FIRE IN THE SKY: "Never-Before-Seen, Weird And Freakish Object,... We Were Completely Knockout,..." - Hubble Sees Asteroid Spouting Six Comet-like Tails; Astronomers Are Now "Scratching Their Heads" To Find An Adequate Explanation?!

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: yellow;">November 08, 2013 - SPACE </span></b>- Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have identified what they can only describe as a never-before-seen "weird and freakish object" in the asteroid belt that looks like a rotating lawn sprinkler.<br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0ATgk4dM-Pg/UnzyyzEFbTI/AAAAAAABNfo/QAcqNb4mSNk/s1600/freakasteroid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0ATgk4dM-Pg/UnzyyzEFbTI/AAAAAAABNfo/QAcqNb4mSNk/s1600/freakasteroid.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This NASA Hubble Space Telescope set of images reveals a never-before-seen set of six comet-like tails <br />radiating from a body in the asteroid belt, designated P/2013 P5. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />Normal asteroids should appear simply as tiny points of light. But this asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, has six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.<br /><br />Because nothing like this has ever been seen before, astronomers are scratching their heads to find an adequate explanation for its out-of-this-world appearance.<br /><br />"We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," said lead investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. "Even more amazing, its tail structures change dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust. That also caught us by surprise. It's hard to believe we're looking at an asteroid."<br /><br />One interpretation is that the asteroid's rotation rate increased to the point where its surface started flying apart, ejecting dust in episodic eruptions starting last spring. The team rules out a recent asteroid impact scenario because a lot of dust would be blasted into space all at once, whereas P5 has ejected dust for at least five months.<br /><br />The asteroid was discovered as an unusually fuzzy-looking object with the Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii. The multiple tails were discovered in Hubble images taken on Sept. 10, 2013.<br /><br />When Hubble returned to the asteroid on Sept. 23, its appearance had totally changed. It looked as if the entire structure had swung around. "We were completely knocked out," Jewitt said.<br /><br />Careful modeling by team member Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Lindau, Germany, showed that the tails could have been formed by a series of impulsive dust-ejection events. She calculated that the first ejection event occurred on April 15 and the last one on Sept. 4. The rest sequentially erupted on July 18, July 24, Aug. 8, and Aug. 26. Radiation pressure from the Sun smears out the dust into streamers.<br /><br />The asteroid could possibly have been spun up if the pressure of sunlight exerted a torque on the body. If the asteroid's spin rate became fast enough, Jewitt said, the asteroid's weak gravity would no longer be able to hold it together. Dust might avalanche downslope towards the equator, and maybe shatter and fall off, eventually drifting into space to make a tail. So far, only a small fraction of the main mass, perhaps 100 to 1,000 tons of dust, has been lost. The 700-foot-radius nucleus is thousands of times more massive.<br /><br />Follow-on observations may show if the dust leaves the asteroid in the equatorial plane, and this would be pretty strong evidence for a rotational breakup. Astronomers will also try to measure the asteroid's true spin rate.<br /><br />Jewitt's interpretation implies that rotational breakup must be a common phenomenon in the asteroid belt; it may even be the main way in which small asteroids die. "In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more," Jewitt said. "This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come."<br /><br />The paper from Jewitt's team appears online in the November 7 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. - <a href="http://phys.org/news/2013-11-hubble-asteroid-spouting-comet-like-tails.html#jCp"><span style="color: orange;"><b>PHYSORG</b></span></a>.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>

Asteroid Comet-like Tails Comets Episodic Eruptions Hubble Space Telescope Multiple Tails NASA P/2013 P5 Pan-STARRS Signs in the Heavens Standard Science Models Tail Structures Unusually Fuzzy FIRE IN THE SKY: "Never-Before-Seen, Weird And Freakish Object,... We Were Completely Knockout,..." - Hubble Sees Asteroid Spouting Six Comet-like Tails; Astronomers Are Now "Scratching Their Heads" To Find An Adequate Explanation?!

November 08, 2013 - SPACE - Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have identified what they can only describe as a never-befor...

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FIRE IN THE SKY: NASA Says That A New Chelyabinsk-Like Meteor Strike Is SEVEN TIMES More Likely - About 20 MILLION Space Rocks Whizzing Around The Solar System Could Do Serious Damage To The Earth!

