 Recent observations of blazar jets require researchers to look deeper into whether current theories about jet formation and motion require refinement. This simulation, courtesy of Jonathan McKinney (KIPAC), shows a black hole pulling in nearby matter (yellow) and spraying energy back out into the universe in a jet (blue and red) that is held together by magnetic field lines (green).
In a manner somewhat like the formation of an alliance to defeat Darth Vader's Death Star, more than a decade ago astronomers formed the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope consortium to understand Nature's Death Ray Gun (a.k.a. blazars). And contrary to its at-death's-door sounding name, the GASP has proved crucial to unraveling the secrets of how Nature's "LHC" works."As the universe's biggest accelerators, blazar jets are important to understand," said Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) Research Fellow Masaaki Hayashida, corresponding author on the recent paper presenting the new results with KIPAC Astrophysicist Greg Madejski. "But how they are produced and how they are structured is not well understood. We're still looking to understand the basics." Blazars dominate the gamma-ray sky, discrete spots on the dark backdrop of the universe. As nearby matter falls into the supermassive black hole at the center of a blazar, "feeding" the black hole, it sprays some of this energy back out into the universe as a jet of particles.
(...)
Read the rest of World-wide Campaign Sheds New Light on Nature's "LHC" (866 words)
© Jean Tate for Universe Today, 2010. | Permalink | No comment |
Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: blazars, jets, supermassive black holes
Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
Source
|
Stuttgart, Germany (SPX) Mar 11, 2010 -
Satlynx is soon to become GE - Satcom. Along with the name change, the company will have a dynamic new corporate identity and website to match. "The evolution of our brand is a natural progression" says Ronny Svang, President and CEO of GE - Satcom.
Berkeley CA (SPX) Mar 11, 2010 -
An analysis of more than 70,000 galaxies by University of California, Berkeley, University of Zurich and Princeton University physicists demonstrates that the universe - at least up to a distance of 3.5 billion light years from Earth - plays by the rules set out 95 years ago by Albert Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity.