We all have bad days, with a monumental striptease here or an expression of anger there, but have you ever thrown a tantrum so bad that it upsets the balance of the entire galaxy?
If you zoom in on any large galaxy, you’ll find a supermassive black hole that pulls in gas from its surroundings with its immense gravity. As the gas spirals inward, it is squeezed into what is known as an accretion disk, a flat disk of gas orbiting around a massive central object.
Over time, the gas closest to the black hole passes through the point of no return and is essentially chewed up by its immense gravity. However, there’s a twist here. The black hole consumes only a portion of this gas and spits the rest back into space.
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Sometimes, like the naughty black hole discovered by XMM Newton, a black hole doesn’t just spew out a small amount of gas, it spews out its entire meal over hundreds of days. The gas in the accretion disk is thrown off in all directions at such high velocities that it completely wipes out the surrounding interstellar gas.
The effect would be so severe that gas would be blown through space and new stars would no longer be able to form. This completely changes the landscape of the surrounding galaxy where the black hole is found.
Accretion disk surrounding black hole slowly pulls in gas – Credit: European Space Agency
Typically, only black holes with very bright accretion disks spew out gas. These brighter disks typically feature faster “black hole winds” that spew out gas.
“It is extremely rare to observe ultrafast winds, and even rarer to detect winds with enough energy to change the properties of the host galaxy,” the co-authors said. Elias CammonAstronomer at Roma Tre University in Italy.
“The fact that Markarian 817 is [the galaxy in question] These winds occurred for about a year but were not particularly active, suggesting that the black hole may be changing the shape of its host galaxy much more than previously thought. ing. ”
For scientists, this research improves our understanding of how black holes and the galaxies around them interact. Many galaxies appear to have large regions around their centers where few new stars form. This may be explained by the black hole’s wind sweeping away star-forming gas.
Following the feedback discussion on New Zealand’s Blackhole public toilets (25 November 2023), news has arrived of a plan called “Using black holes as secondary batteries and nuclear reactors” published in the magazine Physical Review D.
Successful engineers, much like unsuccessful engineers, are not easily intimidated by limitations that others believe are insurmountable. The plan’s authors, Zhan-Feng Mai and Run-Qiu Yang of Tianjin University in China, continue to keep their jaws high and scratch their heads.
They say, “The strong gravity of a black hole prevents classical matter from escaping from it, but fortunately energy can be extracted from a black hole through quantum or classical processes.” he wrote.
They wave away a series of problems that are said to plague anyone who even proposes to get close to a black hole. They state that their black hole is a “mini black hole”.
This kind of confidence inspires venture capitalists, a diverse group of people who are experiencing the golden age of the early 2020s. After raising capital and extracting a suitable portion from it, many people are looking for new big opportunities to invest some of it.
Black hole batteries could be their next big thing, following in the capricious footsteps of cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence. Many investors are finding both to be as compellingly attractive as black holes.
2 story superpower
Alison Litherland tells the story of a boring superpower with useful duplicity.
she says: “When you mentioned Rosemary Fuhrman’s husband’s ability to read her two pages in different Braille at the same time (September 16, 2023), I was reminded of the small superpowers she had when her children were small. I remembered my abilities.
“I was able to read a bedtime story aloud to her while at the same time quietly reading a novel to herself. I don’t know how my brain was able to distinguish between the two stories, but… It certainly helped with the boredom of re-reading the same story before bed.”
The title rests on a letter to the editor from Anna Vittoria Mattioli and Alberto Farinetti of the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia in Italy. The diary is Nutrition, metabolism and cardiovascular disease.
Mattioli and Farinetti explore some of the ambiguity in medical research and medical pronouncements regarding the positive and negative health effects of drinking coffee.
Some people drink espresso in some places, while others drink other forms of coffee. Some people drink coffee filtered, while others drink it unfiltered.
Some people drink coffee “in conjunction with a meal” in some places, while others drink coffee on its own. Some men are men and others are not, and there may be differences in “absorption of macronutrients and micronutrients and their bioavailability.”
