Latest news with #TheAstrophysicalJournalLetters
Time of India
a day ago
- Science
- Time of India
Scientists discover rare space alcohol that could explain how life began on the Earth
Astronomers have uncovered a cosmic clue that takes us closer to answering one of humanity's oldest questions, 'How did life begin on Earth?' It has been found out that a young star system, located roughly 330 light-years away, is awash in alcohol! The discovered alcohol types and their isotopes are among the building blocks of the starting points for creating even complex organic molecules like amino acids. Locating these bits in such a young planetary nursery suggests that the seeds of life might be spread throughout the galaxy, tied to how comets and icy materials form. An alcohol-soaked star system A discovery around the star HD 10045, which is about 330 light-years from Earth, has for the first time, allowed scientists to detect not only methanol, an alcohol compound, but also its rare isotopes in the protoplanetary disk encircling this young star. Published on June 5 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the research was based on data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile What makes these bits the 'cosmic alcohol'? Methanol is a simple alcohol that plays a crucial role in the formation of organic molecules like amino acids, the essential building blocks of life. Although methanol itself has been spotted in other star-forming disks, detecting its isotopes, which are also much rarer variants of the same, is an important step in the discovery of life's building block on Earth. As lead author Alice Booth from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics explained, 'Finding these isotopes of methanol gives essential insight into the history of ingredients necessary to build life here on Earth.' by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Rabien Ab: ten wysokiej klasy aparat słuchowy zdominuje rynek w 2025 roku DRUGIE UCHO Undo Why is HD 100453 different from the others? This star is about 1.6 times bigger than our Sun. Because it's larger, the disk of gas and dust around it is warmer. That warmth keeps methanol in gas form, even far from the star, making it much easier for telescopes like ALMA to detect. In contrast, stars smaller than our Sun have cooler disks, where methanol usually freezes into ice, making it much harder to spot. Another interesting factor about it is that the amount of methanol, as compared to other organic molecules in this star's disk, is very similar to what we see in comets from our own solar system. This gives scientists a clue that these icy materials might come together to form comets, which can then crash into young planets and deliver important ingredients for life. 'This research supports the idea that comets may have played a big role in delivering important organic material to the Earth billions of years ago,' said Milou Temmink, a PhD student who studies planet-forming disks at Leiden University A mix of space chemicals has life-building potential What scientists found goes beyond just simple methanol. The study suggests there may be even more complex molecules hiding in the gas around the star, including things that could be the early building blocks of amino acids and sugars, which are key ingredients for life. According to , these discoveries include rare types of methanol like ¹³CH₃OH and possibly deuterated methanol. Their presence means that icy materials floating in space might survive even during the wild, chaotic process of planet formation. What could it mean for life beyond Earth? By following these organic molecules, be it tiny ice grains, comets, or to planets, scientists are starting to connect the dots on how life might form in different parts of the universe. The chemical mix found around the star HD 100453 could be very similar to what helped spark life on Earth billions of years ago.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Giant Jets Bigger Than The Milky Way Seen Shooting From Black Hole
A supermassive black hole in the early Universe has been spotted blasting out powerful jets of plasma that are at least twice as long as the Milky Way is wide. Its host galaxy is a quasar called J1601+3102, and we're seeing it as it was less than 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. Spanning 215,000 light-years from end to end, this is the largest structure of its kind seen in those early stages of the Universe's formation, and astronomers think it can answer some questions about how they grow. "We were searching for quasars with strong radio jets in the early Universe, which helps us understand how and when the first jets are formed and how they impact the evolution of galaxies," explains astrophysicist Anniek Gloudemans of the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab. Jets are a particularly interesting supermassive black hole behavior. When there is enough material close to a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy, it swirls around, forming a disk of material that feeds into the black hole, drawn in by its