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I didn’t sleep the other day thinking about this….

Black Holes are NICER Than You Think!

We’re learning more every day about black holes thanks to one of the instruments aboard the International Space Station! Our Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) instrument is keeping an eye on some of the most mysterious cosmic phenomena.

We’re going to talk about some of the amazing new things NICER is showing us about black holes. But first, let’s talk about black holes — how do they work, and where do they come from? There are two important types of black holes we’ll talk about here: stellar and supermassive. Stellar mass black holes are three to dozens of times as massive as our Sun while supermassive black holes can be billions of times as massive!

Stellar black holes begin with a bang — literally! They are one of the possible objects left over after a large star dies in a supernova explosion. Scientists think there are as many as a billion stellar mass black holes in our Milky Way galaxy alone!

Supermassive black holes have remained rather mysterious in comparison. Data suggest that supermassive black holes could be created when multiple black holes merge and make a bigger one. Or that these black holes formed during the early stages of galaxy formation, born when massive clouds of gas collapsed billions of years ago. There is very strong evidence that a supermassive black hole lies at the center of all large galaxies, as in our Milky Way.

Imagine an object 10 times more massive than the Sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of New York City — or cramming a billion trillion people into a car! These two examples give a sense of how incredibly compact and dense black holes can be.

Because so much stuff is squished into such a relatively small volume, a black hole’s gravity is strong enough that nothing — not even light — can escape from it. But if light can’t escape a dark fate when it encounters a black hole, how can we “see” black holes?

Scientists can’t observe black holes directly, because light can’t escape to bring us information about what’s going on inside them. Instead, they detect the presence of black holes indirectly — by looking for their effects on the cosmic objects around them. We see stars orbiting something massive but invisible to our telescopes, or even disappearing entirely!

When a star approaches a black hole’s event horizon — the point of no return — it’s torn apart. A technical term for this is “spaghettification” — we’re not kidding! Cosmic objects that go through the process of spaghettification become vertically stretched and horizontally compressed into thin, long shapes like noodles.

Scientists can also look for accretion disks when searching for black holes. These disks are relatively flat sheets of gas and dust that surround a cosmic object such as a star or black hole. The material in the disk swirls around and around, until it falls into the black hole. And because of the friction created by the constant movement, the material becomes super hot and emits light, including X-rays.

At last — light! Different wavelengths of light coming from accretion disks are something we can see with our instruments. This reveals important information about black holes, even though we can’t see them directly.

So what has NICER helped us learn about black holes? One of the objects this instrument has studied during its time aboard the International Space Station is the ever-so-forgettably-named black hole GRS 1915+105, which lies nearly 36,000 light-years — or 200 million billion miles — away, in the direction of the constellation Aquila.

Scientists have found disk winds — fast streams of gas created by heat or pressure — near this black hole. Disk winds are pretty peculiar, and we still have a lot of questions about them. Where do they come from? And do they change the shape of the accretion disk?

It’s been difficult to answer these questions, but NICER is more sensitive than previous missions designed to return similar science data. Plus NICER often looks at GRS 1915+105 so it can see changes over time.

NICER’s observations of GRS 1915+105 have provided astronomers a prime example of disk wind patterns, allowing scientists to construct models that can help us better understand how accretion disks and their outflows around black holes work.

NICER has also collected data on a stellar mass black hole with another long name — MAXI J1535-571 (we can call it J1535 for short) — adding to information provided by NuSTAR, Chandra, and MAXI. Even though these are all X-ray detectors, their observations tell us something slightly different about J1535, complementing each other’s data!

This rapidly spinning black hole is part of a binary system, slurping material off its partner, a star. A thin halo of hot gas above the disk illuminates the accretion disk and causes it to glow in X-ray light, which reveals still more information about the shape, temperature, and even the chemical content of the disk. And it turns out that J1535’s disk may be warped!

Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI and Artist: John Kagaya (Hoshi No Techou)

This isn’t the first time we have seen evidence for a warped disk, but J1535’s disk can help us learn more about stellar black holes in binary systems, such as how they feed off their companions and how the accretion disks around black holes are structured.

