from the a-proton-and-a-neutron-star-walk-into-a-black-hole dept.
This past Wednesday (and about 900 million years ago), for the first time according to scientists at Australian National University (ANU) gravitational-wave discovery machines detected a black hole swallowing a neutron star
Professor Susan Scott, from the ANU Research School of Physics, said the achievement completed the team's trifecta of observations on their original wish list, which included the merger of two black holes and the collision of two neutron stars.
"About 900 million years ago, this black hole ate a very dense star, known as a neutron star, like Pac-man—possibly snuffing out the star instantly," said Professor Scott, Leader of the General Relativity Theory and Data Analysis Group at ANU and a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).
Professor Scott notes that there is an alternative, but unlikely, possibility as well
there is the slight but intriguing possibility that the swallowed object was a very light black hole—much lighter than any other black hole we know about in the Universe. That would be a truly awesome consolation prize.
[...] The ANU SkyMapper Telescope responded to the detection alert and scanned the entire likely region of space where the event occurred, but we've not found any visual confirmation.
The scientists continue to analyze the data and search for the event in the sky and expect to publish the final results once complete.
Also at c|net.
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Tuesday August 20 2019, @07:22AM (11 children)
So LIGO (two US locations) and VIRGO (Italy) detected the gravitational waves and an Aussie optical telescope looked but saw nothing. What was the Aussie contribution?
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Tuesday August 20 2019, @09:18AM (1 child)
"What was the Aussie contribution?"
Their PR people wrote a press release?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:41AM
That's already more than they contributed to WW1. Go aussie go!
''Australians were 10 times more likely to go absent in the Great War than British soldiers, or the Canadians or New Zealanders,'' says the British-born Stanley, who was principal historian at the Australian War Memorial before moving to the National Museum of Australia where he is the director of historical research.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/portrait-of-the-anzacs-deserters-more-interested-in-booze-brawls-and-sex-20100801-111f3.html [smh.com.au]
(Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Tuesday August 20 2019, @10:06AM (2 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Tuesday August 20 2019, @01:09PM
They were probably just too slow with the telescope. Quick with the PR, though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @05:00PM
Or just the new MEGA Paunch Burger, now at your nearest Pawney Paunch Burger location!
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday August 20 2019, @11:29AM (5 children)
They tossed the prawns on the barbie?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @11:58AM (4 children)
so here goes the spell to invoke the "general relativity is not a rubber sheet" band:
according to newton there's no makimum density, thus a object can become unlimited dense.
however if we use general relativity a object can become maximally dense so that its gravity doesnt allow light to escape.
for all purposes, if we visualize this with a rubber sheet, the horizonal sheet with a dense object placed into it will can deform the sheet unlimited. it seems obvious, thus that the object can be moved around on the sheet, making a endless deep pocket anywhere. thus two dense objects can merge.
with general relativity, the sheet would tear, after reaching a certain density, leaving what commonly is referred as a "blackhole".
now if two object make a tear in the sheet i dont see how these two tears could move towards eachother.
also time at event horizon stands still so it would take unlimited time to "move" towards another blackhole.
thus ... blackholes cannot move or merge ^_^
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday August 20 2019, @03:12PM (3 children)
Newton says nothing about a maximum density. It's quantum mechanics that normally prevents matter from getting arbitrary dense. But with enough mass, gravity can overcome that.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 20 2019, @04:21PM (2 children)
To be fair, we don't really *know* that gravity can overcome that. Perhaps space stretches a bit under the pressure. Actual wormholes are looking unlikely, but that's not the only alternative. I think we've got good reason to believe that it gets as dense as quarkium, but I'm not at all sure we have convincing reason to believe it ever gets denser, no matter what the pressure. A "black hole" is just a one-way gate (Hawking radiation is a way around it, not a way through it), and we don't really know what's on the other side. We just know our equations break down.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @04:53PM
if we have a equation in "quantum mechanics" that uses the "c" (speed of light in vacuum) constant and we assume, with another theory, that nothing can go faster then light, not even causal effect, then ... well a object that gathers light and doesn't (cannot) emit any is a one-way and "stationary" object.
after thinking about my previous post, i was wondering what would happen if aliens had a spaceship with a big enough "device" to create a "tiny" blackhole.
assuming the spaceship-laborary was moving at some speed "x" and then create the tiny blackhole, according to my original post it (the tiny blackhole) would stop dead in its tracks but this seems st0pid c'ause of relativity and all the newton stuff.
so maybe i can correct that and say the speed of all the material that contribute to the blackhole formation is the final "resting speed" of the moving blackhole.
so blackhole can move if they were created moving.
however i still think it would be cool if created "blackholes" cannot be influenced by external gravity field once created.
it's the equivalent of "object are at rest or continue moving without a external influence acting on them"; only nothing can influence a blackhole anymore.
it's awesome to have a tiny object but super dense (tiny blackhole, tiny as in really really small schwarzschild radius) that is totally impervious to any ... uhm ... errr ... geodesics (that arise after its creation) ^_^
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:50AM
To be fair, we also don't know gravity exists. It's just a theory and there are other explanations involving the firmament and God's mysterious ways.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday August 20 2019, @02:34PM (1 child)
I read the article (I know, I know, what a faux pas) and at the end they said neutron stars greater than 2.5x the mass of the sun have never been detected, and black holes less than 5 solar masses have never been detected. What kind of object fills that gap from 2.5 to 5 solar masses, black holes, neutron stars, or something else? I'm guessing it's black holes, because they are harder to observe, and because theoretical limits on neutron star masses are about 2 solar masses.. If there were larger neutron stars, we should have seen some by now, shouldn't we?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 21 2019, @06:52AM
> What kind of object fills that gap from 2.5 to 5 solar masses...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Jeremy [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @04:14PM (1 child)
A hole ate a ball?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @07:42PM
that ... argh ... toilet ... is ... uhhmmmm ... gonna .. be ....eeergH ... MAssssiiive!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @06:12PM (3 children)
So once again, they are unable to use these "detections" to do something useful like tell people where to see something interesting going on. Only invisible otherwise silent events are detected beforehand, or they detect the GW after some other method already pointed out the event.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @07:54PM (2 children)
there's a app for that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @08:00PM (1 child)
just kidding.
there's nothing really saying that observing a "single atom" will tell you anything about the wider universe.
so anything "app"-ly like where future galileo's want to care about more then what uni monies flows support is a "good thing(tm)" ofc nobody really remebers the dude supplying the self scraped glass to galileo.. or for that matter the "special" sand supplied via "trade center genoe" to melt with german 1'000 years old cedar (you know, the biggg logs the chinese sailors from "sinboao" tried to steal but failed) .. or such? right? right?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 20 2019, @09:31PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Saint_James%2C_U.S._Virgin_Islands [wikipedia.org]
Can you find a free source for ref 18?