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Scientists Solve Mystery of Star Formation Near Black Holes
eonlabs writes "A new paper has been published on the formation of stars in close proximity to a supermassive black hole. Their formation has not been well understood until now, but with the help of a year of supercomputer time, scientists have been able to model the interstellar processes needed to produce them. The results not only match up well with earlier observations, but provide clues as to how their formation is remotely possible. It also helps clear up previous research in this area. 'The simulations...followed the evolution of two separate giant gas clouds up to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, as they fell towards the supermassive black hole. ...The disrupted clouds form into spiral patterns as they orbit the black hole... In these conditions, only high mass stars are able to form and these stars inherit the eccentric orbits from the elliptical disc.'"
The paper itself was published in Science, but you'll need a subscription to read more than the abstract.
Sounds kind of like a giant spiral fractal. So it took a year just to calculate this?
My star formed near a super massive black hole last night. Her name was Latrina.......
It really disturbs me how ignorant scientists really are about the universe. All these guesses that get passed around as facts until we realize we've been totally wrong and replace broken "facts" with updated "facts" that are still wrong.
you'll need a subscription to read more than the abstract.
Slashdot gets worse: now we can't RTFA. Not that that'll make the slightest bit of difference to anyone's comments.
It's also on the BBC News site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7574255.stm
Confucius say "Bright light near hole remind me of gynecologist."
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
clearly god did it :)
Well, the formation of stars in close proximity to supermassive black holes is only remotely possible, because there's possibly no supermassive black hole in direct vicinity to us dwarfed humans.
Now, I for one welcome our supermassive ... etc.
... and I make you write this reply!
The butler did it!
"but you'll need a subscription to read more than the abstract"
That, AND a super massive brain.
Yes and we're...
Oh, you are, are you?
...ecstatic that it was possible to do so without O(e^n) and taking more than our lifetime.
This type of simulation is very common in computational astrophysics from stellar scale to large-scale structure, and everything in between. The two common computational techniques are the particle mesh methods. It's easy to think about the complexity of the particle problem: every particle interacts with every other particle, giving O(n^2), which is unworkable for even moderate values (astrophysically speaking) of n.
Judiciously sacrificing a little accuracy for a lot of efficiency gets you down from O(n*n) to O(n*log n) calculations. Mesh and hybrid methods used in MHD and FD simulations are similarly tractable; that is, only just, if you have a lot of processors for the (*moderately*) large n in what is now very attainable memory.
No part of the complexity analysis of any of these physical processes is super-polynomial. So I don't think you know what you're talking about, and I certainly don't think you're Ian Bonnell or Ken Rice, nor apparently even a student with basic experience with either complexity analysis or the basic physical concepts being modelled (on a computationally-large scale).
I haven't read the paper yet, but this isn't exactly a bolt from the blue for the researchers; they've published other papers on this subject matter which are typical for the field. They're working on the same problems as lots of people, using the same methods as lots of people, and only "ecstatic" about the whole affair when they actually get supercomputer time, again like other people.
This is both useful and impressive.
It is not at all impressive, which should be obvious to anyone actually doing this research. It would take a very naive and conceited individual to trumpet this research as such if it were his own.
That is all.
Your modesty and lack of impersonation are noted by all.
I know there are at least a few Slashdot readers who use this sort of thing in their work; maybe one will chime in here if the record isn't already straight enough.
They are not stars they are ori supergates opening
but thanks for your support.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Thanks for posting.
bORIng are the bORI.
Does this explain Hollywood's support for Obama?
Booo!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Once elected, no tax dollar will escape his gravitational pull.
Hissss!
Sorry, couldn't resist again.
... would be a good name for a band.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Does this explain Hollywood's support for Obama?
Booo!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Once elected, no tax dollar will escape his gravitational pull.
Hissss!
Sorry, couldn't resist again.
The action of the gas clouds as the are drawn closer to the black hole, as described in the article, can be demonstrated sprinkling pepper into your commode and flushing it. Who'd 'a thunk it?
The paper itself was published in Science, but you'll need a subscription to read more than the abstract.