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: yellow;">November 07, 2013 - SPACE </span></b>- The meteor that shocked Russia in February when it exploded in the skies above Chelyabinsk shows us that the danger from space rocks smashing into Earth is much bigger than previously thought, an international group of scientists has concluded.<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nqlHbsV63Nk/UnwBOYcs9lI/AAAAAAABNYs/p9VrwUJ9kQA/s1600/asteroidearth01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nqlHbsV63Nk/UnwBOYcs9lI/AAAAAAABNYs/p9VrwUJ9kQA/s1600/asteroidearth01.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br />The 20-meter-wide meteor, which streaked across the sky and exploded into small pieces on Feb. 15, smashing windows, damaging buildings and damaging residents’ eyesight, could have caused much more damage if it had been more solid, three studies published in US journals Nature and Science on Wednesday found. <br /><br />After studying the area around the explosion and a wealth of video and other evidence over the last few months, NASA scientist Paul Chodas said the meteor blast showed that there were about 20 million space rocks whizzing around the solar system that could do serious damage to Earth – not the 3 million previously thought. That’s because it was considered that meteors had to be 30 meters and wider to cause huge devastation, but Chelyabinsk was actually a nearer miss than it seemed at the time, the scientists said. <br /><br />Hundreds of videos recorded by car dashboard cameras were analyzed, which helped a great deal to verify the exact trajectory, speed and the energy of the meteor explosion that shattered windows in more than 3,600 apartment blocks, broke in doors and gates, in some cases collapsing roofs and knocking many pedestrians off their feet. <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--J3ROaWcEuE/UnwBdnx9PWI/AAAAAAABNY0/B9-xazhI2RI/s1600/asteroidearth02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--J3ROaWcEuE/UnwBdnx9PWI/AAAAAAABNY0/B9-xazhI2RI/s1600/asteroidearth02.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A man in Moscow looks at a computer screen displaying a picture reportedly taken in the Urals city of <br />Chelyabinsk on February 15, 2013, showing the trail of a meteorite above a residential area of the city. <br />(AFP Photo)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zic0L6mRXR0/UnwBeL7J2nI/AAAAAAABNY4/rEeJ-V_i-6s/s1600/asteroidearth03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zic0L6mRXR0/UnwBeL7J2nI/AAAAAAABNY4/rEeJ-V_i-6s/s1600/asteroidearth03.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Windows broken as a result of the meteorite fall near Chelyabinsk on February 15, 2013. <br />(Photo courtesy of Nakanune.RU. / RIA Novosti)</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Over 1,200 people in the Chelyabinsk region were hospitalized that day because of the nuclear-like explosion. <br /><br />According to the data now available, the Chelyabinsk meteor was traveling at a speed of 19 kilometers per second (68,400 kilometers an hour), was about a little bit less than 20 meters in diameter and weighed about 13,000 tons. Most of it burned up in the atmosphere and the huge emission of energy at the moment of the explosion, with no more than 0.05 percent (4-6 tons) of the debris of the space object reaching the surface of the planet. <br /><br />Two groups of scientists published their studies in Nature, one led by Jirí Borovicka, of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the second led by Peter Brown, at the University of Western Ontario. Both calculated that the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion was equivalent to about 500 kilotons of TNT. <br /><br />It has also been established that it is highly probable that the Chelyabinsk meteor was previously a part of a bigger space rock, two kilometers in diameters – an asteroid identified as (86039) 1999 NC43 that will pass several millions kilometers away from Earth in March 2014. <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zQsgfYe4Hy0/UnwBpPeK-uI/AAAAAAABNZE/PNCmsY9d5Vk/s1600/asteroidearth04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zQsgfYe4Hy0/UnwBpPeK-uI/AAAAAAABNZE/PNCmsY9d5Vk/s1600/asteroidearth04.