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- Mathieu van der Poel: ‘I don’t know how I got to the podium’ in Liège-Bastogne-Liège GCN – Global Cycling Network
- Tadej Pogacar’s solo attack leaves rivals in dust at Liège–Bastogne–Liège The Guardian
- How to watch Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2024: live stream men’s cycling online from anywhere now TechRadar
Tag Archives: shape
TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey Talks Strong U.S. Film Lineup Amid Strikes: “We’re in Great Shape” – Hollywood Reporter
- TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey Talks Strong U.S. Film Lineup Amid Strikes: “We’re in Great Shape” Hollywood Reporter
- TIFF Lineup Unveiled Amid Strikes: Awards Contenders ‘Dumb Money’, ‘The Holdovers’, ‘Rustin’; Starry Pics For Sale With Scarlett Johansson, Kate Winslet, Michael Keaton, Viggo Mortensen & More Deadline
- Kate Winslet, Emily Blunt and Olivia Colman movies headed to Toronto film festival The Guardian
- TIFF announces a bunch of high profile movies coming to Toronto for this year’s fest blogTO
- Toronto Film Festival 2023 Lineup Includes Alexander Payne, Richard Linklater, Anna Kendrick, George C. Wolfe and Ethan Hawke Movies Variety
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Kyle Richards jokes ‘Must be ozempic’ as shirtless Mauricio Umansky posts about getting into shape – Daily Mail
- Kyle Richards jokes ‘Must be ozempic’ as shirtless Mauricio Umansky posts about getting into shape Daily Mail
- Mauricio Umansky Shows Off Weight Loss amid Separation – and Kyle Richards Makes Ozempic Joke Yahoo Entertainment
- Garcelle Beauvais was ‘suspicious’ of Kyle Richards, Mauricio Umansky’s marriage before split Page Six
- Kyle Richards Jokes Mauricio Uses Ozempic After He Posts Thirst Trap Us Weekly
- Erika Jayne Claims Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky Are ‘Not Splitting’ Yahoo Entertainment
- View Full Coverage on Google News
NASCAR faces tight schedule as Chicago Street Course takes shape around Grant Park – Chicago Tribune
- NASCAR faces tight schedule as Chicago Street Course takes shape around Grant Park Chicago Tribune
- Potholes and bumps? NASCAR drivers reveal their thoughts on the Chicago street race NBC Chicago
- NASCAR Chicago Street Race course begins to take shape as engineers, organizers ensure safety measures put in place WLS-TV
- NASCAR course takes shape at Grant Park. ‘We’ve never built anything this large this fast’ Chicago Sun-Times
- Leidos expands on promotional partnership with NASCAR; joins Chicago Street Race Weekend festivities as an official event partner Jayski.com
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Future Space Telescopes Could be 100 Meters Across, Constructed in Space, and Then Bent Into a Precise Shape
It is an exciting time for astronomers and cosmologists. Since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have been treated to the most vivid and detailed images of the Universe ever taken. Webb‘s powerful infrared imagers, spectrometers, and coronographs will allow for even more in the near future, including everything from surveys of the early Universe to direct imaging studies of exoplanets. Moreover, several next-generation telescopes will become operational in the coming years with 30-meter (~98.5 feet) primary mirrors, adaptive optics, spectrometers, and coronographs.
Even with these impressive instruments, astronomers and cosmologists look forward to an era when even more sophisticated and powerful telescopes are available. For example, Zachary Cordero
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently proposed a telescope with a 100-meter (328-foot) primary mirror that would be autonomously constructed in space and bent into shape by electrostatic actuators. His proposal was one of several concepts selected this year by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program for Phase I development.
Corder is the Boeing Career Development Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and a member of the Aerospace Materials and Structures Lab (AMSL) and Small Satellite Center. His research integrates his expertise in processing science, mechanics, and design to develop novel materials and structures for emerging aerospace applications. His proposal is the result of a collaboration with Prof. Jeffrey Lang (from MIT’s Electronics and the Microsystems Technology Laboratories) and a team of three students with the AMSL, including Ph.D. student Harsh Girishbhai Bhundiya.
