Black Hole Mystery Solved

Black holes are an object of research and mystery for the whole scientific community from decades. Many researchers are working day and night to explore the mysteries of black holes. In this series, a recent invention by Yale University Astrophysicist revels the fact that, There is a upper limit of the mass of any black hole. This research has been also published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

WHAT ARE BLACK HOLES?

As most of you are aware BLACK HOLE is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, not even electromagnetic radiation can escape from it. Dur to this black holes can not be seen (as they absorbs light radiations) but can only be experienced by their ultra strong gravitational pull. That's why they are named as BLACK HOLE.. They continue to grow in size by absorbing any matter that comes in range of their gravitational field.

HOW MUCH THEY CAN GROW?

Till now it was not sure that what can be maximum size of a black hole. These black holes are now known to exist throughout the Universe and the largest and most massive are at the centers of the largest galaxies. These "ultra-massive" black holes have reported to have mass about One Billion Times that of our own Sun.




CONCEPT OF UPPER MASS LIMIT

According to the new research by Priyamvada Natarajan, an Associate Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University and a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, it has been proved, that even the biggest of these Black Holes can't keep growing forever. Instead, they appear to curb their own growth - once they accumulate about 10 billion times the mass of the Sun.




THEORY BEHIND THIS RESEARCH

Normally Black Holes continue to accumulate mass by absorbing matter from neighboring gas, dust and stars. But according to new research by Priyamvada Natarajan, that it is possible only to a certain limit, irrespective of the position of black hole. The reason behind this is that, "Eventually these Black Holes reach the point when they radiate so much energy as they consume their surroundings that they end up interfering with the very gas supply that feeds them, which may interrupt nearby star formation."

EXPERIMENT BY PRIYAMVADA NATARAJAN

Natarajan used existing Optical and X-ray Data of these Ultra-Massive Black Holes to show that, in order for those various observations to be consistent, the black holes must essentially stop at some point in their evolution. This helped her to prove this fact that these black holes can not grow indefinitely in mass and there is some upper mass limit of black holes.

Vulture - Unmanned Aircraft

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of United States is working to develop an unmanned aircraft that is able to stay in air for a period of 5 years at a time. It is one of the most recent inventions of world.

Officials of DARPA has revealed that this aircraft will be known as VULTURE due to its Persistent Pseudo-Satellite Capability . It means that this aircraft will be able to fly over a single area, communicating or performing analysis for years at a time.

Major Obstacles in Project:

Even this project looks appealing to many of you, but there are some serious problems or you can say obstacles in achieving this project.

1) First challenge in front of designers is to figure out some Way to Supply Power to this aircraft during long missions.

2) Another problem is that this aircraft will carry a 1000 pound (450 kg) payload in winds at an altitude of 60,000 to 90,000 feet.

3) Designers have also to sort out the problems regarding Deterioration of Materials during their long-time exposure to stratospheric flight.
In addition to this there may be many challenges during designing of this aircraft.

Daniel Newman: The Man Behind VULTURE

Daniel Newman is the Project Manger of this ambitious project of NASA. In his words: "We want to completely change the paradigm of how we think of aircraft. Aviation has a perfect record - we've never left one up there. We will attempt to break that record". It looks that its time to get out of the traditional "launch - recover - maintain - launch cycle of aircrafts."

Concept Behind Vulture:

Basically Aircrafts operates just like satellites, but the major difference is that these are not regulated by orbital mechanics. You can understand Vulture as a Pseudo-Satellite, which operates in the stratosphere and not in the low Earth orbit. This would provide a 65 dB upgrading in communications capability and will increase onboard sensor resolution.


When Will it Become a Reality?
Well, right now NASA has not mentioned any time table when the aircraft will be ready. But for now NASA has worked on the probable design of Vulture.

Moon's North Pole

This image of the moon's north polar region was taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) when the last Apollo 11 landed on the moon's surface in 1969. One of the primary scientific objectives of LROC is to identify regions of permanent shadow and near-permanent illumination.

