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Black Hole Swallows Star
Thorfinn.au writes "The New Scientist writes a conjectural piece to explain the light pattern of SCP 06F6 in what was first identified as a supernova — but observations show a skewed and stretched light curve not fitting with an current theoretical explanation of exploding stars. Also, the discussion in the comments is interesting."
from the last paragraph of tfa:
Gaensicke hopes one of Hubble's new cameras, the Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed on the last space shuttle mission to visit the telescope, could reveal more about the object's origins. The camera may be able to spot a host galaxy around the object that was too faint to see with other instruments.
As our instrumentation improves, we'll probably have many more head-scratching discoveries...
Well unfortunately you cannot tell very much about what happens in this system ( wether it is a binary system or not) by what is happening with the light. You would have to look at the x-ray spectrum to be able to measure the kind of energies in the system. Chandra observatory is the best we can do at the moment... but it seems they still like to measure things in Crabs! But in the mean time, this would be cool to get some photo's of this happening!
We are in the earliest stages of undesrtanding how the universe works. For the first 8-10 thousand years we have looked what that which is in our universe and how it functions within our universe. Only in the last 3000 years have we started to look at how the universe (or if you prefer reality) itself works.
Based on our understanding the very fundamental laws of our universe at some point has changed. The laws, as we call them, 5 seconds before the big bang may have been very different then at the time of the big bang and vastly different a billion years afterwards.
We look to oddities like black holes to try and grasp and dredge out what additional laws that may exist to better understand how to exist within a system of laws. We must be ever so careful though as we go forward in collecting and looking at data. Who knows, perhaps we will find a white hole adding mass to our universe potentially signalling an escape from heat death or the big rip. Perhaps the graviton will be found... perhaps not.
The question all this begs is crucial to the core of our own existence, and is the harbinger to the meaning of life. The question must be asked after observing this article:
How could we miss an opportunity for a sexual joke with this?
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I don't seem to grasp that black holes can become mobile. I can not imagine something would be able to exert enough force on the black hole to actually accelerate it.
Other than the obvious everything-attracts-everything-else, also remember that black holes don't magically appear from nothing. Whatever matter initially created the black hole was most likely moving, and that momentum doesn't go anywhere.
The article does say that someone has proposed this as the best fit to the details of the observed data, while someone has proposed something else (a massive supernova of a star surrounded by carbon dust). Dozens of other possibilities probably got considered and rejected before making the article. If you read the actual scientific papers they will likely consider many more alternatives and explain in detail why they don't fit what's observed. They will also describe in detail
If you want the raw details you need to read the papers and be prepared for some maths (in which they work out which theories fit the data and which don't). The idea that pulsars are neutron stars, for instance, emerged over several years and was confirmed as the predictions it made about what kinds of patterns would, and wouldn't be seen in pulsar radiation panned out. Many other ideas fell by the wayside.
The real data is published and discussed, multiple interpretations are considered, but in scholarly articles, not in press releases.