extreme gravity. That feeding often produces a quasar, blazing with light as the swirling material is heated by friction and gravity to temperatures of millions of degrees. Not all the material falls onto the black hole beyond escape, though. Some of it gets diverted along the magnetic field lines outside the event horizon and accelerated to the black hole's poles, where it is launched into space with tremendous speed. These eruptions of material form jets, and they blast out into space for huge distances. The longest we've found to date are 23 million light-years from end to end, much later in the lifetime of the Universe. However, they only emit light in radio waves, which makes them a little tricky to see. To identify J1601+3102, Gloudemans and her colleagues had to combine observations from multiple telescopes, including the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) Telescope in Europe, Gemini North in Hawaii, and the optical Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas. These observations didn't just reveal the extent of J1601+3102's jets, they allowed the researchers to study the black hole. The amount of light emitted by the quasar activity can be analyzed to reveal the black hole's mass. It's just 450 million times the mass of the Sun, a relatively modest size for a quasar black hole. And it's not scarfing down matter at a particularly high rate, either. These properties suggest that quasars could be more varied than we generally assume. "Interestingly, the quasar powering this massive radio jet does not have an extreme black hole mass compared to other quasars," Gloudemans says. "This seems to indicate that you don't necessarily need an exceptionally massive black hole or accretion rate to generate such powerful jets in the early Universe." The discovery was detailed in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Humanity Has Just Glimpsed Part of The Sun We've Never Seen Before 'City-Killer' Asteroid Even More Likely to Hit The Moon in 2032 The Center of Our Universe Does Not Exist. A Physicist Explains Why.
Business Mayor
19-05-2025
- Science
- Business Mayor
Not one, but two massive black holes are eating away at this galaxy
Astronomers have discovered nearly 100 examples of massive black holes shredding and devouring stars, almost all of them where you'd expect to find massive black holes: in the star-dense cores of massive galaxies. University of California, Berkeley, astronomers have now discovered the first instance of a massive black hole tearing apart a star thousands of light years from the galaxy's core, which itself contains a massive black hole. The off-center black hole, which has a mass about 1 million times that of the sun, was hiding in the outer regions of the galaxy's central bulge, but revealed itself through bursts of light generated by the spaghettification of the star — a so-called tidal disruption event, or TDE. In a TDE, the immense gravity of a black hole tugs on a star — similar to the way the moon raises ocean tides on Earth, but a lot more violently. 'The classic location where you expect massive black holes to be in a galaxy is in the center, like our Sag A* at the center of the Milky Way,' said Yuhan Yao, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley who is lead author of a paper about the discovery recently accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL) . 'That's where people normally search for tidal disruption events. But this one, it's not at the center. It's actually about 2,600 light years away. That's the first optically discovered off-nuclear TDE discovered.' The galaxy's central massive black hole, about 100 million times the mass of our sun, is also gorging itself, but on gas that has gotten too close to escape. Studies of massive black holes at galactic centers tell astronomers about the evolution of galaxies like our own, which has one central black hole — called SagA* because of its location within the constellation Sagittarius — weighing in at a puny 4 million solar masses. Some of the largest galaxies have central black holes weighing several 100 billion solar masses, presumably the result of the merger of many smaller black holes. Finding two massive black holes in the center of a galaxy is not surprising. Most large galaxies are thought to have massive black holes in their cores, and since galaxies often collide and merge as they move through space, large galaxies should occasionally harbor more than one supermassive black hole — at least until they collide and merge into an even bigger black hole. They typically hide in stealth mode until they reveal their presence by grabbing nearby stars or gas clouds, creating a short-lived burst of light. These are rare events, however. Astronomers calculate that a massive black hole would encounter a star once every 30,000 years, on average. Read More Starwatch: Ursids meteor shower to appear in largely dark sky The new TDE, dubbed AT2024tvd, was detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility, an optical camera mounted on a telescope at Palomar Observatory near San Diego, and confirmed by observations with radio, X-ray and other optical telescopes, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. 