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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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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