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Destruction caused by the blast of the falling space object at the Chelyabinsk zinc plant on February 15, 2013. <br />(Pavel Lisitsyn / RIA Novosti)</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Brown’s group estimated the peak brightness of the explosion as 30 times brighter than the sun, which led to many, sometimes severe, cases of skin burns and eye retinas being damaged, as an estimated 70 people temporarily lost their sight because of the bright explosion. <br /><br />The scientists also concluded that the existing models of atmosphere meteor explosions, based on nuclear warhead test data, were not correct, leading scientists to increase the estimated number of space rocks dangerous for Earth flying around the sun. <br /><br />NASA previously considered meteorites dangerous if they were more than 30 meters in diameter on impact with Earth. After the Chelyabinsk 20-meter meteor exploded with a force of 40 Hiroshima atomic bombs, it became evident that instead of an estimated 3 million potentially dangerous objects in the solar system, scientists should keep tabs on 20 million asteroids. <br /><br />And while such events were expected to occur only once every 150 years, now 30 years looks more likely to be the frequency of such catastrophes. <br /><br />The research was based on the work of an international team of 59 researchers from nine countries, led by Olga Popova of the Russian Academy of Sciences. They collected data from multiple sources, including data from a world net of subsonic sonars used by inspectors of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the US military satellites monitoring missile launches and tests, Gazeta.ru reported. <br /><br />The scientists calculated the kinetic power of the meteor more accurately at 590 kilotons, nearly twice the power of a W87 American 300-kiloton thermonuclear warhead. <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mAPyKg1RMho/UnwByEuxw_I/AAAAAAABNZM/Ks4Hqxt6a4g/s1600/asteroidearth05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mAPyKg1RMho/UnwByEuxw_I/AAAAAAABNZM/Ks4Hqxt6a4g/s1600/asteroidearth05.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Divers with a meteor fragment retrieved from Lake Chebarkul on October 16, 2013.<br />(Aleksandr Kondratuk / RIA Novosti)</td></tr></tbody></table><br />The group conducted research in the impact zone and modeled of the meteor explosion’s shock wave, which coincided. <br /><br />The scientists visited 50 villages around Chelyabinsk within weeks after the event, mapping the meteor’s destructive consequences. <br /><br />They found out that the impact zone spread out as wide as 90 kilometers, resembling a butterfly, making it similar to the impact zone of another famous meteorite explosion, the Tunguska meteor that struck on June 30, 1908 above the Siberian taiga. The Tunguska meteor (a small comet) was up to 150 meters in diameter and the estimated explosion that happened about 10 kilometers above the surface was estimated of up to 30 megatons of TNT equivalent, 100 times more powerful than the Chelyabinsk meteor. <br /><br />Popova’s group collected answer to over 1,700 questionnaires of eyewitnesses to the Chelyabinsk phenomenon. People said they could see traces of the meteor from as far away as 700 kilometers. <br />Some of the eyewitnesses questioned by the scientists told them something like, “<i>Huh, I thought Americans were nuking us!</i>” <br /><br />Popova said the Chelyabinsk meteor was a “standard” LL-type chondrite, with a relatively small quantity of iron in it. But it is still magnetic, and it can be easily detected by a mine detector and rusts when it comes into contact with water, Popova said. <br /><br />As a rule meteors lose about 90 percent of their mass while they travel through Earth’s atmosphere, but the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk practically disappeared, Popova said. The largest peace of space rock retrieved from Lake Chebarkul in October weighs 570 kilograms, compared to the meteor’s originally estimated 18,000 tons. <br /><br />“<i>That’s why we still don’t know what destructive forces space bodies are exposed to when they enter the atmosphere</i>,” Olga Popova told Gazeta.ru.<br /><br /><br /><div style="background-color: yellow;"><span style="color: red;"><b>NASA Says That New Chelyabinsk-like Meteor Strike Is SEVEN TIMES More Likely.</b></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GH8R8dsfyFc/UnwCYQdRZuI/AAAAAAABNZY/1aNoirNLOZo/s1600/asteroidearth06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GH8R8dsfyFc/UnwCYQdRZuI/AAAAAAABNZY/1aNoirNLOZo/s1600/asteroidearth06.