I am having multiple quazargasms

NASA, not Sci-Fi, Space

via https://www.instagram.com/sciencefictionthriller/

 

http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2014/rxj1131/

 

…..without permission

    • Astronomers have directly measured the spin of a supermassive black hole in a quasar that is located 6 billion light years away.
    • This is the most distant black hole where such a measurement has been made.
    • Black holes are defined by just two simple characteristics: mass and spin.
  • Finding out how quickly black holes are spinning reveals important information about how they grow over time.

 

Multiple images of a distant quasar are visible in this combined view from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope. The Chandra data, along with data from ESA’s XMM-Newton, were used to directly measure the spin of the supermassive black hole powering this quasar. This is the most distant black hole where such a measurement has been made, as reported in our press release.

Gravitational lensing by an intervening elliptical galaxy has created four different images of the quasar, shown by the Chandra data in pink. Such lensing, first predicted by Einstein, offers a rare opportunity to study regions close to the black hole in distant quasars, by acting as a natural telescope and magnifying the light from these sources. The Hubble data in red, green and blue shows the elliptical galaxy in the middle of the image, along with other galaxies in the field.

The quasar is known as RX J1131-1231 (RX J1131 for short), located about 6 billion light years from Earth. Using the gravitational lens, a high quality X-ray spectrum – that is, the amount of X-rays seen at different energies – of RX J1131 was obtained.

The X-rays are produced when a swirling accretion disk of gas and dust that surrounds the black hole creates a multimillion-degree cloud, or corona near the black hole. X-rays from this corona reflect off the inner edge of the accretion disk. The reflected X-ray spectrum is altered by the strong gravitational forces near the black hole. The larger the change in the spectrum, the closer the inner edge of the disk must be to the black hole.

The authors of the new study found that the X-rays are coming from a region in the disk located only about three times the radius of the event horizon, the point of no return for infalling matter. This implies that the black hole must be spinning extremely rapidly to allow a disk to survive at such a small radius.

This result is important because black holes are defined by just two simple characteristics: mass and spin. While astronomers have long been able to measureblack hole masses very effectively, determining their spins have been much more difficult.

These spin measurements can give researchers important clues about how black holes grow over time. If black holes grow mainly from collisions and mergers between galaxies they should accumulate material in a stable disk, and the steady supply of new material from the disk should lead to rapidly spinning black holes. In contrast if black holes grow through many small accretion episodes, they will accumulate material from random directions. Like a merry go round that is pushed both backwards and forwards, this would make the black hole spin more slowly.

The discovery that space-time at the black hole’s event horizon is spinning at over half the speed of light suggests that RX J1131, observed at a distance of six billion light years, corresponding to an age about 7.7 billion years after the Big Bang, has grown via mergers, rather than pulling material in from different directions.

These results were published online in the journal Nature. The lead author is Rubens Reis of the University of Michigan. His co-authors are Mark Reynolds and Jon M. Miller, also of Michigan, as well as Dominic Walton of the California Institute of Technology.

Off The Charts Geek Galore – Star Wars Interactive Video Board Game VHS footage

*Seriously, Star Wars, Vader - seriously

Address me as Lord Vader and tell me your name!

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This footage was included on a VHS tape with the 1996 Hasbro game “Star Wars: The Interactive Board Game”. David Prowse and James Earl Jones reprised the body and voice of Darth Vader, respectively. Also, Gilbert Taylor (cinematographer for A New Hope) returned as cinematographer..

 

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Playlist/Cheat sheet: 4:34 – Begin game 5:30 – Any players names that begin with any letters in “DARK SIDE”: Add 1 Dark Side point 7:28 – Player who is taking their turn at this time: Take Data cards until you draw a Keycode card. Pass Keycode card to player on their left; keep all drawn Data cards 9:19 – Player who is taking their turn at this time: Move to nearest Detention Block, their droid is sent to the Repair Center 10:43 – Players in Detention Block can move again 12:02 – No player can enter Control Centers, any player in Control Centers cannot move 13:05 – Players can leave and enter Control Centers and move again 14:48 – Player who is taking their turn at this time: Roll die for each of their own explosives planted, remove explosive if roll is 2, 3, or 4 15:44 – Players in Detention Block can move again 17:13 – Players in corridors: Gain 2 Dark Side points 20:12 – Players whose droids are on Data Terminal spaces: Return droids to Repair Center 20:40 – Players in Detention Block can move again 21:28 – Player(s) who has the least amount of Dark Side points: Take a Force card 23:30 – Player who is taking their turn at this time: Add 2 Dark Side points 25:28 – All players temporarily unable to draw Data cards. Player who is taking their turn at this time: Roll die for each of their own explosives planted on Outer Level area, remove explosive if roll is 2 or 3 27:39 – Players can draw Data cards again 28:31 – Conduit system locked for 2 minutes 30:25 – Conduit system can be accessed again 31:02 – Any player that steals Data cards from another player in the next 3 minutes can draw 3 more Data cards from central core 34:20 – Players may draw no more extra Data cards if they steal from other players. Anyone who broke this rule during clip playing adds 2 Dark Side points 35:03 – Players in Detention Block can move again 36:42 – Any player in Control Centers: Take 2 Data cards 38:40 – Inner level area available to enter 39:45 – Players in Detention Block can move again 40:15 – Player with most Dark Side points, or if tied, the youngest: They are now the Pupil. That player removes all explosives, returns all their Data cards, and has free access to all levels and rooms. They can also attack other players. 42:09 – The Pupil – Move to another player’s space and attack them 44:16 – The Pupil – Rotate the Inner level area 46:15 – All other players – Roll a die; Draw 2 Data cards if the die is a 2, 3, or 4 47:13 – The Pupil – Roll a die; Remove 1 explosive from Inner level if it is a 2 or 5 48:13 – The Pupil – Rotate the Inner level area 49:17 – The Pupil – Roll a die; Remove 1 explosive from Inner level if it is a 4 or 5 49:46 – Player who is taking their turn at this time: Pupil moves to that space and player is put in Detention Block 50:12 – Player who has planted the least amount of explosives: Plant next explosive immediately 51:16 – Final 5 minute countdown. Players in Detention Block can move again. The Pupil: Rotate the Inner level area 51:53 – The Pupil: Makes all players with 6+ Dark Side points discard a Force card 52:12 – Players in Detention Block can move again 53:50 – Players in Detention Block can move again 54:15 – All other players: Whoever is closest to a Reactor access gantry, take two Data cards. The Pupil: Rotate Inner level area twice 55:18 – Player who is taking their turn at this time: Move to any power conduit on Inner level area 55:46 – All players draw 2 Data cards 56:08 – Player with the least Dark Side points: Plant all explosives on Inner level area 56:23 – Game Over