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Their proposed telescope addresses a key issue with space telescopes and other large payloads that are packaged for launch and then deployed in orbit. In short, size and surface precision tradeoffs limit the diameter of deployable space telescopes to the 10s of meters. Consider the recently-launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest and most powerful telescope ever sent to space. To fit into its payload fairing (atop an Ariane 5 rocket), the telescope was designed so that it could be folded into a more compact form.
This included its primary mirror, secondary mirror, and sunshield, which all unfolded once the space telescope was in orbit. Meanwhile, the primary mirror (the most complex and powerful ever deployed) measures 6.5 meters (21 feet) in diameter. Its successor, the Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor (LUVOIR), will have a similar folding assembly and a primary mirror measuring 8 to 15 meters (26.5 to 49 feet) in diameter – depending on the selected design (LUVOIR-A or -B). As Bhundiya explained to Universe Today via email:
“Today, most spacecraft antennas are deployed in orbit (e.g., Northrop Grumman’s Astromesh antenna) and have been optimized to achieve high performance and gain. However, they have limitations: 1) They are passive deployable systems. I.e. once you deploy them you cannot adaptively change the shape of the antenna. 2) They become difficult to slew as their size increases. 3) They exhibit a tradeoff between diameter and precision. I.e. their precision decreases as their size increases, which is a challenge for achieving astronomy and sensing applications that require both large diameters and high precision (e.g. JWST).”
While many in-space construction methods have been proposed to overcome these limitations, detailed analyses of their performance for building precision structures (like large-diameter reflectors) are lacking. For the sake of their proposal, Cordero and his colleagues conducted a quantitative, system-level comparison of materials and processes for in-space manufacturing. Ultimately, they determined that this limitation could be overcome using advanced materials and a novel in-space manufacturing method called Bend-Forming.
This technique, invented by researchers at the AMSL and described in a recent paper co-authored by Bhundiya and Cordero, relies on a combination of Computer Numerical Control (CNC) deformation processing and hierarchical high-performance materials. As Harsh explained it:
“Bend-Forming is a process for fabricating 3D wireframe structures from metal wire feedstock. It works by bending a single strand of wire at specific nodes and with specific angles, and adding joints to the nodes to make a stiff structure. So to fabricate a given structure, you convert it into bending instructions which can be implemented on a machine like a CNC wire bender to fabricate it from a single strand of feedstock. The key application of Bend-Forming is to manufacture the support structure for a large antenna on orbit. The process is well-suited for this application because it is low-power, can fabricate structures with high compaction ratios, and has essentially no size limit.”
In contrast to other in-space assembly and manufacturing approaches, Bend-Forming is low-power and is uniquely enabled by the extremely low-temperature environment of space. In addition, this technique enables smart structures that leverage multifunctional materials to achieve new combinations of size, mass, stiffness, and precision. Additionally, the resulting smart structures leverage multifunctional materials to achieve unprecedented combinations of size, mass, stiffness, and precision, breaking the design paradigms that limit conventional truss or tension-aligned space structures.
In addition to their native precision, Large Bend-Formed structures can use their electrostatic actuators to contour a reflector surface with sub-millimeter precision. This, said Harsh, will increase the precision of their fabricated antenna in orbit:
“The method of active control is called electrostatic actuation and uses forces generated by electrostatic attraction to precisely shape a metallic mesh into a curved shape which acts as the antenna reflector. We do this by applying a voltage between the mesh and a ‘command surface’ which consists of the Bend-Formed support structure and deployable electrodes. By adjusting this voltage, we can precisely shape the reflector surface and achieve a high-gain, parabolic antenna.”
Harsh and his colleagues deduce that this technique will allow for a deployable mirror measuring more than 100 meters (328 ft) in diameter that could achieve a surface precision of 100 m/m and a specific area of more than 10 m2/kg. This capability would surpass existing microwave radiometry technology and could lead to significant improvements in storm forecasts and an improved understanding of atmospheric processes like the hydrologic cycle. This would have significant implications for Earth Observation and exoplanet studies.
