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Black Hole Awakens After 26 Years
schwit1 writes: For the first time since 1989, the black hole in V404 Cygni, a system comprising a black hole and a star, has reawakened, suddenly emitting high energy outbursts beginning on June 15. The outbursts are probably occurring because the black hole is gobbling up material that has fallen into it. While the 1989 outburst helped astronomers gain their first understand of the behavior of a black hole in a star system, this outburst will help them understand how such systems evolve and change over time. The European Space Agency (ESA) reports: "First signs of renewed activity in V404 Cygni were spotted by the Burst Alert Telescope on NASA's Swift satellite, detecting a sudden burst of gamma rays, and then triggering observations with its X-ray telescope. Soon after, MAXI (Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image), part of the Japanese Experiment Module on the International Space Station, observed an X-ray flare from the same patch of the sky. These first detections triggered a massive campaign of observations from ground-based telescopes and from space-based observatories, to monitor V404 Cygni at many different wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum."
There, FTFY.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
The black hole just sat there. Something else collided with it, and the black hole gravity pulled it in. The something, probably a gas cloud, heated up during the fall and started to emit radiation. How does this cause something to wake up?
"...helped astronomers gain their first understand of the behavior..."
What the fuck does this even mean?
"this outburst will help them understand how such systems evolve and change over time"
I can tell you right now. Sometimes something falls in, sometimes it doesn't.
Im pleasantly surprised the words 'black hole awakens after 26 years' isn't followed up with some sort of infuriating article on SCO.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Terrorism? NSA surveillance? Torture? TWO fucking wars?
I'm going back to sleep.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
its becoming a sun
I've been using our university's observatory to take images of V404 Cyg for the past week. On Jun 23/24, the star underwent a particularly crazy series of variations: over a period of six hours, it fell to just 5 percent of its initial brightness, then recovered almost to its starting point.
I made an animated GIF showing the star's changes over this period. You can see it on my observing log for the the night:
http://spiff.rit.edu/richmond/...
That page also includes my full dataset, and pointers to additional reading.
The star is currently bright enough -- mag 11-14 -- to be studied easily with small telescopes. Anyone interested in joining the effort should start with the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) -- go to their campaign page at
http://www.aavso.org/aavso-ale...
Michael Richmond "This is the heart that broke my finger."
mwrsps@rit.edu http://stupendous.rit.edu
Funny how article says it awoke on June 15th. That's when we aware, actually event occurred when civilization here on Earth was in its infancy.
IANAA, but I think the exceptional thing here is that such a huge change in an astronomical object can be seen in an human-life time scale, instead of millions years as usual.
Even in TFA, using the term 'reawakened' is so totally mischaracterizing the situation.
It's not like black holes go dormant, or gravity goes to sleep. No, clearly it's been short of significant infall material and has suddenly consumed something substantial, leading to a burst of outflow energy.
It's interesting and fascinating, but really we can do better to inform the general public (who is already woefully scientifically ignorant) than using tabloid-level language to explain it.
Obligatory relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1133/ 'Up goer five'
-Styopa
...on a cosmic scale.
The NAACP is going to be all over you in a hot minute.
Pfft ... this happened 7800 years ago ... go /.
Someone send Maximillian and VINcent to check it out....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
And our scientists just got around to noticing last week?
Maybe?
...it actually woke up a long, long time ago.
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
If an event like this were to happen "near" us in astronomical terms, and we were in the (very, very large) path of lethal radiation, we would simply be exterminated. Bruce Willis could not save us.
As I said in my biopic, The Sleeper Has Awakened!
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I'm just amused because this "current" increase in energy output actually happened about 7,800 years ago, and we're just now getting the news.
Clearly aliens using the black hole to enter our galaxy... they'll be here soon.
What's 26 years for a black hole? An eye-blink?
Seriously, thank you for making that gif and posting it. It's such a simple yet awesomely geeky thing and it made my day to see it.
Plus I now have an awesome new term, "Cataclysmic Variable Star." It's so Sci-Fi sounding it hurts!
We don't see enough of stuff like that around here any more, so again, thank you for sharing!
Black holes also apparently emit sound. Isn't that an eerie thought? Frequency is astronomically low though.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/go...