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By ANDREW BRIDGES (AP) This an artist's Illustration of the RX J1242-11 system depicting how the catastrophic destruction...Full Image   PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - Two space observatories have provided the first strong evidence of a supermassive black hole stretching, tearing apart and partially gobbling up a star flung into reach of its enormous gravity, astronomers said Wednesday. The event had long been predicted by theory but never confirmed. A powerful X-ray blast drew the attention of astronomers to the event, located near the center of a galaxy about 700 million light-years from Earth. The international team of astronomers believe gases...

The big and the bizarre The Chandra telescope took this image of the hole region The more they look, the more astronomers are amazed at what they are finding out about the heart of our galaxy. This is the location of a supermassive black hole, referred to by scientists as Sagittarius A* (its location in the sky is in the southern constellation Sagittarius). For the first time, researchers have been able to study in detail the light coming from a star that skirts close in to this exotic object at jaw-dropping speeds. From what the team can discern, their spectral...

July 07, 2003 Frozen Stars Black holes may not be bottomless pits after all By George Musser Demolishing stars, powering blasts of high-energy radiation, rending the fabric of spacetime: it is not hard to see the allure of black holes. They light up the same parts of the brain as monster trucks and battlebots do. They explain violent celestial phenomena that no other body can. They are so extreme, in fact, that no one really knows what they are. Most researchers think of them as microscopic pinpricks, the remnants of stars that have collapsed under their own weight. But...

SEATTLE - The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way flares with intense eruptions every day as it gobbles up nearby gas, dust and objects. But the most sensitive X-ray images ever taken show it is starved and puny compared with black holes in other galaxies. Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray telescope have captured images of intense flares streaking from the center of the Milky Way and said the violence comes from a supermassive black hole living on matter. The study also suggests that the Milky Way's black hole is underfed when compared with the supermassive black...

X-rays reveal merger of black holes     Scientists say Chandraprovides first evidencethat two such mysteriescan coexist in one galaxy The Chandra image of NGC 6240, a butterfly-shaped galaxy that is the product of the collision of two smaller galaxies, revealed that the central region of the galaxy (inset) contains not one, but two active giant black holes. ASSOCIATED PRESS       WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 —  In a very bright galaxy 400 million light-years away, two black holes are drifting toward each other and in millions of years will merge with an eruption of energy and a burst...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 October 12 Chandra Deep Field Credit: Riccardo Giacconi et al., JHU, AUI, NASA Explanation: Officially the Chandra Deep Field - South, this picture represents the deepest ever x-ray image of the Universe. One million seconds of accumulated exposure time with the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory went in to its making. Concentrating on a single, otherwise unremarkable patch of sky in the constellation Fornax, this x-ray image corresponds...

USAID PROGRAM BUDGET Overview | Program Budget Analysis | Budget by Strategic Objective Overview The United States provides approximately .5 per cent of its annual budget for foreign assistance throughout the world. The U.S. Congress plays a significant role in helping determine U.S. Government priorities. Each year Congress drafts laws, which direct funds to specific development priorities it identifies. Other important players in the process for determining the levels of aid throughout the world include the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (for food assistance) and, of course, the U.S. Agency for International Development. Program Budget...

XMM-Newton showed that energy can escape from a black hole Far away among the stars, in the Ara constellation of the southern sky, a small black hole is whirling space around it. If you tried to stay still in its vicinity, you couldn't. You'd be dragged around at high speed as if you were riding on a giant flywheel. In reality, gas falling into the black hole is whirled in that way. It radiates energy, in the form of X-rays, more intensely than it would do if space were still by tapping into the black hole's internal energy stream. ESA's...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 21, 2002 -- Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of South Carolina have provided a hypothesis that "black holes" in space are not holes at all, but instead are more akin to bubbles. Researcher Emil Mottola of Los Alamos' Theoretical Division today presented a new explanation for black holes at the American Physical Society annual meeting in Albuquerque, N.M. Pawel Mazur of the University of South Carolina is Mottola's co-author. The researchers' explanation redefines black holes not as "holes" in space where matter and light inexplicably disappear into...

Giant Radio Telescope Tackles Black HolesApril 2, 2002 08:00 CSTSpace exploration requires a great deal of imagination. With the international Space Very Long Baseline Interferometry mission (VLBI), supported by NASA until last month, a global team of scientists and engineers not only imagined a telescope larger than Earth, they actually created it. Black holes are perhaps the most elusive cosmic entity. Although we cannot see black holes, astronomers have confirmed their existence from the behavior of objects near the areas thought to be black holes. To learn more about these giant mysteries, scientists have to get a closer look...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 March 9 A Quasar Portrait Gallery Credit J. Bahcall (IAS, Princeton), M. Disney (Univ. Wales), NASA Explanation: Quasars (QUASi-stellAR objects) lie near the edge of the observable Universe. Discovered in 1963, astronomers were astounded that such objects could be visible across billions of light-years, as this implies they must emit prodigious amounts of energy. Where does the energy come from? Many believe the quasar's central engine is...