Witness the Birth of a Black Hole - Space.com
 

Astronomers photographed a cosmic event this morning which they believe is the birth of a black hole, SPACE.com has learned.

A faint visible-light flash moments after a high-energy gamma-ray burst likely heralds the merger of two dense neutron stars to create a relatively low-mass black hole, said Neil Gehrels of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It is the first time an optical counterpart to a very short-duration gamma-ray burst has ever been detected.

Gamma rays are the most energetic form of radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum, which also includes X-rays, light and radio waves.

The merger occurred 2.2 billion light-years away, so it actually took place 2.2 billion years ago and the light just reached Earth this morning.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...ole_birth.html

the whole concept of billions of lightyears and actually seeing what happened in the past is creepy and totally fascinating to me at the same time

Very interesting, thanks!

same here, but I doubt it applies to many people here...

i mean why would you care about the universe if you can make money, get stoned and fuck a hooker instead?


:winkwink:

I was actually the original owner of sex.com, but it's just reaching earth now.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

fo shizzle man :pimp

...this is wide open to soo many jokes.
I'll pass.

2.2 billion light years away...just image how fucking big the universe is. Unbelievable!

A light-year is a unit of distance. It is the distance that light can travel in one year. Light moves at a velocity of about 300,000 kilometers (km) each second. So in one year, it can travel about 10 trillion km. More p recisely, one light-year is equal to 9,500,000,000,000 kilometers.

that is pretty wild. i often wonder if there's a mirror planet in another galaxy with people doing the same exact things we do.

selling porn on the internet? :winkwink:

I doubt it :)

but seriously, I believe that there are several different shapes of life on other planets and galactics

we have 9 ( or 10 ? ) planets in our Solar system and life exists on Earth and probably existed on Mars millions years ago.

If you calculate that there are millions or other planets in the universe, it would be statistically almost impossible that there would be no life on any of them...

That is pretty sweet.

Really puts things into perspective - Goes to show how really insignificant each and everyone of our lives are :upsidedow

very cool

Rent/buy the movie Collateral. :)

Matt

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom..._010522-1.html

Woohoo.. Another dinosaur theory. If a star somewhere blows up every day, but very rarely / never around us, it's probably even measurable, but it just shows how big the universe really is. I love it.

Matt

All of the sudden i feel very very very small :upsidedow

Ooh i love that movie :)

thanks i've always been a science buff

2.2 billion years ago? the bible says the earth is only 7k years old. nasa cant be right.

duke :1orglaugh

This is old news but I couldn't find a timeline pic that went back 2 billion years so you win