The team recently demonstrated a 1-meter (3.3 ft) prototype of an electrostatically-actuated reflector with a Bend-Formed support structure at the 2023 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) SciTech Conference, which ran from January 23rd to 27th in National Harbor, Maryland. With this Phase I NIAC grant, the team plans to mature the technology with the ultimate aim of creating a microwave radiometry reflector.
Looking ahead, the team plans to investigate how Bend-Forming can be used in geostationary orbit (GEO) to create a microwave radiometry reflector with a 15km (9.3 mi) field of view, a ground resolution of 35km (21.75 mi) and a proposed frequency span of 50 to 56 GHz – the super-high and extremely-high frequent range (SHF/EHF). This will enable the telescope to retrieve temperature profiles from exoplanet atmospheres, a key characteristic allowing astrobiologists to measure habitability.
“Our goal with the NIAC now is to work towards implementing our technology of Bend-Forming and electrostatic actuation in space,” said Harsh. “We envision fabricating 100-m diameter antennas in geostationary orbit with have Bend-Formed support structure and electrostatically-actuated reflector surfaces. These antennas will enable a new generation of spacecraft with increased sensing, communication, and power capabilities.”
Further Reading: NASA
This new shape shifting, liquid robot can escape from a cage
But, in contrast with the film, the inventors of this robot believe their discovery can be used for good — particularly in clinical and mechanical settings — by reaching hard-to-reach spaces.
The robot was presented as part of a study into the metal microparticles, known as a type of magnetoactive phase transitional matter, that can morph shape, move quickly, be controlled easily and carry many times its own body weight.
The scientists behind the study, who published their findings Wednesday in the journal Matter, created the robot using a composite of metals with a low melting point.
“This material can achieve Terminator-2 like performance, including fast movement and heavy load bearing when it is in its solid state, and shape changing in its liquid state,” Chengfeng Pan, an engineer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who co-authored the study, told The Washington Post, when asked about his discovery and the comparisons being made to the Terminator movies.
“Potentially, this material system can be used for applications in flexible electronics, health care, and robotics.”
By blasting the robot with magnetic fields at alternating currents, scientists increased its temperature to 95 Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) and caused it to morph from a solid into a liquid state in 1 minute 20 seconds. Once transformed into liquid metal, the figurine could be steered through the narrow gaps of its locked cage by more magnets — demonstrating its morphability.
It is the first time a material capable of both shifting shape and carrying heavy loads has been identified for use in microbots, according to scientists at the Chinese, Hong Kong and American universities who worked on the study — solving a riddle that has confounded miniature robot makers who previously struggled to achieve both morphability and strength in their designs.
In its liquid form, the robot could be made to elongate, divide, and merge. In solid form, it was steered at speeds exceeding 3 mph and carried heavy objects up to 30 times its own weight. The combination means a robot made from the material could be deployed to fix electronics in difficult to reach places, for example working as a makeshift screw or for electronic soldering in tight spots.
In another experiment, researchers demonstrated how the robot could be deployed inside a model human stomach to remove an unwanted foreign object. Scientists steered the solid-form robot, measuring less than 0.4 inch in width, through the fake organ until it had located the foreign object. It was then melted by remotely controlled magnetic fields, stretched in its new liquid metal state around the object — and once securely hugging it — cooled back into a solid, allowing it to tow the foreign object out of the chamber.
The shape-shifting material is the latest in a string of developments across the burgeoning field of miniature robotics — as scientists race to identify potential medical and mechanical applications for tiny robots in everyday life.
Recent microrobotic innovations include robots small enough to potentially crawl through human arteries, intelligent enough to be taught to swim, and others capable of flying through the air powered by tiny onboard power supplies.
“We’re still early in the exploration of what kind of materials can do this,” Brad Nelson, a Pprofessor of Robotics at ETH Zurich who was not part of the study, told The Washington Post. One of the most interesting areas of research in microrobotics right now is in clinical applications — particularly the delivery of drugs to the brain or for treating blood clots, he adds.
While the metal microbot unveiled on Wednesday is instructive, its use of neodymium iron boron — toxic to humans — means it would only be clinically safe for use inside humans if it were completely removed from the body afterward, Nelson says.
“The folks that are really looking at clinical applications of these devices, we want to look at materials that can degrade in the body, remain in the body, without causing harm to the patient,” Nelson said.
