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By Bible Speaks
Supernova Survivor
A supernova explosion marks the violent end of a massive star’s life. The death throes are tremendously energetic, with the supernova capable of outshining an entire galaxy. Some of these blasts are so brilliant that they have been spotted in our daytime skies. The wreckage left behind - a stellar debris field known as a supernova remnant (SNR) - glows brightly in the X-ray spectrum for thousands of years. These are truly cataclysmic events. What could possibly survive such devastation?
Well, on rare occasions, a companion star can. Researchers are studying one such possible example in the Large Magellanic Cloud, some 160,000 light-years from Earth. Lying within an ionized field of hydrogen called DEM L241 is a supernova remnant. The Chandra X-ray Observatory has found an point-like X-ray source, probably the neutron star or black hole created when the star went supernova. This X-ray source is at the same location as a massive star in the SNR. The data suggests this is a binary pair, with the neutron star or black hole in orbit with a star much larger than our Sun. If confirmed, this would be only the third instance of such a binary pair found in a supernova remnant.
Image caption: Chandra X-ray data (purple) shows the supernova remnant, while ground based telescopes were used to highlight the ionized hydrogen cloud (yellow and cyan). Optical data (white) from the Digitized Sky Survey shows the stars in this image, which is roughly 1,100 light-years across.
-JF
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/F.Seward et al; Optical: NOAO/CTIO/MCELS, DSS
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By Guest Nicole
The campaign to capture the first-ever image of a black hole has begun.
From today (April 5) through April 14, astronomers will use a system of radio telescopes around the world to peer at the gigantic black hole at the center of the Milky Way, a behemoth called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) that's 4 million times more massive than the sun.
The researchers hope to photograph Sgr A*'s event horizon — the "point of no return" beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape. (The interior of a black hole can never be imaged, because light cannot make it out.) [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]
A Hubble Space Telescope view of the Milky Way galaxy’s center in infrared light. The inset shows X-rays in the region around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s heart.
Credit: X-ray: NASA/UMass/D.Wang et al., IR: NASA/STScI
"These are the observations that will help us to sort through all the wild theories about black holes — and there are many wild theories," Gopal Narayanan, an astronomy research professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said in a statement. "With data from this project, we will understand things about black holes that we have never understood before."
The project, known as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), links up observatories in Hawaii, Arizona, California, Mexico, Chile, Spain and Antarctica to create the equivalent of a radio instrument the size of the entire Earth. Such a powerful tool is necessary to view the event horizon of Sgr A*, which lies 26,000 light-years from our planet, EHT team members said.
"That's like trying to image a grapefruit on the surface of the moon," Narayanan said.
During the current campaign, EHT is also eyeing the supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxy M87, which lies 53.5 million light-years from Earth. This monster black hole's mass is about 6 billion times that of the sun, so its event horizon is larger than that of Sgr A*, Narayanan said.
These observations should help astronomers determine the mass, spin and other characteristics of supermassive black holes with better precision, team members said. The researchers also aim to learn more about how material accretes into disks around black holes, and the mechanics of the plasma jets that blast from these light-gobbling giants.
EHT could also reveal more about the "information paradox" — a long-standing puzzle about whether information about the material gobbled up by black holes can be destroyed — and other deep cosmological mysteries, team members said.
"At the very heart of Einstein's general theory of relativity, there is a notion that quantum mechanics and general relativity can be melded, that there is a grand, unified theory of fundamental concepts," Narayanan said. "The place to study that is at the event horizon of a black hole."
Though the current observing campaign will be over soon, it will take a while for astronomers to piece together the images. For starters, so much information will be collected by the participating telescopes around the world that it will be physically flown, rather than transmitted, to the central processing facility at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Haystack Observatory.
Then, the data will have to be calibrated to account for different weather, atmospheric and other conditions at the various sites. The first results from the campaign will likely be published next year, EHT team members said.
http://www.space.com/36360-black-hole-image-event-horizon-telescope.html
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By Bible Speaks
Origin of the Universe:
Gen. 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Astronomer Robert Jastrow wrote: “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”—God and the Astronomers (New York, 1978), p. 14.
JW.ORG
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By Bible Speaks
Which One Is Larger, The Number Of Sand
Grains On Earth Or Stars In The Sky?
This one is perplexing question, but this time with a surprise twist. The question is, and I bet you asked it when you were 8 years old and sitting on a beach with your parents: Which are there more of — grains of sand on the Earth or stars in the sky?
Obviously, grains and stars can’t be counted, not literally. But you can guesstimate.
