Slashdot Mirror
Star Falls Into Black Hole
thodelu writes with news that astronomers recently got a look at what they believe is a star falling into a black hole. Phil Plait explains:
"As the star approached this bottomless pit, the side of the star facing the black hole was pulled far harder than the other side of the star, which may have been a million or more kilometers farther away from the black hole. This change in pull stretched the star — this stretching is called a 'tide,' and is essentially the same thing that causes tides on the Earth from the Moon’s gravity and when the star wandered too close to the black hole, the strength of that pull became irresistible, overcoming the star’s own internal gravity. In a flash, the star was torn apart, and octillions of tons of ionized gas burst outward! This material whipped around the black hole, forming a disk of plasma called an accretion disk. Magnetic fields, friction, and turbulence superheated the plasma, and also focused twin beams of matter and energy which blasted out from the poles of the disk, away from the black hole itself. The energy stored in these beams is incredible, crushing our imagination into dust: for a time, they shone with the light of a trillion Suns!"
Why is Slashdot covering Charlie Sheen now?
That's OVER 9000 times the force of 1000 suns!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You lose, Sentry! Trillion suns beats a million!
Wild stab in the dark here on that one, 'cause the guy who writes the blog is a professional gamma-ray astronomer, maybe?
Is this a rhetorical phrase like ginormous, or is this number actually defined somewhere?
An Octillion is 1,000 Septillions.
A Septillion is 1,000 Augustillions.
An Augustillion is 1,000 Julytillions.
A Julytillion is 1,000 Junetillions.
A Junetillion is 1,000 Maytillions.
A Maytillion is 1,000 Apriltillions.
An Apriltillion is 1,000 Marchtillions.
And a Marchtillion is 1,074 Februarytillions (except every 4 years when it's exactly 1,000 Februarytillions.)
Next time look it up in Googol.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Any site that "embiggens" images when you click on them is OK with me.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
If I took a cube 100 meters on a side, carved information on it that could be read from a distance, and slung it past the EH
You euthanized your faithful Companion Cube more quickly than any test subject on record. Congratulations.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.