'Massive black holes are always at the centers of galaxies, but we know that galaxies merge — that is how galaxies grow. And when you have two galaxies that come together and become one, you have multiple black holes,' said co-author Ryan Chornock, a UC Berkeley associate adjunct professor of astronomy. 'Now, what happens? We expect they eventually come together, but theorists have predicted that there should be a population of black holes that are roaming around inside galaxies.' The discovery of one such roaming black hole shows that systematic searches for the signature of a TDE could turn up more rogue black holes. The find also validates plans for a space mission called LISA — the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna — that will look for gravitational waves from mergers of massive black holes like these. 'This is the first time that we actually see massive black holes being so close using TDEs,' said co-author Raffaella Margutti, a UC Berkeley associate professor of astronomy and of physics. 'If these are a couple of supermassive black holes that are getting closer together — which is not necessarily true — but if they are, they might merge and emit gravitational waves that we'll see in the future with LISA.' LISA will complement ground-based gravitational wave detectors, such as LIGO and Virgo, which are sensitive to the merger of black holes or neutron stars weighing less than a few hundred times the mass of our sun, and telescopic studies of pulsar flashes, such as the Nanograv pulsar timing array experiment, which are sensitive to gravitational waves from the mergers of supermassive black holes weighing billions of solar masses. LISA's sweet spot is black holes of several million solar masses. LISA is slated to be launched in the next decade. Transient outbursts Because black holes are invisible, scientists can only find them by detecting the light produced when they shred stars or gas clouds and create a bright, hot, rotating disk of material that gradually falls inward. TDEs are powerful probes of black hole accretion physics, Chornock said, revealing how close material can get to the black hole before being captured and the conditions necessary for black holes to launch powerful jets and winds. The most productive search for TDEs has used data from the Zwicky Transient Facility, originally built to detect supernova explosions, but also sensitive to other flashes in the sky. The ZTF has discovered nearly 100 TDEs since 2018, all within the cores of galaxies. X-ray satellites have also detected a few TDEs, including two in the outskirts of a galaxy that also has a central black hole. In those galaxies, however, the black holes are too far apart to ever merge. The newly discovered black hole is close enough to the core's massive black hole to potentially fall toward it and merge, though not for billions of years. Yao noted that two alternative scenarios could explain the presence of the wandering black hole in AT2024tvd. It could be from the core of a small galaxy that merged with the larger galaxy long ago and is either moving through the larger galaxy on its way out or has become bound to the galaxy in an orbit that may, eventually, bring it close enough to merge with the black hole at the core. Erica Hammerstein, another UC Berkeley postdoctoral researcher, scrutinized the Hubble images as part of the study, but was unable to find evidence of a past galaxy merger. AT2024tvd could also be a former member of a triplet of black holes that used to be at the galactic core. Because of the chaotic nature of three-body orbits, one would have been kicked out of the core to wander around the galaxy. Searching galaxies for off-center black holes Because the ZTF detects hundreds of flashes of light around the northern sky each year, TDE searches to date have focused on flashes discovered near the cores of galaxies, Yao said. She and Chornock created an algorithm to distinguish between the light produced by a supernova and a TDE, and employed it to search through the 10,000 or so detections by ZTF to date to find bursts of light in the galactic center that fit the characteristics of a TDE. 'Supernovae cool down after they peak, and their color becomes redder,' Yao said. 'TDEs remain hot for months or years and have consistently blue colors throughout their evolution.' TDEs also exhibit broad emission lines of hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen and silicon. Last August, the Berkeley team discovered a burp of light that looked like a TDE, but its location seemed off-center, though within the resolution limits of the ZTF. The researchers suspected the black hole was indeed off center, and immediately requested time on several telescopes to pinpoint its location. These included NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Very Large Array and the Hubble Space Telescope. They all confirmed its off-nucleus location, with HST providing a distance of about 2,600 light years — about one-tenth the distance between our sun and Sag A*. Though close to the central black hole, the off-nuclear black hole is not gravitationally bound to it. Because the black hole at the core spews out energy as it accretes infalling gas, it is categorized as an active galactic nucleus. Yao and her team hope to find other roaming TDEs, which will give astronomers an idea of how often galaxies and their core black holes merge, and thus how long it takes to form some of the extreme, supermassive black holes. 