Astronomy

Relax and watch two black holes merge.

The Galaxy, the Jet, and a Famous Black Hole

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In February 2022, SpaceX and entrepreneur/philanthropist Jared Isaacman (commander of the Inspiration4 mission) announced they were launching a new program to “rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities” while supporting important charitable and humanitarian causes here on Earth. It’s called the Polaris Program. In a recent press release, SpaceX revealed the spacesuits its Polaris astronauts will be wearing (up top) and described the research crews will conduct during the program’s three human spaceflight missions – the first of which is scheduled to launch this summer!

These missions will build on the company’s experience with NASA’s Commercial Crew Delivery (CCD) program, where NASA certified SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle to transport crews to the International Space Station (ISS). According to the company’s press statement, the new suits are an evolution of the Intravehicular Activity (IVA) suit currently used by Dragon crews. This included the crew of the Demo-2 mission, which validated the flight system and was the first crewed mission to take off from U.S. soil since the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011.

It was also the suit worn by the Inspiration4 crew as they became the first flight to be crewed entirely by private citizens. These latest are known as the Extravehicular Activity Space Suit, which has several new features. Per the company’s press statement, “Developed with mobility in mind, SpaceX teams incorporated new materials, fabrication processes, and novel joint designs to provide greater flexibility to astronauts in pressurized scenarios while retaining comfort for unpressurized scenarios.”

The suit also has redundancy features, such as additional seals and pressure valves to help ensure the suit remains pressurized during EVAs. The new 3D-printed helmet incorporates a new visor that reduces glare and features a camera and a new Heads-Up Display (HUD) that monitors conditions inside the suit. These suits will make their debut during the first of three Polaris missions – Polaris Dawn – scheduled to take place this summer (at the earliest). This mission will be commanded by Isaacman and will see a Crew Dragon launched from Launch Complex 39A atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The crew will spend five days in orbit and attempt to reach the highest Earth orbit ever flown.

During their time in space, the Polaris Dawn crew will conduct the first commercial spacewalk (and the first EVA where four astronauts were in space simultaneously) and be the first to test the Starlink laser-based communication system in space. The crew will also conduct scientific research in collaboration with the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH), BioServe Space Technologies, Space Technologies Lab, Weill Cornell Medicine, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the U.S. Air Force Academy.

These efforts are designed to advance our understanding of human health during long-duration spaceflights, with applications for health here on Earth. According to the company website, these research activities will include:

• Using ultrasound to monitor, detect, and quantify venous gas emboli (VGE), contributing to studies on human prevalence to decompression sickness;
• Gathering data on the radiation environment to better understand how space radiation affects human biological systems;
• Providing biological samples towards multi-omics analyses for a long-term Biobank; and
• Research related to Spaceflight Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome (SANS), which is a key risk to human health in long-duration spaceflight.

Polaris Dawn will be followed up by a second mission (Polaris II, the date of which is TBD) that will attempt to build upon these objectives. The third mission (Polaris III) will be the first human spaceflight involving the Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicle. But as is made clear in the company’s statement, the suits are intended to fulfill SpaceX’s long-term goals:

“While Polaris Dawn will be the first time the SpaceX EVA suit is used in low-Earth orbit, the suit’s ultimate destiny lies much farther from our home planet. Building a base on the Moon and a city on Mars will require the development of a scalable design for the millions of spacesuits required to help make life multiplanetary.”

Further Reading: SpaceX, Polaris Program

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Within the last five years, astronomers have discovered a new type of astronomical phenomenon that exists on vast scales – larger than whole galaxies. They’re called ORCs (odd radio circles), and they look like giant rings of radio waves expanding outwards like a shockwave. Until now, ORCs had never been observed in any wavelength other than radio, but according to a new paper released on April 30 2024, astronomers have captured X-rays associated with an ORC for the first time.

The discovery offers some new clues as to what might be behind the creation of an ORC.

While many astronomical events, like supernova explosions, can leave behind circular remnants, ORCs seem to require a different explanation.

“The power needed to produce such an expansive radio emission is very strong,” said Esra Bulbul, lead author of the new paper. “Some simulations can reproduce their shapes but not their intensity. No simulations explain how to create ORCs.”

ORCs can be a challenge to study, in part because they are usually only visible in radio wavelengths. They haven’t previously been associated with X-ray or infrared emissions, nor has there been any sign of them in optical wavelengths. Sometimes, ORCs surround a visible galaxy, but not always (eight have been discovered to date around known elliptical galaxies).

