disprove the theory.

Now go ahead, flame me. My karma can take it.

note to both ID supporters and ID critics.
this topic is about black holes, not ID.

Re:This is how science works

[smooth wombat]

Evolution is a good explanation of "accepted" evidence. One cannot test it, therefore it isn't science.

Right. Because the fossil record of both horses and humans do not show examples of intermediate changes from non-horses and non-humans to todays creatures.

And I suppose astrology is a science because it's so well "tested".

Re:This is how science works

[macemoneta]

It's called "climate change" now. That way if the current trend of lower temps continues and we go into another mini ice age (as some are predicting) they're still right!

It's called "climate change" now because people had problems understanding the concept of global warming; they concentrated on the terminology instead of understanding the process.

Energy is being added to the Earth's outer layer, including the atmosphere. This additional energy is like turning on a blender - everything is going to get mixed up. Places where it was cold may turn warm. Places where it was warm may become cold. Deserts will form where there was arable land. Dry places may get wetter. The ice caps act as a thermal buffer (like the ice cubes in a drink), and the additional energy is causing them to melt. This in turn raises sea levels.

Things get complicated because of the political boundaries; people can't just move to where things are becoming nicer. If the farm land in the U.S. turns to a dust bowl for example, we can't just pick up 300M people and move to another country - just as the U.S. doesn't open its borders to tens of millions dying of thirst and starvation in other countries.

A secondary complication is the delicate balance between airborne particulates and greenhouse gases. Reducing pollution levels reduces both, but not at the same rate. As the two have opposing impacts, and tend to be politically controlled by local goverments, it's and extra monkey wrench in the calculations.

In this context, the term "climate change" is easier for people to grasp. It doesn't change what is happening.

Re:This is how science works

[DoofusOfDeath]

I do not understand the irrational knee-jerk reation to evolution that "Good Ol' Righteous God Fearing Folk" have.

I'm agnostic, but let me take a stab at an answer to your question...

I think that bot Christians and Evolutionists have a spectrum of positions within their two camps; some are compatible, some aren't:

• Some Christians believe that the book of Genesis was meant to be understood literally rather than metaphorically or poetically. So to them, all Evolutionist viewpoints are incompatible with things they already believe.

• Some Evolutionists believe don't merely believe that natural variation and selection occurred. They go further to posit that any process (e.g., evolution) which appears random or capriciously cruel to them is surely not be guided by any God worth talking about. So to this subset of Evolutionists, all Christian believes are definitely wrong.

• In the middle, you have Christians who are willing to concede that a literal interpretation of Genesis might be inaccurate, either because its conflicts with what seam to be clear indications in the natural record that evolution occurred, or for other reasons of Biblical scholarship. (I'm told that regardless of an apparent conflict with scientific conclusions, some Biblical scholars have other reasons to believe that parts of Genesis are meant metaphorically, such as the style of the prose.)

Does that sound right?

Re:This is how science works

[steelfood]

Wow, and this junk got modded insightful?

Here's something that you can do and in fact has been done over a timeframe of the past 50 years:

Take a large pool of bacteria, start killing them off with antibiotics, rinse, and repeat.

Now, the bacteria is your organism, the antibiotics the selective pressure. Natural selection dictates that eventually through random mutations, there will be bacteria that will no longer be susceptible to antibiotics.

Lo and behold, this has exactly happened. The overuse of common antibiotics has resulted in an outbreak of what doctors call superbugs--bacteria that are resistant to those same common antibiotics. And where are we most likely to find these superbugs? Hospitals, where antibiotics are most used. Why do you think they try to get patients out of the hospital as quickly as possible? It's not just because they need the beds. It's largely because, barring any need for specialized monitoring or equipment, the outside is a safer environment for the sick to heal than inside. 50 years ago when antibiotics just began to be used, the opposite was true.

So if you've gotten this far, you now have proof of natural selection, proof you can see with your very own eyes. And this is just the most simple, most mundane case. There is a more extreme case involving frogs where natural selection has resulted in speciation within a hundred years.

Re:This is how science works

[glitch23]

Right. Because the fossil record of both horses and humans do not show examples of intermediate changes from non-horses and non-humans to todays creatures.

You can fit your evidence to whatever theory you want as many people have already done. If you take a movie (which of course is just made up of 30fps still images) and delete enough frames (seconds or minutes worth) you can come up with lots of things that could fit back into those missing pieces and still make the final movie come out the same. In fact, directors do this for every motion picture because they film hours and hours of video but only ~2 hours worth make their way into the final cut. The movie came out the same though in many cases (except for some of those director's cuts with alternate endings).

So goes the fossil record. There are too many gaps that need filled in to come to the conclusion that evolution is responsible. A different set of pieces that do not support evolution could be inserted to produce an entirely different movie that still makes logical sense (i.e. still produces existing observations), specifically a movie that does not use a few dozen unusual frames to tell the entire 2 hour plot which is what evolution basically is. It reminds me of Al Gore only taking video of chunks of ice falling off glaciers into the water, which happens all the time anyway, but filming a 30 second spot of a few and saying it is representative of all glaciers catastrophically melting is an outright lie. When, if other glaciers were actually filmed for comparison, it could easily be seen that selective use of Nature is not representative of Nature as a whole although it can be for those with an agenda.

The real test is to use evolution to predict what comes next since change, based on the theory, is inevitable. It's easy to work backward and interpret data to fit theory. Let's try working forward before we assume evolution is 100% perfect. By the way, since ID does not predict future change to species there is nothing to test.

Good science writing

[ekstrom]

This is a good article. It was complete enough to satisfy the casual interest of this old physicist who once worked for awhile as an astronomer, explained all of its terms in ways accessible to a more general public, but was never tedious about it. We need more science writing of that quality. Also good work, it would seem. Rarely do you get a chance to check astrophysical theory in such detail against observations.

Re:Hawking Radiation

[Walt Dismal]

I've always wondered whether magnetic fields inside a black hole are restricted to being within the internal boundary of the black hole, but not able to penetrate outside it? Does the event horizon also apply to them? Does the boundary established by the hole's gravitational field prevent a magnetic field from emerging? That would imply gravity can trump magnetism. I guess that makes sense if gravity warps space, and magnetism has to propagate through space, so if space is distorted the magnetic field lines are too. So does this mean one could somehow bottle up enormous magnetic fields within a gravity-compressed space? Does this operate in suns to contain their reactions? And why do my friends from Tau Ceti always look at me like I was crazy when I ask them this? Just because I'm human doesn't mean they have to treat me like a galactic retard. Although that explains the Slinky they gave me, claiming it was advanced alien technology.