ATK Aerospace System's

This is ATK Aerospace System's two-minute test in Utah's west desert. It is the third test for the 154-foot, five-stage booster rocket that could launch future spaceflights for NASA and commercial operators.

NASA Mars Project!!!

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, standing in front of the Atlas V first stage booster, takes questions from the media at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This booster will help send NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover to Mars later this year.

Space craft launch at Florida

The GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) is prepared for launch at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 17B in Florida.

Shuttle Programme For Indian Universities

Cadence Design Systems (India) has entered into an agreement with imec, an independent research centre in nanoelectronics and nanotechnology, in conjunction with the imec Europractice IC Service, to develop a shuttle programme for Cadence University Software Program members. The programme aims to provide Indian universities with access to advanced technologies, enabling their students to work with process and design techniques through to silicon tape-out.

Cadence will offer support to its University Software Program members by providing flows and methodologies, and imec will provide access to IC technologies down to 65nm, SPICE models, design rules, PDKs, and standard cell libraries.

The shuttle programme will allow University Software Program members to tape-out all technologies offered through Europractice. This will give universities foundry access for silicon verification which has been a hurdle due to lack of strong academia-foundry partnerships.

Jaswinder Ahuja, corporate vice president and managing director, Cadence Design Systems (India), said, “The collaboration with imec takes our programme to the next level by giving students access to actual silicon samples. It is an invaluable experience for students to work on a real-life tape out and will better prepare them to handle the tape out pressures of the fast-paced semiconductor industry. The Cadence University Software Program in India currently has more than 250 colleges enrolled across India and encompasses faculty development, the Cadence Design Contest, and the Cadence VLSI Certification Program.”

“From our newly opened Bengaluru office (www.imec-in.in), we look forward to working with Indian universities and companies to validate ideas, build prototypes and support low-volume production. We are very pleased to have the support of Cadence in this endeavour,” said Dr Paul Marchal, R&D director of imec India.

The International Space Station and the Docked Space Shuttle Endeavour

ISS027-E-036619 (23 May 2011) --- This image of the International Space Station and the docked space shuttle Endeavour, flying at an altitude of approximately 220 miles, was taken by Expedition 27 crew member Paolo Nespoli from the Soyuz TMA-20 following its undocking on May 23, 2011 (USA time). The pictures are the first taken of a shuttle docked to the International Space Station from the perspective of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Onboard the Soyuz were Russian cosmonaut and Expedition 27 commander Dmitry Kondratyev; Nespoli, a European Space Agency astronaut; and NASA astronaut Cady Coleman. Coleman and Nespoli were both flight engineers. The three landed in Kazakhstan later that day, completing 159 days in space.

Another Take on Supersonic

 

Our ability to fly at supersonic speeds over land in civil aircraft depends on our ability to reduce the level of sonic booms. NASA has been exploring a variety of options for quieting the boom, starting with design concepts and moving through wind tunnel tests to flight tests of new technologies. This rendering of a possible future civil supersonic transport shows a vehicle that is shaped to reduce the sonic shockwave signature and also to reduce drag.

This Is What the Moon Looks Like From Space

On Sunday, July 31, 2011, when Expedition 28 astronaut Ron Garan aboard the International Space Station looked out his window, this is what he saw: the moon. And, he saw it 16 times. Said Garan, "We had simultaneous sunsets and moonsets." For Garan and the rest of the station crew, this extraordinary event is a daily occurrence. Since the station orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, each day the crew experiences this about 16 times a day.

Cosmonauts Conduct Spacewalk

Cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Alexander Samokutyaev (out of frame), attired in Russian Orlan spacesuits, conducted a spacewalk on Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2011, on the Russian segment of the International Space Station. During the six-hour, 23-minute spacewalk, the Expedition 28 flight engineers moved a cargo boom from one airlock to another, installed a prototype laser communications system and deployed an amateur radio micro-satellite.

