One of the basic truisms in astronomy is that, when a massive star ends its life, it goes out with a bang. A big one. A supernova. This titanic explosion is triggered when the star runs out of nuclear fuel in its core. The core collapses in a heartbeat, and the energy generated in that…
Category: Black Holes
Mysterious alignment of black holes
Deep radio imaging by researchers in the University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape, in South Africa, has revealed that supermassive black holes in a region of the distant universe are all spinning out radio jets in the same direction — most likely a result of primordial mass fluctuations in the early…
Black hole blast
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Hertfordshire/M.Hardcastle et al., Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA The Pictor A galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its center, and material falling onto the black hole is driving an enormous beam, or jet, of particles at nearly the speed of light into intergalactic space. These images show X-ray data obtained by Chandra at…