'AT2024tvd is the first offset TDE captured by optical sky surveys, and it opens up the entire possibility of uncovering this elusive population of wandering black holes with future sky surveys,' Yao said. 'Right now, theorists haven't given much attention to offset TDEs. They primarily predict rates for TDEs occurring at the centers of galaxies. I think this discovery really motivates them to compute rates for offset TDEs, as well.' The 34 co-authors who contributed to the paper come from institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, Russia, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands. ZTF is a public-private partnership, with equal support from the ZTF Partnership and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Daily Record
15-05-2025
- Science
- Daily Record
NASA finds 'monster' black hole 600 million light-years away in 'scene out of a sci-fi movie'
NASA has pinpointed a massive, roaming black hole that is so big they have dubbed the hole 'Super Jaws' It is easy to get swept away in the wonders of space. There is extensive and ongoing research on space, with scientists having even struck gold recently when trying to reconstruct what happened after the Big Bang. However, NASA has stumbled upon another mind-blowing discovery - a massive roaming black hole lurking 600 million light-years away that is "like a scene out of a sci-fi movie". Astronomers using NASA telescopes have found 'Space Jaws' - a wandering, supermassive black hole. What's more, an accompanying telescope also revealed that the black hole is offset from the centre of the galaxy. "Within the inky black depths between stars, there is an invisible monster gulping down any wayward star that plummets toward it," a NASA spokesperson excitingly elaborated. "The sneaky black hole betrayed its presence in a newly identified tidal disruption event (TDE) where a hapless star was ripped apart and swallowed in a spectacular burst of radiation. "These disruption events are powerful probes of black hole physics, revealing the conditions necessary for launching jets and winds when a black hole is in the midst of consuming a star, and are seen as bright objects by telescopes." A black hole is a region in space where the pulling force of gravity is so strong that light is not able to escape. The strong gravity occurs because matter has been pressed into a tiny space. This compression can take place at the end of a star's life. Some black holes are a result of dying stars. Because no light can escape, black holes are invisible. However, space telescopes with special instruments can help find black holes. They can observe the behaviour of material and stars that are very close to black holes. So, what does this latest find mean? A TDE happens when an infalling star is stretched or 'spaghettified' by a black hole's immense gravitational tidal forces. The shredded stellar remnants are pulled into a circular orbit around the black hole. This generates shocks and outflows with high temperatures that can be seen in ultraviolet and visible light. 'AT2024tvd is the first offset TDE captured by optical sky surveys," said lead study author Yuhan Yao. "It opens up the entire possibility of uncovering this elusive population of wandering black holes with future sky surveys." The full paper will be published in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, but the space agency was surprised to find that this one million-solar-mass black hole doesn't reside exactly in the centre of the host galaxy. This is where supermassive black holes are typically found, and actively gobble up surrounding material. In fact, at the centre of the host galaxy there is a different supermassive black hole weighing 100 million times the mass of the Sun. Hubble's optical precision shows the TDE was only 2,600 light-years from the more massive black hole at the galaxy's centre. That's just one-tenth the distance between our Sun and the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. This bigger black hole spews out energy as it accretes infalling gas, and it is categorised as an active galactic nucleus. Strangely, the two supermassive black holes co-exist in the same galaxy, but are not gravitationally bound to each other as a binary pair. The smaller black hole may eventually spiral into the galaxy's centre to merge with the bigger black hole. But for now, it is too far separated to be gravitationally bound. "Theorists haven't given much attention to offset TDEs," Yuhan went on. "But I think this discovery will motivate scientists to look for more examples of this type of event."
