First images of particle jets at edge of a supermassive black hole

Supermassive black holes appear to occupy the center of almost all galaxies. When they are actively swallowing matter, these black holes can power energetic jets that shine brighter than the entire rest of the galaxy, and can shoot matter free of it.  Despite the mass and energy involved, however, the origin of these jets has been extremely hard to image, both because they're relatively compact, and because they're situated in the crowded centers of distant galaxies.

Now, however, researchers are putting together an array of telescopes stretched across the globe with the specific goal of imaging the environment near these supermassive black holes. The team behind the Event Horizon Telescope has now used it to image the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, and returned the first details of the disk of matter that is being sucked into that galaxy's central black hole.

It's difficult to imagine the environment near a supermassive black hole. These objects are typically over a million times the mass of our Sun, but all of that matter is crammed into a space that may only be a fraction of the Sun's radius. Any matter falling into one piles up into an orbiting disk of material (called an accretion disk) that increases in density and energy as you get closer to black hole. Any matter that crosses a critical point, however, rapidly spirals inward to the black hole itself.  The inner area of the disk is so energetic that it actually sends matter away from the black hole in a wind of particles.

But that's not the most energetic part. Even further inward, the intense magnetic field lines sometimes cross the event horizon of the black hole itself, propelling intense beams of charged particles away from the black hole. These jets interact with the wind of particles coming from the accretion disk, which focuses them into narrow beams that move at nearly the speed of light. These have so much energy that they are (in some cases) able to propel particles for hundreds of thousands of light years, sending them entirely out of the galaxy, where the particles eventually slow by interacting with the intergalactic medium.

Or that's what theoretical considerations seem to tell us. To actually image any of this, however, has been a serious challenge. It's what the Event Horizon Telescope was intended to solve. In a paper in this week's edition of Science, four of the telescope's instruments were pointed towards the center of M87: Hawaii's James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Submillimeter Telescope in Arizona, and two telescopes at CARMA in California. By carefully timing the incoming signals at each of these scopes (and using the two neighboring instruments in California to refine the signal), the researchers could turn these distant instruments into a single, giant telescope, one that could resolve details of the environment near the central black hole.

This system managed to image the area around the black hole down to a resolution on the scale of the Schwarzchild radius. And they were able to spot that the base of the high-energy jets is only a few times the size of the black hole itself (5.5 times the Schwarzchild radius), which "is consistent with scales on which energy is extracted from the black hole and accretion disk to feed the jet."

This also tells us something about the accretion disk. If the disk and black hole were rotating in opposite directions, the inner edge of the disk would be much further from the black hole itself than if they were rotating in the same direction. The size of the jets seen here is too small to arise from a system where the two bodies are rotating in opposite directions, so we can conclude that the disk is following the rotation of the black hole it orbits.
Even if the Event Horizon Telescope is improved, we're not likely to get a better picture of the black hole's environment, because the model built from the observation runs up against limits that arise from our uncertainties regarding the distance to M87 and the mass of the black hole within it. But the authors hope to be able to use the telescope to continue observations over longer periods of time, since the accretion disk probably contains an uneven distribution of matter, which could create periodic irregularities in the output.

Plus, eventually, they hope to turn the telescope on our own galaxy's black hole. It's not as active as M87's, but it still seems to be swallowing enough matter to make checking it out at high resolution worth our while.

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Huawei Device Ramps Up 4G

Vancouver, Canada, September 26, 2012: Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, announced the availability of its

ultra-fast 4G smartphone, the HUAWEI Ascend P1 LTE at the Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2012 in Vancouver, Canada. The HUAWEI Ascend P1 LTE will be available in the UK

exclusively from EE, with availability in other markets to follow. At the event, Huawei also underscored its commitment to increase access to high-speed mobile

experiences for more people around the world through strengthening their LTE product portfolio which includes many first-in-class LTE products such as the Huawei B593,

the world's first LTE TDD wireless broadband router and the Huawei E398, the world’s first triple-mode LTE modem.
“LTE is the future of mobile communications, and faster data networks will become a key area of differentiation for consumers when choosing their mobile devices,”

said Kevin Ho, President of the Handset Product Line of Huawei Device. “Huawei is committed to LTE innovation throughout the entire communications infrastructure from

the ground to the cloud. The availability of the HUAWEI Ascend P1 LTE is just one more way in which we are putting great technology into the hands of more people

globally.”

Huawei Ascend P1 LTE is currently the device compatible with the highest number of frequency bands and is being tested on operators’ networks across Europe, Latin

America, North America, Asia-Pacific.  Through Ascend P1 LTE, Huawei Device is helping operators to develop and expand their LTE user base.  Since initiating LTE R&D

efforts in 2004, Huawei has been a global leader in the development of LTE technology and has led the way in commercial LTE rollouts.

Ultra-Fast Mobile Communication with the Ascend P1 LTE

With its 2,000mAh Li-Polymer battery and powerful 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, the HUAWEI Ascend P1 LTE enables faster downloads at a data transmission rate of up to

100 Mbit/s that far outperforms HSDPA. Its ultra-low latency guarantees smooth video calls and online games.

The Ascend P1 LTE, running the Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, is an entertainment dynamo with pace to burn. The 1GB RAM ensures smooth browsing and the

4GB ROM offers capacity for limitless apps from the Google Play? Store. The HUAWEI Ascend P1 LTE also provides an array of multimedia features to delight photographers

and movie-makers. Its 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flash captures 30 images per second to preserve every memorable moment. The second-generation 10.9-cm (4.3-inch)

Super AMOLED qHD display with scratchproof Corning? Gorilla? Glass2 provides enhanced stability and durability.