For Pan, the comparisons between his creation and the Terminator’s T-1000 character are understandable — but limited in how far they can be taken. “Our robot still needs an external heater for melting and external magnetic field for controlling the movement and shape changing,” he said. “Terminator is fully autonomous.”
Nelson also argues that the risk of inadvertently creating a real-life cyborg assassin is not something to worry about.
“I don’t see any possibility of injecting something into somebody, and then the microbots swim into their brain and take over their thoughts, or something crazy like that.
“The technology isn’t there, and I don’t see it going there,” Nelson says — adding that were the technology to be tested in clinical settings there would be safeguards in place to protect against such risks.
Naomi Schanen contributed to this report
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope records black hole contorting star into donut shape
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope recorded a star’s final moments in detail as it was eaten by a black hole.
The agency said the process twisted the star into a donut-like shape in the process.
When a star gets close enough, the gravitational grasp of the black hole violently rips it apart, belching out intense radiation in what is known as a “tidal disruption event.”
Astronomers are using the telescope to better understand what happens, utilizing its powerful ultraviolet sensitivity to study the light from the AT2022dsb “stellar snacking event.”
NASA’S WEBB UNCOVERS STAR FORMATION IN CLUSTER’S ‘DUSTY RIBBONS’
This sequence of artist’s illustrations shows how a black hole can devour a bypassing star. 1. A normal star passes near a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. 2. The star’s outer gasses are pulled into the black hole’s gravitational field. 3. The star is shredded as tidal forces pull it apart. 4. The stellar remnants are pulled into a donut-shaped ring around the black hole, and will eventually fall into the black hole, unleashing a tremendous amount of light and high-energy radiation.
(Credits: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI))
The star is located nearly 300 million light-years away at the core of the galaxy ESO 583-G004.
Approximately 100 tidal disruption events around black holes have been detected by astronomers using various telescopes.
The agency recently reported that a high-energy space observatory spotted another such event in March 2021.
The star’s outer gasses are pulled into the black hole’s gravitational field.
(Credits: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI))
“We’re excited because we can get these details about what the debris is doing. The tidal event can tell us a lot about a black hole,” Emily Engelthaler, of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, said in a statement.
NASA’S JAMES WEBB TELESCOPE FINDS FIRST EXOPLANET ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME SIZE AS EARTH
For any given galaxy with a quiescent supermassive black hole at the center, it’s estimated that stellar shredding happens only a few times over every 100,000 years.
This AT2022dsb event was first caught on March 1, 2022, by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, a network of ground-based telescopes.
The stellar remnants are pulled into a donut-shaped ring around the black hole, and will eventually fall into the black hole, unleashing a tremendous amount of light and high-energy radiation.
(Credits: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI))
The collision was close enough to Earth and bright enough due to ultraviolet spectroscopy over a period of time that is longer than normal.
“Typically, these events are hard to observe. You get maybe a few observations at the beginning of the disruption when it’s really bright. Our program is different in that it is designed to look at a few tidal events over a year to see what happens,” Peter Maksym, of the Center for Astrophysics, explained. “We saw this early enough that we could observe it at these very intense black hole accretion stages. We saw the accretion rate drop as it turned to a trickle over time.”
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The data are being interpreted as coming from the donut-shaped area of gas that was once the star.
The area is known as a torus, swirling around a black hole in the middle.
Black hole ‘spaghettified’ a star into a doughnut shape, and astronomers captured the gory encounter
The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a star being stripped and stretched into a doughnut shape as a black hole devours it.
The supermassive black hole, located 300 million light-years from Earth at the core of the galaxy ESO 583-G004, snared and shredded the star after it wandered too close, sending out a powerful beam of ultraviolet light that astronomers used to locate the violent encounter.
When a black hole feeds, its immense gravity exerts powerful tidal forces on the unfortunate star. As the star is reeled ever closer to the black hole’s maw, the gravity affecting the regions of the star closer to the black hole is far stronger than that acting on the star’s farside. This disparity “spaghettifies” the star into a long, noodle-like string that gets tightly wound around the black hole layer by layer — like spaghetti around a fork.