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Children look at Chelyabinsk meteorite exhibited at Chelyabinsk Museum of Regional Studies. <br />(Aleksandr Kondratuk / RIA Novosti)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />New research out of NASA suggests the odds of the Earth being rocked by another meteorite on par with the one that unexpectedly shook Chelyabinsk, Russia earlier this year are higher than previously estimated.<br /><br />On Wednesday this week, officials with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced their latest findings regarding February’s meteorite, and it isn’t good news for anyone alarmed that another soaring chunk of rock could come ripping through Earth’s atmosphere. <br /><br />Scientists say that the Chelyabinsk meteorite was the largest foreign body to hit Earth in almost a century, and similar ones could soon be on the way. Bill Cooke, who leads NASA’s meteoroid environment office at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said during a press conference this week that there is a pretty good chance of seeing something similar in the near future. <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ETFOP9FVoWc/UnwCg42Ij8I/AAAAAAABNZg/mV8pxuQPS9k/s1600/asteroidearth07.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ETFOP9FVoWc/UnwCg42Ij8I/AAAAAAABNZg/mV8pxuQPS9k/s1600/asteroidearth07.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Divers pull a meteor fragment from Lake Chebarkul. (Aleksandr Kondratuk / RIA Novosti)</td></tr></tbody></table><br />"<i>If you look at the number of impacts detected by US government sensors over the past few decades you find the impact rate of kiloton-class objects is greater than would be indicated by the telescopic surveys</i>," Cooke said at the presser, according to the UK’s Register newspaper. <br /><br />Elsewhere during the event, Cooke acknowledged that the impact rate of these types of meteorites is several-times over what scientists had suspected. <br /><br />"<i>Over the past few decades we've seen an impact rate about seven times greater than the current state of the telescopic surveys would indicate</i>,” he said. <br /><br /><br /><span style="color: lime;"><b>WATCH:</b></span>  Meteorite crash in Russia. <br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="321" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/90Omh7_I8vI?showinfo=0&version=3" width="570"></iframe></div><br /><br /><br />Researchers released their findings after spending almost a year investigating the February incident in which a rock nearly 65-feet in diameter soared blew up 18.5 miles above the Earth and then soared over Chelyabinsk after entering the atmosphere at a speed of 43,000 miles-per-hour. <br /><br />“<i>If you want to calculate what happens in other circumstances in future asteroid impacts, you first need to understand Chelyabinsk</i>,” said Peter Jenniskens, a research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, according to the Los Angeles Times. “<i>So Chelyabinsk is now the gold standard, thanks to citizen science. It is now our calibration point. And that’s why it’s really important to figure out what happened</i>.” <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zEjfajBIk0o/UnwC4ejTxKI/AAAAAAABNZo/9cPJtFd6UuI/s1600/asteroidearth08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zEjfajBIk0o/UnwC4ejTxKI/AAAAAAABNZo/9cPJtFd6UuI/s1600/asteroidearth08.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Damage caused to the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant by the meteorite fall. (Boris Kaulin / RIA Novosti)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />Peter Brown, a planetary scientist at the University of Western Ontario involved in the latest NASA research, added that studying the Chelyabinsk meteorite is making other scientists reconsider how asteroid’s behave. <br /><br />“<i>We need to refine those estimates</i>,” he said. “<i>We should see something like Chelyabinsk every 30 to 40 years rather than every 120 to 140 or so — a factor of three or four more of these impacts than the telescopic data suggest."</i><br /><br />Last February’s incident injured more than 1,000 people in Russia and, according to the Washington Post, created a series of explosions equal to about 500 kilotons of TNT. - <a href="http://rt.com/"><span style="color: orange;"><b>RT</b></span></a>.<br /><br /><br /> <br /></div>