Time of India
06-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Scientists discover new minimoons orbiting Earth – what could this mean for our planet's future
For years, the space near Earth was assumed to be fairly well known, particularly in terms of detecting near-Earth objects (NEOs) like asteroids and debris. That perception is being turned on its head by new discoveries. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now According to a recent paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, there could be an undiscovered population of " minimoons "—small natural satellites—around Earth. And what is interesting about these objects is that some of them seem to be debris from the Moon itself. The research highlights the recently identified object 2024 PT5 , an asteroid-like body that shows lunar-like features such as orbital properties and compositional similarities with Moon rock. This finding by planetary scientist Teddy Kareta and his Lowell Observatory team opens up the thrilling possibility that numerous other such pieces are orbiting Earth in silence, leftovers from old lunar impacts. What are minimoons and their role in space science Minimoons are minor bodies temporarily held in Earth's gravity. In contrast to the Moon, which is a natural permanent satellite, minimoons have transient orbits—occasionally staying within the gravitational clutches of Earth for weeks, months, or years before finally breaking free again into solar orbit. Until recently, these objects were thought to be very rare. The first clearly established minimoon of possible lunar origin, Kamo'oalewa, was found in 2021. With the discovery of 2024 PT5, the story is emerging. Researchers are starting to see these objects not as oddities, but as possible members of a larger population that hasn't been seen because they are too small and have too complicated, changing orbits. New evidence suggests 2024 PT5 could be a piece of the moon The identification of 2024 PT5 is especially noteworthy due to its possible lunar origin. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Its path and spectral character—a method of determining an object's composition from the manner in which it scatters light—effectively mimic those of rocks brought back to Earth by NASA's Apollo missions. This heavily indicates that PT5 could be a piece that was ejected from the surface of the Moon, perhaps by a meteoric impact. Teddy Kareta emphasised the importance of the discovery at the 56th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, saying: 'If there were only one object, that would be interesting but an outlier. If there's two, we're pretty confident that's a population.' In other words, the confirmation of a second minimoon with lunar properties supports the idea that such objects are more common than previously believed. Understanding lunar debris: How high-energy impacts send moon fragments into Earth's orbit Lunar debris is usually created through high-energy impact events, in which meteoroids collide with the lunar surface and send debris into space. A portion of this debris may fall into the Earth's sphere of gravitational influence, becoming temporarily captured. They have chaotic, highly elliptical orbits that set them apart from both standard NEOs and Earth's main Moon. Simulations and tracking models imply that these fragments can be trapped for a few months to a few years, after which they will burn up in Earth's atmosphere, escape Earth's gravity, or be deflected by subsequent gravitational encounters. What minimoons can reveal The implications of minimoons from a scientific perspective are significant. Minimoons provide a one-of-a-kind chance to investigate the Moon's impact record without sending complex sample-return missions to the surface of the Moon. By analysing the composition of the minimoons, scientists can determine the nature of the rock, the age of the rock, and possibly trace it to a particular crater or region of geology on the Moon. This could greatly improve the knowledge of: Geological evolution of the Moon Rate and magnitude of lunar impact events Orbital dynamics of Earth-Moon interactions Kareta compared it to forensic science by saying: "It's like discovering a crime scene has a completely new type of evidence you didn't realise you had before." These pieces are actually natural sample-return missions already underway. From sample return to space mining: The strategic value of minimoons Aside from academic curiosity, minimoons also have significant potential for future missions of exploration. Because they are close and relatively slow-moving relative to other NEOs, they are prime targets for: Robotic spacecraft missions Sample return programs Experimentation with navigation and landing technologies for asteroid mining or deep space missions They provide a valuable stepping stone to deep-space exploration while also facilitating new types of resource analysis and planetary defense testing. 2024 PT5 highlights the need for advanced detection methods The detection of 2024 PT5 emphasises the necessity of more sensitive sky surveys and special observation programs. The majority of existing asteroid detection systems are optimized for discovering larger, brighter objects. Minimoons, being small and faint, need different methods and continuous monitoring in order to be discovered. The development of this capability would greatly improve our knowledge of not just minimoons, but also the dynamic interaction between Earth and its cosmic environment. Also Read |
