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Astronomers Solve the Mystery of 'Hanny's Voorwerp'
KentuckyFC writes "In 2007, a Dutch school teacher named Hanny van Arkel discovered a huge blob of green-glowing gas while combing though images to classify galaxies. Hanny's Voorwerp (meaning Hanny's object in Dutch) is astounding because astronomers have never seen anything like it. Although galactic in scale, it is clearly not a galaxy because it does not contain any stars. That raises an obvious question: what is causing the gas to glow? Now a new survey of the region of sky seems to have solved the problem. The Voorwerp lies close to a spiral galaxy which astronomers now say hides a massive black hole at its center. The infall of matter into the black hole generates a cone of radiation emitted in a specific direction. The great cloud of gas that is Hanny's Voorwerp just happens to be in the firing line, ionizing the gas and causing it to glow green. That lays to rest an earlier theory that the cloud was reflecting an echo of light from a short galactic flare up that occurred 10,000 years ago. It also explains why Voorwerps are so rare: these radiation cones are highly directional so only occasionally do unlucky gas clouds get caught in the crossfire."
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/hannysvoorwerp_wht_big.jpg
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
I think that such a gas cloud is fairly lucky to be lit up like that. Unless, of course, the radiation is somehow harmful to a giant cloud of gas.
If memory serves (not always reliable before coffee) the radiation emanates from the poles, and actually comes from the accretion disk, not the hole itself. I believe that all black holes rotate due to the fact that they retain the angular momentum from in-falling matter.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/hannysvoorwerp_wht_big.jpg
Kermit the frog . . . is that you?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Plural of voorwerp is voorwerpen (not voorwerps).
Put horizontally and vertically oriented quasars lined up in a perpendicular plane on the line between the black hole and the Voorwerp and you have just created the universe's largest TV screen.
Yes, clearly these are angels lighting their farts. If we refuse to teach the angels-lighting-their-farts theory of celestial gaseous illumination, then we will be depriving people of the diversity of opinions in this field. Why would astronomers want to cover it up anyway? Are they afraid it might be true?
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Nice troll. Really.
But, to play purely devil's advocate -- if there truly was a creator-being, it would encompass all that is science, and wouldn't require the Earth to be only 6000 years old.
That creator would fall into the realm of completely unknowable -- it would be outside of what we understand of the universe, and capable of understanding and manipulating things we still can't fathom. I'm not sure the human brain could wrap itself around what that would really imply since it would be such a vastly complex and advanced thing as to be beyond our ability to perceive and understand.
When you get to questions about "what existed before the big bang" or "what happens after we die" or the other really meta stuff, you are outside of what science can comment on. Morality, for example, isn't really in the realm of science.
While not personally religious, I've known people with degrees in astrophysics who were quite religious, and had absolutely no conflict between the science and their concept of god. However, being Really Fucking Smart People with an understanding of the science ... their concept of god was correspondingly much bigger, and encompassed a whole lot more. God didn't need to be stepping into fiddle with the bits science wasn't clear on, and science didn't intrude on the bits that God was in control of. For them, there existed no dichotomy between god and science.
My notion is that if your religion can include all applicable science, it's not harming anybody, and is probably a good thing overall. It's only when the religion needs to deny the science to prop up its own viewpoints that it starts to break down. At a certain level, they do (and should) cover non-intersecting areas of endeavor.
Religion isn't bad per se, it's bad when it wants to override reality and is inflexible/oblivious to the world around it.
Well, yeah, that too ... :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Hanny's Voorwerp ... is astounding because astronomers have never seen anything like it.
Is it really astounding? I thought astronomers see things they've never seen before all the time.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
"Hanny's Voorwerp" would be a great name for a Rock Band.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
When you know Dutch, the summary sounds really strange:
It also explains why Voorwerps are so rare
Really? Objects are rare?
The problem is that most people are not 'Einsteinian' or 'Spinozan' deists, content that 'god' is some amorphous force out there. Most 'religious' people believe in divine revelation, which is the source of all the 'paltry' conceptions of divine environments, behaviors, and figures. And of course these divine revelations are not limited to descriptions, but include many imperatives at odds with each other and with secular society.
If we can't know 'god', fine, the problem is most religious people think that they know god, know what 'he' wants, and feel that they are justified above any structure of society whether that is law, culture, or common morality (genocide is bad, except when GOD does it or people are commanded by him to do it!) to act on 'his' imperatives as they conceive them to be.
Deism is harmless. Theism is a deadly evil.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Hanny's Voorwerp (meaning Hanny's object in Dutch) ...
explains why Voorwerps are so rare
I would have to disagree... "objects" are quite common.
And I counter-disagree. Objects are quite rare compared to vacuum. They're just easy to spot because there's nothing between most of them except photons.
Religion isn't bad per se, it's bad when it wants to override reality and is inflexible/oblivious to the world around it.
But who gets to decide? Buddhism: good, Christianity: bad. I can see some fundamental First Amendment problems here. So lets just keep them all out of the classroom, courtroom, and laboratory. Or make me the Grand Inquisitor and I'll deal with the heretics.
Have gnu, will travel.
What mystery? We hear that Voorwerp Voorwerp Voorwerp sound whenever that stupid police box appears. There's no mystery except nobody knows what the owner's name is.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, as I understand it, most (maybe all) black holes spin due to momentum both already present before their collapse, and imparted during the collapse.
You are quite correct about the jets, though. Here's a classic example.
But, to play purely devil's advocate -- if there truly was a creator-being...
I don't think you're advocating the devil in this particular case. :D