astrophysics

All it takes is intelligence, hard work and . . . a supercomputer. Astrophysicists identified the origin of supermassive black hole flares Largest-ever simulations suggest flickering powered by magnetic ‘reconnection’. No electricity involved. :duck:

Dr. Rebecca Smethurst, aka Dr. Becky on YouTube, has released her latest paper on her current research into Supermassive Black Holes and how they get bigger. Previously it was thought that most of their mass comes from the combining of the Black Holes when galaxies collide, but her team has...

I thought this was interesting. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-sun-life-binary-companion.html I know the Sun is unusual in being a solitary star, so this would make sense.

Research on candidates for non-cosmological redshifts, M. Lopez-Corredoira, C. M. Gutierrez (2005), link is to arXiv abstract: This is not your typical "Arp was right!" paper. I'm interested in what ISF members (those who hang out in this board) think of the paper, especially the extent to...

In a very active thread here in this board, a couple of astronomy/astrophysics/cosmology topics have come up which many regular readers may not have heard of. First, expansion of the universe. Yeah, the results are pretty clear: if General Relativity (GR), then the universe seems to be...

On Sabine Hossenfelder's BackReAction blog, it's titled "Dark matter nightmare: What if we are just using the wrong equations?" (link). At its heart it's about averaging non-linear equations, those in General Relativity (GR) in particular. An extract: As with, it seems, almost all her...

Well, here comes another black hole question from yours truly. I'm sure everyone is surprised ;) So I've heard arguments from physicists before, saying that the planet near a blackhole in Interstellar would be unstable, or bathed in lethal radiation from the accretion disk, etc. But it just...

So, I get this e-mail at my school account from someone (not sure if he's a teacher or not; lists as in our district but I can't find a location for him): As a philosopher of science and as an individual interested in the education of our children, there is an issue that needs to be considered...

If two black holes were orbiting each other at a very close distance, would they still be spherical, or would the event horizons become more drop-shaped, just like ordinary binary stars do?

A lot of people don't seem to like the idea of black holes. Understandable if you happen to run into one, but not if you simply wish to challenge the general validity of the idea. But whether you like the idea or not, it seems only reasonable that one should actually know what a black hole is...

I just watched this video of Carl Sagan explaining the "Drake Equation" about possible life on other planets in the universe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB_v99FSTYc&NR=1 But much of what he says seem to rely on the presumption that life would evolve like it has on earth. Isn't this subtly...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

This question came up, in all things, during a Philosophy lesson I was in earlier today. We were discussing the nature of immaterial substances (i.e. Substances without mass) and how they couldn't affect the world. This was in relation to Mind/Body duality, specifically the 'Mind'. Anyway, I was...

Hey maybe this thread will talk about Bigfoot Zombies and thier psychic powers before we are done, since derails seem to be the nature of plasma threads. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html Shows a star forming region and mentions some of the plasma physics that certain camps, the...

COULOMB’S LAW ONLY VALID FOR RELATIVE MOTION RELATIONSHIPS Our experimental data confirms that elementary charged particles behave according to the expectations of Coulomb’s law when the interacting particles have relative motion with respect to each other, but what about when they don’t...

On Earth when an object is affected by gravity in that it falls to the ground. In space an object produces gravity depending on the size and density. When you spin a sphere on an axes on earth everything on the surface of the object is repelled, and the opposite is true in space. What Produces...

Being used to woo of all kinds, I was wondering today - The Steady State theory (I associate it mainly with Hoyle...) is there actually any good reason to consider it? Please bear in mind i know nothing about astrophysics,and have not the slightest idea where to start looking to answer my...

Thinking about allt he video games and movies where stuff blows up in space: Obviously there's no atmosphere, we all know in space, no one can hear you scream (or explode). But I'm curious about the shockwave from a blast. How does that work in a vacuum? Would there be none? Would the...