Slashdot Mirror
Astronomers Dissect a Supermassive Black Hole
Matt_dk sends along a piece from the European Southern Observatory, which reports on observations of the so-called "Einstein Cross," a fortuitous conjunction of a nearby galaxy and a distant black hole. A team of researchers from Europe and the US combined the effects of macrolensing (from the intervening galaxy) and microlensing (from stars in that galaxy), captured by an earth-bound telescope. "Combining a double natural 'magnifying glass' with the power of ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have scrutinized the inner parts of the disc around a supermassive black hole 10 billion light-years away. They were able to study the disc with a level of detail a thousand times better than that of the best telescopes in the world, providing the first observational confirmation of the prevalent theoretical models of such discs."
And were never seen again.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
the article makes absolutely no mention of glaciers melting in the dead of night.
when I was "dissecting" some hot babes in bikinis at the beach and this huge yeti walked into the path. My paper will be published next month.
Quote FTA:
"The use of the macro- and microlensing, coupled with the giant eye of the VLT, enabled astronomers to probe regions on scales as small as a millionth of an arcsecond. This corresponds to the size of a one euro coin seen at a distance of five million kilometres, i.e., about 13 times the distance to the Moon!"
A truly fortuitous occurence. How long before our technology can catch up to that level?
Astronomers Dissect a Supermassive Black Hole
Was kinda hoping they'd opened its super-dense stomach to analyze what it'd been eating. "Frederic, clean up after yourself! You left black hole innards all over the scalpel."
At least they'd be able to say they worked closely together on the issue.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The new fox special: "Where did it come from? was this the child of the LHC? which shadowy government agency was responable for its capture? all will be reviled in Black Hole autopsy, tonight on fox!"
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
It has not been that long since people first discovered such quasars, and at that time they seemed destined to remain a mega-distant mystery. In the mean time astronomers have accumulated a large body of results on gravitational lensing, which itself is a prediction of Einstein's not-too-old general theory of relativity. Now this technique has been used to form a galatic-cluster-scale configuration that acts as a telescope which can bring us images of this extreme level of detail from across the visible universe. We live in a very exciting period for the science of astronomy.
This will only lead to yet another CSI spinoff, CSI: ESO. Of course Jeff Goldblum will have to be the quirky male lead that fascinates us while still making us slightly uncomfortable.
If I'm understanding it right. Unfortunately I can't even come up with a car analogy to describe what I think they're doing.
For the first time, a first post linking to goatse under a science article may be considered on-topic.
Those freakin' scientists...MICROLENSING the black hole! And a supermassive one at that. The audacity.
In fact, I can just hear it now:
ooh baby don't you know I suffer??
Obviously an alien object autopsy like that calls for Gillian Anderson to do the dissection. The question is where they'd get a large enough scalpel to dissect a supermassive black hole?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Universe's Largest Scalpel
Supermassive scalpal!
N/T
The question is where they'd get a large enough scalpel to dissect a supermassive black hole?
And yet sharp enough to dissect a singularity.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
They truly are boffins - one is even called Boffin.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Intellectually, maybe. After all, they are ... "brighter than a thousand sons"....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
You should click onto that link in the first post, it actually does offer much more insight into these "holes", as you would call it.
Really, the article on that site really opened my eyes, wider than they have widened in all the years i have been alive.
GO MY SON, click the link.
How does macrolensing/microlensing end up magnifying an area in space? To my caveman-like mind, it seems like it would act more as an attenuating factor, reducing the signal to fuzz.
I can assume that macrolensing only works as a magnification if you are not looking for things such as spatial detail, and are instead looking for general facts such as temperatures and wavelengths of light. But then I am assumming...
So does that mean we have to wait for 10 billion years to prove this actually happened? For all we know, those black holes were just a convergence of fake radiation created just to trick us into believing this actually happened. And then, who knows, 10 billion years from now, they'll erect a sign saying "u wer pwnd!" Give me some fricken verifiable data a little closer to earth wouldya?
Namaste
...Roseanne Barr's proctologist can hardly be considered an "astronomer".....
...about asstronomers, Goatse and the large hardon collider (or harcon collider?) in there...
Who's first?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
... to the world's most giant doctor!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Pictures, or it didn't happen.
-- my sig got
How black holes open up.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
It's sort of as if by combining a double natural 'magnifying glass' with the power of ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have scrutinized the inner parts of a car 10 billion light-years away. They were able to study the car with a level of detail a thousand times better than that of the best telescopes in the world, providing the first observational confirmation of the prevalent theoretical models of such cars.
Hope that helps!
The enemies of Democracy are
What's even more amazing is that the entire team speaks only in italics!!!
It's full of whiny English musicians.
... seriously. This would be such a great accessory for the scientifically-minded. It's a nice, distinctive-looking piece of science. Wear it as an atheist as a statement about religion; wear it next to your christian cross as a non-atheist as a statement about rational spirituality. Whatever - I just think someone could make a nice piece of thoughtful jewelery out of this.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
They've been measuring these 4 images for years to see if the curves can be fit together and thereby prove that it is in fact the same quasar we see four times. As far as I know this is still unestablished. Known non-mainstream cosmologists such as Halton Arp believe these four objects are distinct and have been ejected by the center galaxy...
Why does gravitational lensing yield four images of the distant quasar, resulting in a cross? Since the quasar presumably radiates energy in all directions, shouldn't its image be a continuous ring? Why are we seeing four distinct blobs instead?
LOL
I had Supermassive Black Hole playing in the background when I read this article summary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsp3_a-PMTw
LOL...Burn
How many football fields away is that?
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
that the existence of black holes has been proven beyond theory or any possible conjecture? I mean...let's step back from Stargate and wormhole physics here.
If the link worked, that is
It's called Chuck Norris.
Astronomer: "Scalpel..."
*slurp*
Astronomer: "crap... another one please..."
You don't think enough... therefore you better not be!