What did we do & why is this interesting? Deep technical dive ahead!
We learn about accreting #BlackHoles studying their spectra & short-term (~millisecond) variability, called timing. However, individually, both approaches leave us with a lot of puzzles - so we try to combine them in spectral-timing.
For those of you speaking French (I don't) - what I was told to be a really nice documentary about #BlackHoles featuring some of my amazing colleagues from #ESA, including my former PhD candidate Dr. Camille Diez:
Wheeee! One of my PhD siblings and one of my favorite collaborators were awarded the 2024 HEAD (high energy astrophysics division) innovation prize for the "development of novel models to describe emission in the strong gravity regime from accreting compact objects" or in simpler words: developing methods to learn from the shape of X-ray emission from the vicinity of black holes how #BlackHoles spin & what else happens there 😊
NGC 7727, the billion-year-old aftermath of a double spiral #galaxy collision. At the heart of this chaotic interaction, entwined and caught in the midst of the #chaos, is a pair of supermassive #blackholes — the closest such pair ever recorded from #Earth.
#Astronomers have found a new and unknown object in the #MilkyWay that is heavier than the heaviest #neutronstars known and yet simultaneously lighter than the lightest #blackholes known.
From Live Science: Scientists using the eROSITA X-ray telescope have released a trove of data that reveals more than 900,000 objects in space, including 700,000 supermassive black holes and other "exotic" objects. https://flip.it/Y9IMb1 #Science#Space#BlackHoles#SpaceExploration
Wie wäre es mit einem ganz besonderen Kuchen am Morgen? Kolleg:innen am @mpi_grav in Potsdam haben die Adoption der Weltraummission @LISA gefeiert. Bild: M. Zumalacárregui
How about a very special cake in the morning? Colleagues at @mpi_grav in Potsdam celebrated the adoption of the @LISA space mission. Pic: M. Zumalacárregui
"Although Roger Penrose won the Nobel Prize in physics just a few years ago for demonstrating how black holes come to exist in our Universe, singularities and all, the subject isn't closed. We've never peered beneath the event horizon, and have no way of detecting what's inside. Using a powerful mathematical argument, [Roy] Kerr argues that singularities shouldn't physically exist. He may be right."
#ICYMI: A recent #EHT image reveals strong magnetic fields spiraling from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at our galaxy’s center. These fields resemble those around the M87 galaxy’s black hole, suggesting commonality among black holes. A hidden jet in Sagittarius A* is also hinted at.
"The Ring"
Supermassive black holes are elusive creatures. We mostly study them indirectly through their bright accretion disks or powerful jets of plasma they create. But what still eludes us is capturing a direct image of the enigmatic photon ring.
A new work in Acta Astronautica proposes how this might be done.
Read more at: https://briankoberlein.com/blog/ring/
Pocket book edition of “Light in the Darkness” arrived. The story of the 1st image of a black hole, that I witnessed first hand, but which already started when we first looked at the night sky and wondered about its secrets. You learn a great deal about astrophysics and the philosophical questions surrounding it. It was a #4 bestseller in Germany, has 4.5/5 stars on Amazon and is available in 12 other languages. #astrophysics#BlackHoles#books#bookstodon#astrodon#astrophotography#astronomy
It's been a few months since I've done some proper science writing for #SpaceAustralia (Phd Lyfe) but thought this new paper drop was interesting to write about!
Australian astronomers have used radio waves to look deep into the heart of the Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae & found an undiscovered radio source.
The newly found radio source could potentially be the first evidence of an intermediate-mass black hole in the core of a Globular Cluster, or a pulsar that is real close to the centre.
The black hole that ate its own star. This is some neat science!
A new paper reports that VFTS 243, a massive binary system featuring an O-class star and a 10 solar-mass black hole companion, might have formed through the 'complete collapse scenario'.