Harvard Scientists Theorize That Fast Radio Bursts Come From Alien Space Travel

not Sci-Fi, Space

 

Isn’t it awesome!! Could be Aliens.

 

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2017-09

 

Could Fast Radio Bursts Be Powering Alien Probes?
Release No.:
2017-09
For Release:
Thursday, March 9, 2017 – 11:00am
Cambridge, MA –
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The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has looked for many different signs of alien life, from radio broadcasts to laser flashes, without success. However, newly published research suggests that mysterious phenomena called fast radio bursts could be evidence of advanced alien technology. Specifically, these bursts might be leakage from planet-sized transmitters powering interstellar probes in distant galaxies.

“Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven’t identified a possible natural source with any confidence,” said theorist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking.”

As the name implies, fast radio bursts are millisecond-long flashes of radio emission. First discovered in 2007, fewer than two dozen have been detected by gigantic radio telescopes like the Parkes Observatory in Australia or the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. They are inferred to originate from distant galaxies, billions of light-years away.

Loeb and his co-author Manasvi Lingam (Harvard University) examined the feasibility of creating a radio transmitter strong enough for it to be detectable across such immense distances. They found that, if the transmitter were solar powered, the sunlight falling on an area of a planet twice the size of the Earth would be enough to generate the needed energy. Such a vast construction project is well beyond our technology, but within the realm of possibility according to the laws of physics.

Lingam and Loeb also considered whether such a transmitter would be viable from an engineering perspective, or whether the tremendous energies involved would melt any underlying structure. Again, they found that a water-cooled device twice the size of Earth could withstand the heat.

They then asked, why build such an instrument in the first place? They argue that the most plausible use of such power is driving interstellar light sails. The amount of power involved would be sufficient to push a payload of a million tons, or about 20 times the largest cruise ships on Earth.

“That’s big enough to carry living passengers across interstellar or even intergalactic distances,” added Lingam.

To power a light sail, the transmitter would need to focus a beam on it continuously. Observers on Earth would see a brief flash because the sail and its host planet, star and galaxy are all moving relative to us. As a result, the beam sweeps across the sky and only points in our direction for a moment. Repeated appearances of the beam, which were observed but cannot be explained by cataclysmic astrophysical events, might provide important clues about its artificial origin.

Loeb admits that this work is speculative. When asked whether he really believes that any fast radio bursts are due to aliens, he replied, “Science isn’t a matter of belief, it’s a matter of evidence. Deciding what’s likely ahead of time limits the possibilities. It’s worth putting ideas out there and letting the data be the judge.”

The paper reporting this work has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available online.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

When I shine a flashlight at Mars, does a small amount of the light actually reach it? Reddit delivers

not Sci-Fi, Space

Okay:

[–]somedave 4341 points 23 hours ago*
Yes, you need to be careful with phrases like “a small amount”.
Mars is around 225 million km away at closest approach average distance. Lets say you have a 1W flashlight and aim it at Mars, the intensity very far away from this flashlight will drop off as the distance squared (also a little extra from absorption and scattering in the atmosphere). Without doing any exact calculations, if we assume scattering is negligible we can say the intensity that hits Mars will be larger than
I > 1W / (2 pi * (225 million km)2) ~ 3 × 10-24 W /m2
Mars has a surface area of 144.8 million km², so the power hitting Mars will be around
I * A/4 ~ 2.3 × 10-10 W
This isn’t a lot of power, but a single photon at optical wavelengths has an energy of around 3 × 10-19 J, so this is still billions of photons a second hitting Mars.
Edit: Lots of people are pointing out the beam divergence and scattering I ignored. Scattering I still don’t think is very significant, about a fraction 10−5 of the light will be scattered for every meter of travel, most of earths atmosphere is within 20 km of the surface so the intensity is reduced by a factor of around
I/I_0 = exp(-20000*10-5) ~ 0.8
which is a 20% loss and thus not significant. If you aimed the beam through more atmosphere or if you had a blue flashlight this gets worse, but never significant.
The beam divergence depends heavily on how wide a flashlight you have to start with, if you had something which is quite compact the divergence is worse than something with a large output. Most of the power is actually in a spherical segment which is, say, 30 degrees in size, where as my calculation assumed this was closer to 90 degrees. To compensate the intensity on Mars would be bigger by a factor of (90/30)2 = 9 ~ 10.

Comment from discussion when I shine a flashlight at Mars, does a small amount of the light actually reach it?.