http://www.smh.com.au/world/science/scientists-think-they-are-watching-birth-of-a-black-hole-20101116-17vx6.html
Scientists think they are watching birth of a black hole Amina Khan November 17, 2010 LOS ANGELES: A mysterious object that is eating interstellar gas and emitting X-rays in a telltale pattern is almost certainly a very young black hole - the first one humans have been able to observe at such an early stage, scientists say. An amateur astronomer first spotted the object 31 years ago, when it was a star in the process of exploding into a supernova. Since then, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes have documented that X-rays have been emitted from the former star at a surprisingly steady rate from 1995 to 2007. ''If our interpretation is correct, then it's the first time we're seeing a black hole being born in a normal supernova,'' said Avi Loeb, a Harvard University astrophysicist, who reported the discovery in the journal New Astronomy and described it during a NASA news conference on Monday. The black hole - known as SN 1979C - is expected to give scientists a rare opportunity to track the evolution of one of the more bizarre phenomena in the cosmos. Black holes are regions of space where matter is so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape from them. ''It is in its infancy,'' Kimberly Weaver, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, said at the news conference. ''We want to watch how this system evolves and changes in its youthful stages, from when it is first born to when it grows into a child and a teenager.'' Researchers think the black hole was created by a star that was 20 times more massive than our sun. A junior high school teacher, Gus Johnson, spotted it in 1979 when it was in its supernova stage. In its collapsed form, it is now about five times more massive than the sun but is less than 40 kilometres across. The black hole appears to have swallowed an Earth's worth of mass in its short lifetime, Professor Loeb said. At its current rate, it is set to double its mass in another 40 million years. The black hole is 50 million light years away, in one of the Virgo galaxies. Los Angeles Times [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
