Mysterious ring of Very Hot Blue Stars

New Scientist ^ | Sept 20th, 2005 | David Chandler

[Irish_Thatcherite]

Your wrong - it's Space Masons.

[MikeD]

Wow. Do the math, and the orbital velocity is ~0.5%c . The orbital velocity can be measured by the differential redshifts from opposing sides of the disk. I wonder if long-term observations would show some gravitational radiation like binary neutron stars? I'd have to do the math, which I don't feel like doing right now, but I wonder how a 10^8 solar mass object interacts with ~10^3 solar masses at one light year?

[laney]

When was that picture taken?

[Netheron]

I think the answer should be fairly obvious. There was a nice article in Scientific American some months ago about stellar collisions. The way they proved they exist was by examining a cluster of old red stars, predicting the number of collisions that would occur and the resulting star from the collision/merge. They found that the star would appear to be a young blue star, and lo and behold, a number of young blue stars in about the predicted percentage were found.

Basically, the black hole is surrounded by a cloud of old red stars, and near the center of the cloud, where most of the collisions occur, would be where the young blue stars should be.

[hombre_sincero]

Here's the entire article plus comments as posted on my website on January 28, 2005. The article has been removed from Yahoo already so I'm leaving off that link.

The Sword of Retribution?

Fireball seen over Madrid

Fri Jan 28,2005 10:47 AM ET
Yahoo News

MADRID (AFP) - Residents of the area near Madrid airport reported seeing a ball of fire explode and disintregrate in skies over the Spanish capital overnight, security services said.

Emergency services received telephone calls about 10:30 pm (2130 GMT) Thursday reporting the object, described by some callers as looking like a meteorite, which was seen exploding and disintegrating.

Subway employee Jose Antonio Lopez told EFE news agency that when he went home from work, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the capital, he saw a "huge, very red incandescent ball giving off a huge flash then disappeared after a few seconds."

"It was a mass of red fire falling vertically," he said, suggesting it could have been a meteorite.

---

If memory serves flavious Josephus reported a sword that appeared in the skies over Jerusalem in the months leading up to its fall and destruction in 70 AD.
Josephus reported the visions and signs began sometime before the event.

---

Flavius Josephus

Josephus was brought before Vespasian and his son Titus. To Vespasian, he explained about an ambiguous oracle that said that...

a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab, and break down all the sons of Sheth.
[Numbers 24.17-19]

Almost every Jew believed that this prophecy referred to the coming of the Messiah. However, who said that the ruler who was to rise out of Israel was to be a Jew? Why should Vespasian not become king or emperor? Vespasian was impressed. After all, in Gaul and Spain an insurrection had started against the emperor Nero, and it was clear to any intelligent observer that civil war was bound to break out. Everybody had observed the comet, resembling a sword, that had stood over the country during the preceding months. Instead of having Joseph crucified, the Roman general kept him in detention.

[Las Vegas Dave]

*OPI pings.

*of possible interest

[SunTzuWu]

And it burns, burns, burns...

You can get a shot for that. Clear it right up.

[tet68]

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[TXnMA]

Ah, Andromeda! When I can switch off our security light and look up and see M31 with my unaided eyes, I know it's a fine night to drag out the 'scope...

[RadioAstronomer]

Maybe, but the thread's already wucked up beyond repair.

Yuppers.

[muir_redwoods]

"Where can I buy my very own super massive black hole?"

I'm sorry, Al Sharpton is not for sale

[KevinDavis]

[U S Army EOD]

But it has no pull of any kind at all.

[King Prout]

Maybe, but the thread's already wucked up beyond repair.
Yuppers.

yeeeesh... y'all ain't lyin'

[GSlob]

Gravity gradient from 10⁸ solar masses at 1 light year over a radial distance of few million km [dimension of a typical star] would be negligible: at that distance the central object would pull about 1g, and over a radial distance of 1 million km the gravity differential in its field would be about 10^-7g - next to nothing compared with the orbiting star's own gravity field. The orbiting star may be subject not to gravitational disruption, but to radiational ablation, though.

[Romish_Papist]

Milky Way... bleh... I'd rather reside in the Snickers Galaxy.

[Romish_Papist]

"Nailing the black hole in Andromeda"

Now that is just sick. There may be children reading this article... :p

[sheik yerbouty]

That's funny. Do they really look Bluish?

[betty boop]

The newly discovered disc is composed of over 400 very hot, young blue stars, orbiting like a planetary system very close to the black hole. That puzzles astronomers because the black hole's intense gravitational field should have torn apart any clouds of matter long before they could coalesce to form new stars.... The stars form a very flat disc that is only one light year across. An elliptical disc of older red stars surrounds it, spanning about five light years. Since the two discs appear to be in the same plane, they are probably related, but no one yet understands how either disc came into being.... the disc of blue stars is only about 200 million years old, while the galaxy itself has been around for about 12 billion years. Intriguingly, there are signs of young stars very close to the core of our own galaxy as well.

Fascinating, no??? What do you make of this?

[Entropy Squared]

Cool!

I want one!

Where can I buy my very own super massive black hole?

I want a really small one to use for garbage disposal.