Slashdot Mirror
NASA Announces Discovery of 30-Year-Old Black Hole
broknstrngz tips news of an announcement today from NASA about the discovery of a black hole in the M100 galaxy, roughly 50 million light-years from Earth. The discovery is notable because, if confirmed, it's now the youngest known black hole, born from the remains of a supernova we observed in 1979. Bad Astronomer Phil Plait explains why scientists think it collapsed to a black hole, rather than a neutron star: "The way a neutron star emits X-rays is different than that of a black hole. As a neutron star cools, the X-ray emission will fade. However, a black hole blasts out X-rays as material falls in; that stuff forms a flat disk, called an accretion disk, around the black hole. As this matter falls onto the newly created black hole, it gets heated to unimaginable temperatures — millions of degrees — and blasts out X-rays. In that case, the X-rays emitted would be steady over time. What astronomers have found is that the X-rays from SN1979c have been steady in brightness over observations from 1995 – 2007. This is very strong evidence that the star’s core did indeed collapse into a black hole." He also warns that we're not certain quite yet, and we'll have to keep our eye on it to make sure it's not a pulsar.
Not to be pedantic but if the star is 50 million light years away then the "new" black hole is really 50,000,030 years old. Not exactly "news".
1) I'm pretty sure The Black Hole came out in 1979, so this story is a year old. Way to go, Slashdot editors!
2) That's overstating things a bit about Duke Nuke 'Em Forever.
3) Another story about the Hurd?
Please, please, no applause; just throw money. I'll be here all week...
if it is '50 million light-years from Earth' - then it must be something that happened at least fifty-million years ago - talk about old news - not even slashdot repeats news that's *that* old... ;-P