Whale beaches on storm-wracked Northumberland coast

While the north of England turns its mind to clearing up following the two-day deluge – coverage here - another possible victim of the weather has turned up on the Northumberland coast.

It is an eight-metre-long minke whale which has beached itself at Druridge Bay, scene of last weekend's mass naked swim which you can read about here or watch on a video clip here.

The whale was first reported earlier this morning by a walker who 'phoned the north east Coastguard. They sent divers and alerted the fire service for possible heavy lifting later in the day. A vet is treating the whale which is described as dehydrated, under-nourished and much thinner than normal for a creature of its size and estimated age.

Richard Stewart, the watch officer at Humber Coastguard says:

This morning at about 7.50am we received a call from a member of the public saying that she had come across a beached whale on Druridge Bay. Coastguard colleagues, divers, the fire brigade and vet are all there now. The whale is still alive.

Minke whales off the UK tend to be solitary or limited to small groups of two or three, usually staying within 40 miles (64.5kms) of the coast. Beaching is unusual but can happen in unusual weather conditions or when a whale becomes ill and disorientated or too weak to resist tidal movement.

Steven Marsh, operations manager at British Divers Marine Life Rescue based in Uckfield Sussex says:

This one has stopped eating for whatever reason - maybe it has a disease or parasite, or something in its mouth that causes problems with feeding. We won't know how best to care for it until the vet gives their assessment.

If the whale is thought capable of surviving, it will be relaunched on a PVC mat attached to pontoons for the ebbing tide to take it our to sea. But Marsh adds:

It hasn't got any muscle on it at all, and the last thing we want to do is put an animal back in the sea that's likely to suffer and come back again.

There's more about finding stranded marine mammals here and the long and complex history of whale beachings here. Animals incapable of reasonably rapid relaunch are treated humanely but are seldom capable of surviving.

Update 11.30am: Marsh says that sadly the whale is too sick to be relaunched:

They're attempting to euthanise it now using a drug that will put it to sleep. It was in a very poor shape and we don't re-float animals that would die if they were released out to sea.

The storm hasn't killed this whale, but it may have caused it to wash up on the beach. If there is a storm, sick whales are less able to fight it and are more likely to be swept on to beaches.



the news comes from UK.

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Humongous, gassy halo found surrounding Milky Way

Our galaxy — and the nearby Large and Small Magellanic Clouds as well — appears to be surrounded by an enormous halo of hot gas, several hundred times hotter than the surface of the Sun and with an equivalent mass of up to 60 billion Suns, suggesting that other galaxies may be similarly encompassed and providing a possible clue to the mystery of the galaxy’s missing baryons — a.k.a., dark matter.
The findings were reported today by a research team using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

In the artist’s rendering above our Milky Way galaxy is seen at the center of a cloud of hot gas. This cloud has been detected in measurements made with Chandra as well as with the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space observatory and Japan’s Suzaku satellite. The illustration shows it to be nearly 300,000 light-years across — and it may actually be even bigger than that.

Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz

While observing bright x-ray sources hundreds of millions of light-years distant, the researchers found that oxygen ions in the immediate vicinity of our galaxy were “selectively absorbing” some of the x-rays. They were then able to measure the temperature of the halo of gas responsible for the absorption.

The scientists determined the temperature of the halo is between 1 million and 2.5 million kelvins — a few hundred times hotter than the surface of the Sun.

But even with an estimated mass anywhere between 10 billion and 60 billion Suns, the density of the halo at that scale is still so low that any similar structure around other galaxies would escape detection. Still, the presence of such a large halo of hot gas, if confirmed, could reveal where the missing baryonic matter in our galaxy has been hiding — and possibly hint at the true nature of dark matter throughout the Universe.

Read: Dark Matter Filaments Bind Galaxies Together

Even though previous studies have indicated halos of warm gas existing around our galaxy as well as others, this new research shows a much hotter, much more massive halo than ever detected.

“Our work shows that, for reasonable values of parameters and with reasonable assumptions, the Chandra observations imply a huge reservoir of hot gas around the Milky Way,” said study co-author Smita Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus. “It may extend for a few hundred thousand light-years around the Milky Way or it may extend farther into the surrounding local group of galaxies. Either way, its mass appears to be very large.”

Probe into cause of Fife mass whale stranding continues

The environment secretary said he wanted the report results "as soon as possible"
Scientists are continuing their investigations into what caused a group of whales to die in a mass stranding on the Fife coast.

Twenty-two pilot whales died when they became beached between Pittenweem and Anstruther earlier this month.

Researchers at the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) have been examining the carcasses.

Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead has requested a full report into the incidents "as soon as possible".

In a separate incident, a dead sei whale was also found on a beach at Eliot near Arbroath last week.

Initial results
Mr Lochhead said: "It is deeply distressing when we hear reports of whales dying, particularly mass stranding incidents such as we saw earlier this month in Fife.

"The reasons why whale strandings take place, be it natural causes or linked to human activities, are not known.

"The initial findings do not point towards any obvious health problems, however I hope that by examining and testing the carcasses, SAC will be able to shed light on

this concerning issue."

Following the mass stranding of the pilot whales, each of them approximately 20ft (6m) long, ten others were refloated after being kept alive by vets from British

Divers and Marine Life Rescue.

There are many reasons why whales come close to shore and strand, according to SAC veterinary investigation officer Andrew Brownlow.

He said: "Initial results on the pilot whales suggest most were healthy.

"Strandings are sadly not uncommon with social cetacean species, where many animals appear to strand because they follow a sick, lost or panicked individual."


remark :the news from BBC.