Science writer David Blatner, in his new book Spectrums, says a group of researchers at the University of Hawaii, being well-versed in all things beachy, tried to calculate the number of grains of sand.
They said, if you assume a grain of sand has an average size and you calculate how many grains are in a teaspoon and then multiply by all the beaches and deserts in the world, the Earth has roughly (and we’re speaking very roughly here) 7.5 x 1018 grains of sand, or seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains.
That’s a lot of grains.
OK, so how about stars? It turns out that when you look up, even on a clear and starry night, you won’t see many stars. Blatner says the number is a low, low “several thousand,” which gives the sand grain folks a landslide victory. But we’re not limiting ourselves to what an ordinary stargazer can see.
Our stargazer gets a Hubble telescope and a calculator, so now we can count distant galaxies, faint stars, red dwarfs, everything we’ve ever recorded in the sky, and there it is!
Now the population of stars jumps enormously, to 70 thousand million, million, million stars in the observable universe (a 2003 estimate), so that we’ve got multiple stars for every grain of sand — which means, sorry, grains, you are nowhere near as numerous as the stars.
So that makes stars the champions of numerosity, no?
Ummm, no. This is when Blatner hits us with his sucker punch. He says the number of stars in the heavens is “an unbelievably large number,” but then, as a matter of fact, he adds that you will find the same number of molecules “in just ten drops of water.”
WHAT?
If you took 10 drops of water (not extra-big drops, just regular drops) and counted the number of H2O molecules in those drops, you’d get a number equal to all the stars in the universe.
This is amazing! For some reason, when someone says million, billion or trillion, I see an enormous pile of something, a gigantic scene, great sweeps of desert sand, twirling masses of stars. Big things come from lots of stuff; little things from less stuff. That seems intuitive.
But that’s wrong. Little things, if they’re really little, can pile up just like big things, and yes, says Blatner, water molecules “really are that small.”
So next time I look up at the sky at all those stars, I will be impressed, of course, by the great numbers that are out there. But I will remind myself that at the other end of the scale, in the nooks and crannies of the physical world, in the teeniest of places, there are equally vast numbers of teenier things.
We are surrounded by vastness, high and low, and either way, as Blatner’s book says, we “can’t handle the biggitude.”
Courtesy of: National Public Radio
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT THEM ALL?
Isaiah 40:26
“Lift up your eyes to heaven and see.
Who has created these things?
It is the One who brings out their army by number;
He calls them all by name.
Because of his vast dynamic energy and his awe-inspiring power,
Not one of them is missing.”
Psalm 147:4
"He counts the number of the stars;
He calls all of them by name.”
Number of STARS. In addressing man, God used the stars to denote a countless number, comparable to the grains of sand on the seashore. (Ge 22:17; 15:5; Ex 32:13; compare Ne 9:23; Na 3:15, 16; Heb 11:12.) Since the stars clearly discernible to the unaided eye number only a few thousand, this comparison was viewed by many in the past as out of balance. Yet today the evidence shows that the number of stars does indeed compare to all the grains of sand in all the earth.
Time and again the “SAND OF THE SEA” is used in the Bible to designate innumerableness or great abundance. (Ge 22:17; 32:12; 41:49; Jos 11:4; Ps 78:27;139:17, 18; Jer 15:8; Heb 11:12) But the number in question is not astronomically great in each case. To the beholder, however, the number of persons or things involved is so great that it cannot be ascertained. For example, one part of thePhilistine forces that came against Israel in the days of King Saul is described as “people like the grains of sand that are upon the seashore for multitude.” (1Sa 13:5) The number of those that would be misled by Satan following his release from the abyss, as seen by John in vision, was said to be “as the sand of the sea,” that is, the number was great enough that John could not determine how many there would be.—Re 20:8.
However! Your HAIRS are Numbered!
In addition to his illustration about the sparrows, Jesus said: “The very hairs of your head are all numbered.” (Matthew 10:30) This brief but profound statement amplifies the point of Jesus’ illustration about the sparrows. Consider: The average human head has about 100,000 strands of hair. For the most part, one hair seems just like the next, and no single hair seems to deserve our particular scrutiny. Yet, each hair is noticed and numbered by Jehovah God. Since this is the case, isthere any detail of our life that Jehovah cannot know? Surely Jehovah understands the unique makeup of each of his servants. Indeed, he “sees what the heart is.”—1 Samuel 16:7.