Bolides Celestial Convergence Chelyabinsk Comets Earth's Atmosphere Fire In The Sky Fireballs Huge Meteor Meteor Explosion Meteorites NASA Russia Solar System Disturbances Space Rocks Urals FIRE IN THE SKY: NASA Says That A New Chelyabinsk-Like Meteor Strike Is SEVEN TIMES More Likely - About 20 MILLION Space Rocks Whizzing Around The Solar System Could Do Serious Damage To The Earth!

November 07, 2013 - SPACE - The meteor that shocked Russia in February when it exploded in the skies above Chelyabinsk shows us that the da...

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FIRE IN THE SKY: Comet ISON Races Towards The Sun - Now Visible Inside The Orbit Of The Earth! [LATEST IMAGE]

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: yellow;">November 07, 2013 - SPACE </span></b>- Comet ISON is now inside the orbit of Earth and racing toward the sun. Last night, astronomer Alberto Quijano Vodniza of Pasto, Colombia, recorded the comet moving through space at 103,000 mph (46 km/s). <br /><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RvxtUbHP-hk/UnuagQAXXPI/AAAAAAABNXA/Yf0Q8YiXpxA/s1600/cometison01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RvxtUbHP-hk/UnuagQAXXPI/AAAAAAABNXA/Yf0Q8YiXpxA/s1600/cometison01.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: Dennis di Ciccio/CORBIS.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />"The movie shows the comet's motion over 27 minutes," says Vodniza. Watch it again. "We also caught a satellite."<br /><br />On Nov. 28th, Comet ISON will fly through the sun's atmosphere little more than a million kilometers above the sun's fiery surface. This raises a question: Is Comet ISON racing toward its doom? Astronomer Matthew Knight of the Lowell Observatory thinks the comet might withstand the heat:<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C4d2iiZzlaQ/Unua9JEXw_I/AAAAAAABNXI/F1bBdwtzRys/s1600/cometison02.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="720" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C4d2iiZzlaQ/Unua9JEXw_I/AAAAAAABNXI/F1bBdwtzRys/s320/cometison02.gif" width="570" /></a></div><br /><br />"At its closest point to the Sun, the equilibrium temperature approaches 5000 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to cause much of the dust and rock on ISON’s surface to vaporize," says Knight. "While it may seem incredible that anything can survive this inferno, the rate at which ISON will likely lose mass is relatively small compared to how big it likely is. Assuming that the comet's nucleus is bigger than about 200 meters in radius (current estimates suggest it is 500-2000 m in radius), it will likely survive. It helps that the comet is moving very fast, about 400 km/s at perihelion, so it will not remain long at such extreme temperatures."<br /><br />If Comet ISON does survive its encounter with the sun, it could put on a good show for backyard astronomers in the northern hemisphere in December. The next few weeks will tell the tale. Stay tuned! - <a href="http://www.spaceweather.com/"><span style="color: orange;"><b>Space Weather</b></span></a>.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>

1347 Asteroids Comet ISON Comet Negra Comets Dust Electric Universe Electromagnetism Fireballs Great Comet ISON Magnetosphere Meteors NASA Plasma Sun Sungrazing Comet FIRE IN THE SKY: Comet ISON Races Towards The Sun - Now Visible Inside The Orbit Of The Earth! [LATEST IMAGE]

November 07, 2013 - SPACE - Comet ISON is now inside the orbit of Earth and racing toward the sun. Last night, astronomer Alberto Quijano Vo...

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SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: "Discoveries Are Just Beginning" - Surprising Spiral Structure Found At Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole?!