Using ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope, Bulbul and her team observed one of the nearest known ORCs, an object called the Cloverleaf, and found a striking X-ray component to the object.

“This is the first time anyone has seen X-ray emission associated with an ORC,” said Bulbul. “It was the missing key to unlock the secret of the Cloverleaf’s formation.”

This image of the first ORC (odd radio circle) ever discovered, aptly dubbed ORC-1, overlays radio observations from South Africa’s MeerKAT telescope in green atop an optical and infrared map from the international DES (Dark Energy Survey) project. J. English (U. Manitoba)/EMU/MeerKAT/DES (CTIO)

X-rays of the Cloverleaf show gas that has been heated and excited by some process. In this case, the X-ray emissions reveal two groups of galaxies (totaling about a dozen galaxies altogether) that have begun to merge inside the Cloverleaf, heating the gas to 15 million degrees Fahrenheit.

The chaotic galaxy mergers are interesting, but they can’t explain the Cloverleaf by themselves. Galaxies mergers happen all over the universe, while ORCs are a rare phenomenon. There’s something unique going on to create something like the Cloverleaf.

“Mergers make up the backbone of structure formation, but there’s something special in this system that rockets the radio emission,” Bulbul said. “We can’t tell right now what it is, so we need more and deeper data from both radio and X-ray telescopes.”

That doesn’t mean astronomers don’t have any guesses.

“One fascinating idea for the powerful radio signal is that the resident supermassive black holes went through episodes of extreme activity in the past, and relic electrons from that ancient activity were reaccelerated by this merging event,” said Kim Weaver, NASA project scientist for XMM-Newton.

In other words, ORCs like the Cloverleaf might require a two-part origin story – powerful emissions from active supermassive black holes, followed by galaxy merger shockwaves that give those emissions a second kick.

Learn More:

E. Bulbul et. al. “The galaxy group merger origin of the Cloverleaf odd radio circle system.” Astronomy and Astrophysics.

“X-ray Satellite XMM-Newton Sees ‘Space Clover’ in a New Light.” NASA.

The post Do Clashing Galaxies Create Odd Radio Circles? appeared first on Universe Today.

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Supermassive black holes are central to the dynamics and evolution of galaxies. They play a role in galactic formation, stellar production, and possibly even the clustering of dark matter. Almost every galaxy has a supermassive black hole, which can make up a small fraction of a galaxy’s mass in nearby galaxies. While we know a great deal about these gravitational monsters, one question that has lingered is just how supermassive black holes gained mass so quickly.

Most of what we know about early black holes comes from quasars. These occur when supermassive black holes are in an extremely active phase, consuming prodigious amounts of matter and emitting intense light that can be seen across the Universe. Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other observatories have observed quasars as far back as 13 billion years ago, meaning that they were already large and active just a few hundred million years after the big bang. But these brilliant beacons also pose an observational challenge. Early quasars are so bright they vastly outshine their host galaxy, making it difficult to observe the environments of early quasars. But a new study in The Astrophysical Journal has used a spectral trick to see these distant galactic hosts.

The team gathered JWST data on six distant quasars known to be about 13 billion light-years away. Since the quasars were observed at a range of wavelengths, the team then compared the light to model quasars and was able to categorize which wavelengths likely came from the compact source of the quasar, and which from the more diffuse galaxy surrounding it. By filtering out the quasar light, they obtained the first images of the distant galaxies that are home to these ancient quasars.

Since the brightness of each light source is related to its mass, the team could compare the mass of a quasar to the mass of its host galaxy. The result was surprising. In these early galaxies, the mass of the supermassive black hole is about 10% of that of the galaxy. This is much larger than the mass ratio seen in local galaxies, where supermassive black holes can comprise just a tenth of a percent of a galaxy’s mass. This likely means that early supermassive black holes grew extremely quickly, and could have even been the seeds of their galaxies. The observations go against the idea that early galaxies formed first and that their black holes formed later.

Astronomers still don’t know just how supermassive black holes formed so quickly in the early Universe, but it’s now clear that they did. In answering one question about the evolution of supermassive black holes, the team has raised several other questions.

Reference: Yue, Minghao, et al. “EIGER. V. Characterizing the Host Galaxies of Luminous Quasars at z ? 6.” The Astrophysical Journal 966.2 (2024): 176.

The post Supermassive Black Holes Got Started From Massive Cosmic Seeds appeared first on Universe Today.

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