It's ironic that of all of the ways that we as a society could choose to fund our primary scientific journal, the method we did choose is based on keeping scientific results away from people who are interested in science.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
but you'll need a subscription to read more than the abstract.
So in other words I'll have to give my email address to YET another anonymous entity in the hope that they'll just send me information relative to the topic I was originally interested in, and NOT sell my email address along with a million others to the closest available spammer who wants to make my "appendage" more appealing to the female populous ... What are the odds ?
You know, I am SO TIRED of having to sign up for everything with my email address ... why not at least giev me the benefit of the doubt as an actual HUMAN BEING, and at least give me a preview (not the full blowjob, just a little ahhh , ahhh in the words of Chris Rock), BEFORE having to sign my sould away to the devil (and his 1000 spamming cousins).
How about we do the internet a favour, and have a centralised list of GENUINE people who don't wish to be spammed, just to receive info on the topic they are REALLY interested in ? Even subscription based, it's got to be better than the current bullshit ?
The scientists saw some characteristic changes in these e-coli bacteria and INTERPRETED that through their evolutionary worldview glasses.
Other scientists, with just as many degrees to their name, having an intelligent design worldview will interpret that same experiment [through their creationist worldview glasses].
Reality is a certain way no matter how anyone interprets it. You are trying to play down the logical reasoning for belief that Darwinian evolution correctly explains reality so that the lack of logical reasoning for belief that creationism correctly explains reality doesn't look bad by comparison.
No evolutionary changes have ever been observed...
They certainly have! The only way you can escape this fact is to define "observation" so narrowly as not to include the observations such as the tree-like progression of biological morphology through geological time (as recorded in the geophysical record), the distribution over time of DNA (mitochondrial and nuclear) to different parts of the world, the agreement between the way we observe variations of life forms to occur and the way population genetics predicts these variations should occur, and a host of other things.
Scientists have bred millions of generations of fruit flies...
First off, no single line is this many generations long. Second and moreover, scientists have not subjected them to selection pressure different from that to which fruit flies are already well adapted. It is not surprising in the least that accelerating the mutation rate without changing the selective pressures should produce no viable flies very different from the originals already well adapted to it by millions of years of selection.
These [artificial] stimuli have caused a wide variety, often grotesquely malformed fruit flies.
Evolution works because 1) genes change, and 2) the environment imposes selection pressure favoring the reproduction of certain genes while disparaging the reproduction of others. It doesn't matter what genes are available for selection if there is selection pressure against all of them but the one you started with.
You need to understand why there are distinct species in the first place, and why and how they change over time. We don't see a continuum of shapes between tuna and leopards because there is not a continuum of ecological niches in the environment. Between the niches, there is selection pressure against any shape that genetic variation happens to offer up, so those genes don't get reproduced.
(That's what speciation is.)
Selection pressure molds anything that swims for its food into good swimmers, and anything that runs for its food into good runners. But shapes (thus genes) for good swimmers and runners are largely mutually exclusive; optimal for each is suboptimal for the other.
(That's why speciation occurs.)
Other selection pressures, such as available food sources, depend on what *other* contemporaneous species are like, and ultimately on the environment. The only steady change is slowly, over time. The sudden appearance or disappearance of food or habitat or disease can create or destroy new niches discontinuously, perhaps shifting them so much that an existing genetic "island" (species) cannot adapt, and becomes extinct. This has already happened to the vast majority of species that have ever lived.
(That's why the speciation changes, in fits, over time.)
However without a single exception, these were still always fruit flies, and nothing but fruit flies. Never, in all the experiments has anything other than fruit flies been produced.
1) Most (but not all) experiments which involve mutating fruit flies, or anything else for that matter, seek to understand the role of certain genes by finding out what happens when they break; not to observe selection pressure operating on genetic variation in the process
Not all of us grew up in wealthy families. For me, $10 per article might as well have been $10000 per article...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
The nice thing about how computer models are used in astrophysics is that we don't set public policy by them. It's especially nice that these models actually match observed phenomenon.
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Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars