Hunting For Black Holes

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Hunting for Black Holes UNIVERSEFORUM template presentation Place/Date/Time

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What are Black Holes? The idea of a black hole - an object so massive that nothing could escape the grasp of its gravity - dates back to the 1700s. But the modern story of black holes really starts with Einstein's revolutionary theory of gravity, completed in 1917.

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In principle, any object - even a rock - can be made into a black hole, by squeezing it into a tiny enough volume. Under these conditions, the object continues to collapse under its own weight, crushing itself down to zero size.

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In nature, the only objects that can form a black hole on their own are large stars - stars many times more massive than our own Sun.

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Can the Sun become a black hole? The Sun, in another 5 billion years, will end its life as a beautiful planetary nebula. The cinder that remains is a ball of hot carbon the size of the Earth, called a White Dwarf. Its mass will be far too low to become a black hole.

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According to Einstein's theory, the object's mass and gravity remain behind, in the form of an extreme distortion of the space and time around it. This distortion of space and time is the black hole. Replace image with animation: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/2003/01/video/a Multimedia viewers available here: http://www.universeforum.org/einstein/multimediadownload.htm

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A black hole is a true "hole" in space: Anything that crosses the edge of the hole - called the "horizon" of the hole - is swallowed forever. Replace image with animation: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20011015blackhole.html Multimedia viewers available here: http://www.universeforum.org/einstein/multimediadownload.htm

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As you get closer to a black hole, the flow of time slows down, compared to flow of time far from the hole. At the horizon, time actually appears to stop. An object falling into the hole would appear frozen in time at the edge of the black hole!

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Our laws of physics break down at the very center of the black hole. Time itself seems to come to an abrupt end there. For this reason, a black hole is sometimes described as the "reverse of creation."

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Black holes in space The Milky Way- view of a galaxy from the inside More than a dozen black holes have already been discovered in our Milky Way galaxy - out of more than a million black holes estimated to exist there. image

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Cygnus X-1 Can you find the black hole in this picture? We need to look beyond the range of our eyes to spot a black hole.

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Chandra X-Ray Observatory To hunt for black holes we need X-ray vision!

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Though we cannot see black holes directly, they are so powerful that we can see their unmistakable, dramatic effects on the matter around them. There are three lines of evidence that black-hole hunters look for. image Replace images with single animation: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/F_Black_Hole_Extreme_Exploration.html Multimedia viewers available here: http://www.universeforum.org/einstein/multimediadownload.htm

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We can see a black hole being born! Using space telescopes such as Hubble and Swift, we can see the supernova explosions that signal the birth of a black hole. Replace image with movie: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/features/news/24mar03.html Multimedia viewers available at: http://www.universeforum.org/einstein/multimediadownload.htm

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NASA’s Swift space telescope was launched in November 2004, and is seeing two gamma-ray bursts a day

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A giant black hole, heavier than millions of stars, has been discovered at the center of our Milky Way galaxy image

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The gravitational field of a black hole tugs on the stars in its vicinity. A super-massive black hole will make whole swarms of stars whip around as they fall under its influence. By following the motions of the orbiting stars, astronomers can deduce the location, and size, of the central black hole they cannot see. Replace image with movie: http://www.mpe.mpg.de/ir/GC/index.php Multimedia viewers available at: http://www.universeforum.org/einstein/multimediadownload.htm

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Matter– such as gas and dust, or even a whole star –that comes too close to a black hole is drawn towards the hole. As the matter spirals towards the edge of the hole, it heats up, reaching millions degrees before plunging into the black hole. When gas is this hot, it glows in X-ray light. Replace image with “Animation of Star Ripped Apart by Giant Black Hole.” Download movie at: http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/animations/blackholes.html Multimedia viewers available: http://www.universeforum.org/einstein/multimediadownload.htm

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Astronomers have evidence that most, if not all, galaxies in the universe are populated by black holes: smaller ones throughout and a giant black hole at their centers.

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Giant jets of matter – the most powerful beams in the universe – are observed to shoot out from a galaxy's core at almost the speed of light. The only known source powerful enough to produce such jets, is a giant spinning black hole.

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Frontiers What part do black holes play in the evolution of galaxies, and of the universe itself?

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Frontiers Black holes send ripples of gravity through space.  NASA’s LISA space probe, to be launched in 2015 is designed to detect them. Insert Sound File: c.wav or p2.5_e0.97_i20_a0.998_hp.wav Sound 3 at: http://web.mit.edu/sahughes/www/sounds.html Replace icon with sound file

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Frontiers A new type of black hole? The “missing link” between the giant black holes at the centers of galaxies, and the stellar mass black holes that populate a galaxy, are being discovered by X-ray telescopes Black Holes

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Black Holes - Einstein’s Darkest Prediction Frontiers Does the inside of a black hole lead to another universe? Einstein’s theory of gravity allows the possibility of a black hole forming a link - or wormhole - to another universe, or another part of our universe.

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Frontiers What happens inside a black hole? The only way to answer this question is by developing a better, more fundamental theory of space, time, and matter. 

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Credits URL or program name here http://www.universeforum.org/einstein/ WR 124: Y. Grosdidier et al. WFPC2, HST, NASA Eskimo Nebula: NASA, Andrew Fruchter and the ERO Team (STScI) Gravitational Lens animation: Frank Sumners (STScI) Spinning black hole animation: NASA/GSFC Galactic Center: 2MASS Collaboration, U. Mass, IPAC Cygnus X-1 star field: Palomar Observatory and Space Telescope Science Institute Chandra spacecraft: CXC/NGST Cygnus X-1 animation: NASA/GSFC BH birth animation: NASA/Dana Berry/SkyWorks Digital Swift satellite: Spectrum Astro, NASA Milky Way center: European Southern Observatory Stellar motion animation: © Infrared and Submillimeter Astronomy Group at MPE Stellar destruction animation: ESA HCG 87: Gemini Observatory - GMOS Commissioning Team Centaurus A optical: European Southern Observatory Centaurus A x-ray: Chandra X-ray Observatory/CXC NGC 4261: Walter Jaffe/Leiden Observatory, Holland Ford/JHU/STScI, and NASA LISA spacecraft: NASA/JPL Sound file: Department of Physics and Kavli Center for Astrophysics and Space Research, MIT Mid-mass black holes: NASA/SAO/CXC Artist’s impression of a wormhole: NASA Particle accelerator: CERN ALBERT EINSTEIN and related rights ™/© of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, used under license. Represented by the Roger Richman Agency, Inc., www.albert-einstein.net