<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: yellow;"><b><b><span style="color: yellow;">November 06, 2013 - SPACE </span></b></b></span>- The image above shows the central parts of the nearby active galaxy NGC 1433. The dim blue background image, showing the central dust lanes of this galaxy, comes from the NASA/ESA <a class="zem_slink" href="http://hubble.nasa.gov/" rel="homepage" target="_blank" title="Hubble Space Telescope">Hubble Space Telescope</a>. The colored structures near the center are from recent ALMA observations that have revealed a spiral shape, as well as an unexpected outflow, for the first time.<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IOgctlsiRBw/UnpzncmKrQI/AAAAAAABNO4/1XRqkeGsUoE/s1600/galaxyspiral.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IOgctlsiRBw/UnpzncmKrQI/AAAAAAABNO4/1XRqkeGsUoE/s1600/galaxyspiral.jpg" /></a></div><br /><br />Two international teams of astronomers have used the power of <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=-23.0192833333,-67.7531777778&spn=0.01,0.01&q=-23.0192833333,-67.7531777778%20%28Atacama%20Large%20Millimeter%20Array%29&t=h">the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)</a> to focus on jets from the huge black holes at the centers of galaxies and observe how they affect their surroundings. They have respectively obtained the best view yet of the molecular gas around a nearby, quiet black hole and caught an unexpected glimpse of the base of a powerful jet close to a distant black hole. <br /><br />There are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole">supermassive black holes</a> — with masses up to several billion solar masses — at the hearts of almost all galaxies in the Universe, including the Milky Way. In the remote past, these bizarre objects were very active, swallowing enormous quantities of matter from their surroundings, shining with dazzling brilliance, and expelling tiny fractions of this matter through extremely powerful jets. In the current Universe, most supermassive black holes are much less active than they were in their youth, but the interplay between jets and their surroundings is still shaping galaxy evolution. <br /><br />Two new studies, both published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, used ALMA to probe black hole jets at very different scales: a nearby and relatively quiet black hole in the galaxy NGC 1433 and a very distant and active object called PKS 1830-211. <br /><br />"ALMA has revealed a surprising spiral structure in the molecular gas close to the center of NGC 1433," says Françoise Combes (<a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=48.8364388889,2.33650555556&spn=0.01,0.01&q=48.8364388889,2.33650555556%20%28Paris%20Observatory%29&t=h">Observatoire de Paris</a>, France), who is the lead author of the first paper. "This explains how the material is flowing in to fuel the black hole. With the sharp new observations from ALMA, we have discovered a jet of material flowing away from the black hole, extending for only 150 light-years. This is the smallest such molecular outflow ever observed in an external galaxy." <br /><br />The discovery of this outflow, which is being dragged along by the jet from the central black hole, shows how such jets can stop star formation and regulate the growth of the central bulges of galaxies. This process, called feedback, may explain the mysterious relationship between the mass of a black hole at the centre of a galaxy and the mass of the surrounding bulge. The black hole accretes gas and grows more active, but then produces jets that clear out gas from the surrounding regions and stop star formation. <br /><br />In PKS 1830-211, Ivan Martí-Vidal (<a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=57.6883333333,11.9766666667&spn=0.01,0.01&q=57.6883333333,11.9766666667%20%28Chalmers%20University%20of%20Technology%29&t=h">Chalmers University of Technology</a>, <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=57.3930555556,11.9177777778&spn=0.01,0.01&q=57.3930555556,11.9177777778%20%28Onsala%20Space%20Observatory%29&t=h">Onsala Space Observatory</a>, Onsala, Sweden) and his team also observed a supermassive black hole with a jet, but a much brighter and more active one in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe">early Universe</a> . It is unusual because its brilliant light passes a massive intervening galaxy on its way to Earth, and is split into two images by gravitational lensing. <br /><br />PKS 1830-211 has a redshift of 2.5, meaning that its light had to travel for about 11 billion years before reaching us. The light we see was emitted when the Universe was just 20% of its current age. By comparison the light from NGC 1433 takes only about 30 million years to reach the Earth, a very short time in galactic terms. <br /><br />Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts that light rays will be deflected as they pass a massive object such as a galaxy. This effect is called gravitational lensing and, since the first find in 1979, numerous such <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_lens">gravitational lenses</a> have been discovered. The lensing can create multiple images as well as distort and magnify the background light sources. <br /><br />From time to time, supermassive black holes suddenly swallow a huge amount of mass, which increases the power of the jet and boosts the radiation up to the very highest energies. And now ALMA has, by chance, caught one of these events as it happens in PKS 1830-211. The infalling material could be a star or a molecular cloud. Such an infalling cloud has been observed at the center of the Milky Way. <br /><br />"The ALMA observation of this case of black hole indigestion has been completely serendipitous. We were observing PKS 1830-211 for another purpose, and then we spotted subtle changes of colour and intensity among the images of the gravitational lens. A very careful look at this unexpected behaviour led us to the conclusion that we were observing, just by a very lucky chance, right at the time when fresh new matter entered into the jet base of the black hole," says Sebastien Muller, a co-author of the second paper. <br /><br />The team also looked to see whether this violent event had been picked up with other telescopes and were surprised to find a very clear signal in gamma rays, thanks to monitoring observations with NASA's <a href="http://fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov/">Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope</a>. The process that caused the increase of radiation at ALMA’s long wavelengths was also responsible of boosting the light in the jet dramatically, up to the highest energies in the Universe. This energy is emitted as gamma rays, the shortest wavelength and highest energy form of electromagnetic radiation. <br /><br />"This is the first time that such a clear connection between gamma rays and submillimetre radio waves has been established as coming from the real base of a black hole's jet," adds Sebastien Muller. <br /><br />The two new observations are just the start of ALMA's investigations into the workings of jets from supermassive black holes, near and far. Combes’s team is already studying other nearby active galaxies with ALMA and the unique object PKS 1830-211 is expected to be the focus of much future research with ALMA and other telescopes. <br /><br />"There is still a lot to be learned about how black holes can create these huge energetic jets of matter and radiation," concludes Ivan Martí-Vidal. “But the new results, obtained even before ALMA was completed, show that it is a uniquely powerful tool for probing these jets — and the discoveries are just beginning!" - <a href="http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/11/surprising-spiral-structure-found-at-galaxy-centers-supermassive-black-hole.html"><span style="color: orange;"><b>Daily Galaxy</b></span></a>.<br /><br /><br /><br /></div>

ALMA Black Hole Jets Cosmic Energies ESA Galaxy NGC 1433 Gravitational Lenses Hubble Space Telescope Milky Way NASA Signs in the Heavens Spiral Structure Supermassive Black Hole Unexpected Outflow SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS: "Discoveries Are Just Beginning" - Surprising Spiral Structure Found At Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole?!

November 06, 2013 - SPACE - The image above shows the central parts of the nearby active galaxy NGC 1433. The dim blue background image, s...

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