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By Bible Speaks
Which One Is Larger, The Number Of Sand Grains On Earth Or Stars In The Sky? This one is perplexing question, but this time with a surprise twist. The question is, and I bet you asked it when you were 8 years old and sitting on a beach with your parents: Which are there more of — grains of sand on the Earth or stars in the sky? Obviously, grains and stars can’t be counted, not literally. But you can guesstimate. Science writer David Blatner, in his new book Spectrums, says a group of researchers at the University of Hawaii, being well-versed in all things beachy, tried to calculate the number of grains of sand. They said, if you assume a grain of sand has an average size and you calculate how many grains are in a teaspoon and then multiply by all the beaches and deserts in the world, the Earth has roughly (and we’re speaking very roughly here) 7.5 x 1018 grains of sand, or seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains. That’s a lot of grains. OK, so how about stars? It turns out that when you look up, even on a clear and starry night, you won’t see many stars. Blatner says the number is a low, low “several thousand,” which gives the sand grain folks a landslide victory. But we’re not limiting ourselves to what an ordinary stargazer can see. Our stargazer gets a Hubble telescope and a calculator, so now we can count distant galaxies, faint stars, red dwarfs, everything we’ve ever recorded in the sky, and there it is! Now the population of stars jumps enormously, to 70 thousand million, million, million stars in the observable universe (a 2003 estimate), so that we’ve got multiple stars for every grain of sand — which means, sorry, grains, you are nowhere near as numerous as the stars. So that makes stars the champions of numerosity, no? Ummm, no. This is when Blatner hits us with his sucker punch. He says the number of stars in the heavens is “an unbelievably large number,” but then, as a matter of fact, he adds that you will find the same number of molecules “in just ten drops of water.” WHAT? If you took 10 drops of water (not extra-big drops, just regular drops) and counted the number of H2O molecules in those drops, you’d get a number equal to all the stars in the universe. This is amazing! For some reason, when someone says million, billion or trillion, I see an enormous pile of something, a gigantic scene, great sweeps of desert sand, twirling masses of stars. Big things come from lots of stuff; little things from less stuff. That seems intuitive. But that’s wrong. Little things, if they’re really little, can pile up just like big things, and yes, says Blatner, water molecules “really are that small.” So next time I look up at the sky at all those stars, I will be impressed, of course, by the great numbers that are out there. But I will remind myself that at the other end of the scale, in the nooks and crannies of the physical world, in the teeniest of places, there are equally vast numbers of teenier things. We are surrounded by vastness, high and low, and either way, as Blatner’s book says, we “can’t handle the biggitude.” Courtesy of: National Public Radio WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT THEM ALL? Isaiah 40:26 “Lift up your eyes to heaven and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who brings out their army by number; He calls them all by name. Because of his vast dynamic energy and his awe-inspiring power, Not one of them is missing.” Psalm 147:4 "He counts the number of the stars; He calls all of them by name.” Number of STARS. In addressing man, God used the stars to denote a countless number, comparable to the grains of sand on the seashore. (Ge 22:17; 15:5; Ex 32:13; compare Ne 9:23; Na 3:15, 16; Heb 11:12.) Since the stars clearly discernible to the unaided eye number only a few thousand, this comparison was viewed by many in the past as out of balance. Yet today the evidence shows that the number of stars does indeed compare to all the grains of sand in all the earth. Time and again the “SAND OF THE SEA” is used in the Bible to designate innumerableness or great abundance. (Ge 22:17; 32:12; 41:49; Jos 11:4; Ps 78:27;139:17, 18; Jer 15:8; Heb 11:12) But the number in question is not astronomically great in each case. To the beholder, however, the number of persons or things involved is so great that it cannot be ascertained. For example, one part of thePhilistine forces that came against Israel in the days of King Saul is described as “people like the grains of sand that are upon the seashore for multitude.” (1Sa 13:5) The number of those that would be misled by Satan following his release from the abyss, as seen by John in vision, was said to be “as the sand of the sea,” that is, the number was great enough that John could not determine how many there would be.—Re 20:8. However! Your HAIRS are Numbered! In addition to his illustration about the sparrows, Jesus said: “The very hairs of your head are all numbered.” (Matthew 10:30) This brief but profound statement amplifies the point of Jesus’ illustration about the sparrows. Consider: The average human head has about 100,000 strands of hair. For the most part, one hair seems just like the next, and no single hair seems to deserve our particular scrutiny. Yet, each hair is noticed and numbered by Jehovah God. Since this is the case, isthere any detail of our life that Jehovah cannot know? Surely Jehovah understands the unique makeup of each of his servants. Indeed, he “sees what the heart is.”—1 Samuel 16:7.
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