First Black Holes May Have Incubated in Giant, Starlike Cocoons
This is an artist's illustration of the view into a black hole. (April Hobart, NASA, Chandra X-Ray Observatory)
The first large black holes in the universe likely formed and grew deep inside gigantic, starlike cocoons that smothered their powerful x-ray radiation and prevented surrounding gases from being blown away, says a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The formation process involved two stages, said Mitchell Begelman, a professor and the chair of CU-Boulder’s astrophysical and planetary sciences department. The predecessors to black hole formation, objects called supermassive stars, probably started forming within the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago. A supermassive star eventually would have grown to a huge size — as much as tens of millions of times the mass of our sun — and would have been short-lived, with its core collapsing in just in few million years, he said.
In the new study to be published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in London, Begelman calculated how supermassive stars might have formed, as well as the masses of their cores. These calculations allowed him to estimate their subsequent size and evolution, including how they ultimately left behind “seed” black holes. (more…)
High-Energy Plasma Study Under 100,000 Degree Heat
Roberto Mancini, professor and chair of the University of Nevada, Reno Physics Department stands next to the experiment chamber of the University’s Nevada Terawatt Facility 2-terawatt Zebra accelerator, one of the two most powerful University based pulse-power generators nationwide, where researchers come to conduct high energy density plasma experiments. (Photo by Mike Wolterbeek. University of Nevada, Reno)
Using one of the greatest sources of radiation energy created by man, University of Nevada, Reno researcher and faculty member Roberto Mancini is studying ultra-high temperature and non-equilibrium plasmas to mimic what happens to matter in accretion disks around black holes.
Physics department professor and chair Mancini has received a $690,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to continue his research in high energy density plasma; plasmas are considered to be the fourth state of matter. He will serve as principal investigator for a project titled “Experiments and Modeling of Photo-ionized Plasmas at Z.”
“Receiving awards such as this exemplifies the academic caliber and national importance of the work in our Physics Department,” Jeff Thompson, dean of the College of Science said. “We’re proud of the team of researchers here working on cutting-edge science.” (more…)
Rogue Black Holes May Roam the Milky Way
This artist's conception shows a rogue black hole floating near a globular star cluster on the outskirts of the Milky Way. New calculations by Ryan O'Leary and Avi Loeb suggest that hundreds of massive black holes, left over from the galaxy-building days of the early universe, may wander the Milky Way. Fortunately, the closest rogue black hole should reside thousands of light-years from Earth. (Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA))
It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie: rogue black holes roaming our galaxy, threatening to swallow anything that gets too close. In fact, new calculations by Ryan O’Leary and Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) suggest that hundreds of massive black holes, left over from the galaxy-building days of the early universe, may wander the Milky Way.
Good news, however: Earth is safe. The closest rogue black hole should reside thousands of light-years away. Astronomers are eager to locate them, though, for the clues they will provide to the formation of the Milky Way. (more…)
Massive Computing Project Seeks to Develop Magnetic Fusion Energy
The Cray XT3 at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Choong-Seock Chang, a research professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, has received a Department of Energy (DOE) award to carry out ultra large-scale computation using the Cray XT supercomputer at the department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The awarded 20 million hours of computing time—roughly equivalent to running a single-processor desktop computer for more than 2,280 years—is among the largest awards given to a single project. The computation will be using more than 100,000 processors at a time.
(more…)
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