Study: Black holes power brightest objects (cool pic)

[seriousstan]

An optical image of the quasar RXJ1131-1231, magnified by a gravitational lens. The red spot in the center is the galaxy that is acting as a lens, while the four bright spots (three top, one bottom) are magnified images of the same quasar.


Black holes are so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their gravitational clutches, making them impossible to observe directly. And even though quasars, or quasi-stellar radio sources, are the universe’s most powerful sources of constant light, they are billions of light-years away. So even with the most powerful telescopes they appear as pinpoints of light. On top of that, the dust and gas lit up by a quasar makes seeing inside one a great challenge.

The researchers led by Xinyu Dai and Christopher Kochanek of Ohio State University were only able to view the interior structures of the two quasars, named RXJ1131-1231 and Q2237+0305, when a galaxy lined up between them and the Earth, magnifying their light — a phenomenon called gravitational microlensing. Like a Sumo wrestler rolling over and deforming a soft mat, the weighty galaxy dented, or curved, the fabric of space-time, rerouting and in this case focusing light from the quasars behind it.

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"Luckily for us, sometimes stars and galaxies act as very high-resolution telescopes," Kochanek said. "Now we're not just looking at a quasar, we're probing the very inside of a quasar and getting down to where the black hole is."

With NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, coupled with measurements from optical telescopes, the astronomers were able to measure the size of the so-called accretion disk inside each quasar, one of which spanned about 14 astronomical units, where one AU is the distance from Earth to the sun.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15144907/

From a pinpoint of light to being able to measure the accretion disk around the black hole buried in the middle of the quasar. WOW!!

OSU....it ain't just for football anymore.

OK ...maybe football still rules.....GO BUCKS #1!!!!!

[AIJ Alom]

1. Absolutely Gorgeous ! This is where our attention and all of efforts

should be devoted to. We need to get out there. An entire universe beckons the human race yet the primitives/conservatives among us still want to battle over this tiny, insignificant speck of rock.

[Dudley_DUright]

2. That Einstein was a smart cookie (he was some kind of Einstein!)

Both black holes and gravitational lensing are predictions of General Relativity. I had a great time teaching an independent studies course in GR to one of our best students last spring. Nice to see GR being used to probe the accretion disk around a black hole powered quasar!

[Beelzebud]

3. That is really amazing when you think about it.

The idea of using stars and whole galaxies as essentially lenses. Cool stuff! :D

Thanks for sharing.