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."

Comments

What doea a voorwerp look like?

[Low Ranked Craig]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/hannysvoorwerp_wht_big.jpg

Unlucky?

[Reilaos]

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.

Re:what determines the direction of the cone

[Low Ranked Craig]

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.

Re:What does a voorwerp look like?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0806/hannysvoorwerp_wht_big.jpg

Kermit the frog . . . is that you?

Voorwerpen

[Anonymous Coward]

Plural of voorwerp is voorwerpen (not voorwerps).

Re:Voorwerpen

[Anonymous Coward]

This is English. We make our own rules and other languages learn to live by them.

Just be glad we didn't make it Veerworp.

Re:Science!

[ElectricTurtle]

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?

Re:Science!

[gstoddart]

The problem with religious stories is that the mythologies are too paltry

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.

Science is cool. Up with science.

Well, yeah, that too ... :-P

Re:Um

[Culture20]

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.