Cosmic Exclamation Point

VV 340, also known as Arp 302, provides a textbook example of colliding galaxies seen in the early stages of their interaction. The edge-on galaxy near the top of the image is VV 340 North and the face-on galaxy at the bottom of the image is VV 340 South. Millions of years later these two spirals will merge -- much like the Milky Way and Andromeda will likely do billions of years from now. Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple) are shown here along with optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (red, green, blue). VV 340 is located about 450 million light years from Earth.

Ophir Chasma

During its examination of Mars, the Viking 1 spacecraft returned images of Valles Marineris, a huge canyon system 5,000 km, or about 3,106 miles, long, whose connected chasma or valleys may have formed from a combination of erosional collapse and structural activity. This synthetic oblique view shows Ophir Chasma, the northern most one of the connected valleys of Valles Marineris. For scale, the large impact crater in lower right corner is about 18.5 miles, or 30 km, wide.

Ophir Chasma is a large west-northwest-trending trough about 62 miles, or 100 km, wide. The Chasma is bordered by high-walled cliffs, most likely faults, that show spur-and-gully morphology and smooth sections. The walls have been dissected by landslides forming reentrants. The volume of the landslide debris is more than 1,000 times greater than that from the May 18, 1980, debris avalanche from Mount St. Helens. The longitudinal grooves seen in the foreground are thought to be due to differential shear and lateral spreading at high velocities.

Hurricane Irene

High above the Earth from aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Ron Garan snapped this image of Hurricane Irene as it passed over the Caribbean on Aug. 22, 2011.

The National Hurricane Center noted on Aug. 22 that Irene is expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of 5 to 10 inches across Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Southeastern Bahamas and The Turks and Caicos Islands. Isolated maximum amounts of rainfall may reach up to 20 inches.

A Tale of Three Galaxies

Arp 274, also known as NGC 5679, is a system of three galaxies that appear to be partially overlapping in the image, although they may be at somewhat different distances. The spiral shapes of two of these galaxies appear mostly intact. The third galaxy (to the far left) is more compact, but shows evidence of star formation.

Two of the three galaxies are forming new stars at a high rate. This is evident in the bright blue knots of star formation that are strung along the arms of the galaxy on the right and along the small galaxy on the left.

The largest component is located in the middle of the three. It appears as a spiral galaxy, which may be barred. The entire system resides at about 400 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo.

Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 was used to image Arp 274 in April 2009. Blue, visible and infrared filters were combined with a filter that isolates hydrogen emission. The colors in this image reflect the intrinsic color of the different stellar populations that make up the galaxies. Yellowish older stars can be seen in the central bulge of each galaxy. A bright central cluster of stars pinpoint each nucleus. Younger blue stars trace the spiral arms, along with pinkish nebulae that are illuminated by new star formation. Interstellar dust is silhouetted against the starry population. A pair of foreground stars inside our own Milky Way are at far right.

Astronomers: We've found a planet made of diamond

Perhaps the biggest frustration for astronomers is that they can't get to the places that most interest them.
So please imagine the excitement--and vexation--of skygazers who believe they have discovered a planet that might just be the shiniest piece of bling out there. Reuters paints a picture of astronomers who feel like someone who has just been offered 27 carats over their chocolate pudding.
For there seems to be a planet orbiting tightly around a small star just down the road (in celestial terms) from Earth that is "a massive diamond."

If only Planet Tiffany could look like this.

Those last three words aren't mine. They are those of a seemingly very excited Matthew Bailes, a professor at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. For he told Reuters: "The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon...i.e a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own sun."

The discovery was reported yesterday in the journal Science.
Astronomers are theorizing that this as-yet unnamed planet--just 4,000 light years from us--is actually a relic of a star shed its outer layer to reveal its inner riches. Planet Tiffany (you have a problem with the name I've given it?) appears to be merely five times the size of Earth. The star it orbits every 2 hours and 10 minutes does have a very fetching name: J1719-1438.
Though radio telescopes have been detecting beams from the star, it is as yet impossible to know what Planet Tiffany really looks like. Some suggest it won't be quite the shiny object that one might imagine.