This doughnut of hot plasma quickly accelerates around the black hole and spins out into an enormous jet of energy and matter, which produces a distinctive bright flash that optical, X-ray and radio-wave telescopes can detect.
The exceptional brightness of this particular black hole feeding session allowed astronomers to study it over a longer time period than is typical for tidal disruption events. This could yield exciting new insights about the unfortunate star’s final moments, the researchers said.
Related: Wormhole simulated in quantum computer could bolster theory that the universe is a hologram
“We’re looking somewhere on the edge of that donut,” Peter Maksym, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a NASA statement (opens in new tab). “We’re seeing a stellar wind from the black hole sweeping over the surface that’s being projected towards us at speeds of 20 million miles per hour (three percent the speed of light). We really are still getting our heads around the event.”
For a star, spaghettification is a dramatic process. The outer atmospheric layers of the star are stripped first. Then, they circle the black hole to form the tight yarn ball the researchers observed. The remainder of the star soon follows, accelerating around the black hole. Despite black holes’ reputation as voracious eaters, most of the star’s matter will escape; only 1% of a typical star ever gets swallowed by a black hole, Live Science previously reported.
The results were reported at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, held in Seattle this week.
Black Hole’s Deep Gravitational Sinkhole Twists Unlucky Star Into Donut Shape
This animation depicts a star experiencing spaghettification as it’s sucked in by a supermassive black hole during a ‘tidal disruption event’. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
A Deep Gravitational Sinkhole Swallows Unlucky Bypassing Star
Black holes have such a voracious gravitational pull that they even swallow light. This makes them hungry monsters lurking in the eternal darkness. There’s no escape if you happen to stumble across one in the inky blackness of space. That’s no worry for astronauts who have yet to travel farther than the Moon. But entire stars can face that peril if they wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Hubble astronomers got a front-row seat to such an interstellar demolition derby when they were alerted to a flash of high-energy radiation from the core of a galaxy 300 million light-years away. Like a police officer arriving quickly at the scene of an accident, Hubble vision was trained on the mayhem before the collision was over. Hubble is too far away to see the doomed star getting sucked in. Instead, Hubble astronomers took the fingerprints of starlight coming from the mishap. These spectra tell a forensic story of a star falling into a cosmic blender. It was shredded, and pulled toward the black hole like a piece of stretched taffy. This process formed a donut-shaped ring of gas around the
This sequence of artist’s illustrations shows how a black hole can devour a bypassing star.
1. A normal star passes near a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy.
2. The star’s outer gasses are pulled into the black hole’s gravitational field.
3. The star is shredded as tidal forces pull it apart.
4. The stellar remnants are pulled into a donut-shaped ring around the black hole, and will eventually fall into the black hole, unleashing a tremendous amount of light and high-energy radiation.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)
Hubble Finds Hungry Black Hole Twisting Captured Star Into Donut Shape
Black holes are gatherers, not hunters. They lie in wait until a hapless star wanders by. When the star gets close enough, the black hole’s gravitational grasp violently rips it apart and sloppily devours its gasses while belching out intense radiation.
Astronomers using
These are termed “tidal disruption events.” But the wording belies the complex, raw violence of a black hole encounter. There is a balance between the black hole’s gravity pulling in star stuff, and radiation blowing material out. In other words, black holes are messy eaters. Astronomers are using Hubble to find out the details of what happens when a wayward star plunges into the gravitational abyss.
Hubble can’t photograph the AT2022dsb tidal event’s mayhem up close, since the munched-up star is nearly 300 million light-years away at the core of the galaxy 
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have recorded a star’s final moments in detail as it gets gobbled up by a black hole. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Lead Producer: Paul Morris
About 100 tidal disruption events around black holes have been detected by astronomers using various telescopes. NASA recently reported that several of its high-energy space observatories spotted another black hole tidal disruption event on March 1, 2021, and it happened in another galaxy. Unlike Hubble observations, data was collected in X-ray light from an extremely hot corona around the black hole that formed after the star was already torn apart.