Mattioli and Farinetti suggest further research is needed to “de-confound” under confusing headings.
he says: “The old chestnut about drainage circulation rears its head again. I see. Given the very small volume and mass involved in hair, and the fact that people spend a significant amount of time moving around in non-vertical positions, it is absurd to suggest that the Coriolis force could be responsible for the swirling of hair. The Coriolis force is responsible for the surprising twist in how objects appear to move when they rotate Please remember that.
The new version gives a meandering nod to the Coriolis question, this time at a distance. “Other non-hemispheric factors are [be] Maternal health, maternal nutrition, and prenatal hormone exposure were evaluated in samples from different locations in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, before considering the potential influence of hemispheric environmental physical factors such as the Coriolis force. I did.”
Sheffield names the harvest
Susan Frank is second to none when it comes to sharing information about garden varieties.
She writes: “We wanted to include the names of two of our trustees associated with Sheffield Botanic Gardens Trust, Barbara Plant and Christine Rose.”
According to feedback, Sheffield Botanic Gardens Trust Website Trustee Miles Stevenson, who is neither a plant nor a rose, makes it clear (by displaying special information in parentheses) that it is a chair.
Mark Abrahams hosted the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founded the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Previously, he was working on unusual uses of computers. his website is impossible.com Have a story for feedback? You can email your article to Feedback at feedback@newscientist.com. Please enter your home address. This week’s and past feedback can be found on our website.
An imaginary diagram of the interstellar medium distribution of active galactic nuclei based on current observation results. Dense molecular gas from the galaxy flows along the disk’s surface toward the black hole. The energy generated by the high temperature of the material accumulated around the black hole destroys molecular gas, converting it into atoms and plasma. Most of these multiphase interstellar mediums are jets flowing outward from the galactic center (mainly plasma jets occur directly above the disk, and mainly atomic and molecular jets occur at an angle). However, it turns out that most of the particles flow back into the disk like a fountain. Credit: ALMA (ESO/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan/Nuclear Astronomical Observatory), T. Izumi et al.
Recent advances in astrophysics have led to groundbreaking observations of gas flows around supermassive black holes. These observations were made with great detail. light years Important insights into the behavior of these giant universes have been revealed. Remarkably, the researchers found that while large amounts of gas are attracted to these black holes, only a small portion (about 3 percent) is actually consumed. The remaining gas is ejected and recycled back to the host galaxy.
Not all substances fall into this. Black Hole It is absorbed, but some is excreted as effluent. However, it has been difficult to measure the ratio between the amount of material that a black hole “eats” and the amount that it “falls into.”
An international research team led by Assistant Professor Takuma Izumi of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan is developing the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (alma telescope) Observe a supermassive black hole in the Circus Galaxy, 14 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Circus. This black hole is known to be actively feeding.
The center of the Silcinus galaxy observed with ALMA. Carbon monoxide (CO; indicating the presence of a medium-density molecular gas) is shown in red. Atomic carbon (C; indicates the presence of an atomic gas) in blue. Green is hydrogen cyanide (HCN; indicating the presence of a dense molecular gas). Pink hydrogen recombination line (H36α; indicating the presence of ionized gas). The central dense disk of gas (green) is about 6 light-years wide. The plasma outflow proceeds almost perpendicular to the disk. Credit: ALMA (ESO/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan/Nuclear Astronomical Observatory), T. Izumi et al.
ALMA’s role in solving the mystery of black holes
Thanks to ALMA’s high resolution, the research team was able to measure the inflow and outflow around a black hole for the first time on a scale of several light years. By measuring the flow of gases in different states (molecules, atoms, and states), plasma) The team was able to determine the overall feeding efficiency of the black hole and found it to be only about 3%. The researchers also confirmed that gravitational instability is driving the influx.
The analysis also showed that most of the ejected outflow was not fast enough to escape from the galaxy and be lost. They are recycled into the perinuclear region around the black hole and begin falling slowly towards the black hole again.
Reference: “Feeding and feedback of supermassive black holes are observed at subparsec scale” Takuma Izumi, Keiichi Wada, Masatoshi Imanishi, Koichiro Nakanishi, Kotaro Kono, Yuki Kudo, Daiki Kawamuro, Shunsuke Baba, Naoki Matsumoto , Yutaka Fujita, Conrad R.W. Tristram, 2 November 2023 science. DOI: 10.1126/science.adf0569
This research was funded by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
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