“However, there are still very few tidal events that are observed in ultraviolet light given the observing time. This is really unfortunate because there’s a lot of information that you can get from the ultraviolet spectra,” said Emily Engelthaler of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (
The Hubble spectroscopic data are interpreted as coming from a very bright, hot, donut-shaped area of gas that was once the star. This area, known as a torus, is the size of the solar system and is swirling around a black hole in the middle.
“We’re looking somewhere on the edge of that donut. We’re seeing a stellar wind from the black hole sweeping over the surface that’s being projected towards us at speeds of 20 million miles per hour (three percent the speed of light),” said Maksym. “We really are still getting our heads around the event. You shred the star and then it’s got this material that’s making its way into the black hole. And so you’ve got models where you think you know what is going on, and then you’ve got what you actually see. This is an exciting place for scientists to be: right at the interface of the known and the unknown.”
The results were reported during a press conference on January 12, 2022, at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble and Webb science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
Hubble finds hungry black hole twisting captured star into donut shape
Black holes are gatherers, not hunters. They lie in wait until a hapless star wanders by. When the star gets close enough, the black hole’s gravitational grasp violently rips it apart and sloppily devours its gasses while belching out intense radiation.
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have recorded a star’s final moments in detail as it gets gobbled up by a black hole.
These are termed “tidal disruption events.” But the wording belies the complex, raw violence of a black hole encounter. There is a balance between the black hole’s gravity pulling in star stuff, and radiation blowing material out. In other words, black holes are messy eaters. Astronomers are using Hubble to find out the details of what happens when a wayward star plunges into the gravitational abyss.
Hubble can’t photograph the AT2022dsb tidal event’s mayhem up close, since the munched-up star is nearly 300 million light-years away at the core of the galaxy ESO 583-G004. But astronomers used Hubble’s powerful ultraviolet sensitivity to study the light from the shredded star, which include hydrogen, carbon, and more. The spectroscopy provides forensic clues to the black hole homicide.
About 100 tidal disruption events around black holes have been detected by astronomers using various telescopes. NASA recently reported that several of its high-energy space observatories spotted another black hole tidal disruption event on March 1, 2021, and it happened in another galaxy. Unlike Hubble observations, data was collected in X-ray light from an extremely hot corona around the black hole that formed after the star was already torn apart.
“However, there are still very few tidal events that are observed in ultraviolet light given the observing time. This is really unfortunate because there’s a lot of information that you can get from the ultraviolet spectra,” said Emily Engelthaler of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “We’re excited because we can get these details about what the debris is doing. The tidal event can tell us a lot about a black hole.” Changes in the doomed star’s condition are taking place on the order of days or months.
For any given galaxy with a quiescent supermassive black hole at the center, it’s estimated that the stellar shredding happens only a few times in every 100,000 years.
This AT2022dsb stellar snacking event was first caught on March 1, 2022 by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN or “Assassin”), a network of ground-based telescopes that surveys the extragalactic sky roughly once a week for violent, variable, and transient events that are shaping our universe. This energetic collision was close enough to Earth and bright enough for the Hubble astronomers to do ultraviolet spectroscopy over a longer than normal period of time.
“Typically, these events are hard to observe. You get maybe a few observations at the beginning of the disruption when it’s really bright. Our program is different in that it is designed to look at a few tidal events over a year to see what happens,” said Peter Maksym of the CfA. “We saw this early enough that we could observe it at these very intense black hole accretion stages. We saw the accretion rate drop as it turned to a trickle over time.”
The Hubble spectroscopic data are interpreted as coming from a very bright, hot, donut-shaped area of gas that was once the star. This area, known as a torus, is the size of the solar system and is swirling around a black hole in the middle.
“We’re looking somewhere on the edge of that donut. We’re seeing a stellar wind from the black hole sweeping over the surface that’s being projected towards us at speeds of 20 million miles per hour (three percent the speed of light),” said Maksym. “We really are still getting our heads around the event. You shred the star and then it’s got this material that’s making its way into the black hole. And so you’ve got models where you think you know what is going on, and then you’ve got what you actually see. This is an exciting place for scientists to be: right at the interface of the known and the unknown.”
The results were reported at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington.
More information:
aas.org/meetings/aas241
Provided by
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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Hubble finds hungry black hole twisting captured star into donut shape (2023, January 13)
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