NICER primarily studies neutron stars — it’s in the name! These are lighter-weight relatives of black holes that can be formed when stars explode. But NICER is also changing what we know about many types of X-ray sources. Thanks to NICER’s efforts, we are one step closer to a complete picture of black holes. And hey, that’s pretty nice!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

gaybeecat

Reav’s just checkin out Bee’s mouth, no big deal!

dustrial-inc

sakura-haruka

someone-like-robsten

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

clubjade

ciel-etoile

lousolversons

You’re not gonna do it, are you? Change the world.

skywlkrleia

just--space

Milky Way and Exploding Meteor : Tonight the Perseid Meteor Shower reaches its maximum. Grains of icy rock will streak across the sky as they evaporate during entry into Earths atmosphere. These grains were shed from Comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids result from the annual crossing of the Earth through Comet Swift-Tuttles orbit, and are typically the most active meteor shower of the year. Although it is hard to predict the level of activity in any meteor shower, in a clear dark sky an observer might see a meteor a minute. This years Perseids occur just before a new Moon and so the relatively dark sky should make even faint meteors visible. Meteor showers in general are best be seen from a relaxing position, away from lights. Featured here is a meteor caught exploding two weeks ago above Austria next to the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. via NASA

homoamoeba

Tacticute~

Growth And Decay.

Color Railway.

gif i made today!

theunnamedstranger

Where did this rick and morty hatedom come from. It was the shit literally yesterday and now everyone hates it.

I guess the “let’s hate anything remotely popular while promoting our own edgy avant-garde bullshit fandom” crowd had to get on it someday. Because people can’t enjoy silly memey cartoons anymore.

I don’t even watch rick and morty and this pisses me off.

knightofbalance-13

I’ve actually WATCHED the first episode of the second show and…Let’s see just saw everything about the second image is misleading.

“Completely unpredictable” What it doesn’t say is that it follows NO LOGIC whatsoever so you don’t know what is suppose to be weird and out of place and what isn’t, what is suppose to be a joke and what is suppose to be serious, what is suppose to be bad and what is suppose to be good. No logic means no expectations means no build up means no attachment to the show.

“Style So avant-garde tt makes normies and art thots implode”

What it doesn’t say is that people implode because it was made in 2016 and looks like a bad PS1 game. Every character looks like it had trouble rendering, they all move in a style reminiscent of Foodfight, their model designs look like only a very slightly better version of the Rapitte Kids movie, everything looks cheaply made and it makes it very unappealing to the eye.

“Main Character defeats challenges through mind blowing philosophical insights”

Yeah…This is an outright lie: He beta the first challenge by making a digital flute out of a dog’s spine and a lady’s arm. But the main character talks as if he does which lends to the notion he is an egotistical ass but nothing about his interactions gives us hints in one way or another. about his character.

“Destroys the fabric of reality eveyr episode” What it doesn’t tell is that this sets a ceiling right at the beginning of the show: Either each episode must destroy the fabric of reality which you expect and it becomes forseeable or it doesn’t and it feels underwhleming. Not to mention since nothing makes sense, you react to that the same as everything: a deadpan “okay.”

“Extremely quotable and memorable dialouge” In the same vein as Doorbes or the Jimmy Neutron Family Hour: Being so stupid and surreal it becomes a “SO Bad it’s Funny” meme. Not in anyway objectively good.

“Multiple viewings are needed to appericate it’ Except that this is only if you are watching it casually and not with a critical eye in which you see what it is meant to be: Either stoner comedy or overwritten hypster bullcrap.

“Poses questions that challenge the fabric of human nature” While being mixed in with purposefully overwritten dialogue which would cause it to meld in with everything else or the question is phrased like it is but is the same as all the other overwritten dialogue.

“It’s actually funny” Only in an unintentional “So bad it’s funny” vibe which only works BECAUSE it’s trying to be serious and fails at it.

“Explores dozens of different themes every episode without spoonfeeding it to you”

Except t5hat the themes are pushed on screen and only explored through the same overwritten dialogue which melds together into a pool of pretentiousness that only serves the failure of the show’s attempts at being serious.

“Last Exactly as long as it needs to” To make a fool of itself trying to be serious or funny and failing in spectacular fashion.

“Profound characterizations” As in “Profound in the way a psychedelic trip is profound” since it falls in with teh rest of the absolute lack of logic.

“Leaves a profound impact on the view despite short length” IE “What the fuck did I just watch?”

“Geniunely educating in it’s subject matter” In how to not have any logic whatsoever.

“Only true Patricans can appericate it” Except that there is no definition for this word and it only means a ruling class of Riome which gives an are of condescension to the post and the show when in reality it’s just5 a way to deflect criticism.

ANd the last part was the onlyt part I got mad at and that is because it’s just used to insult and demean anyone who says anything bad about the show, criticism or not.. The rest is done in the most deadpan way possible because I feel nothing for the show and it ultimately becomes so vapid and uninteresting in it’s complete lack of logic or grounding I just don’t care about it.

I don’t hate the show but if you try comparing this to one of the best animated shows of the past ten years don’t be surprised if your show fails in under 5 seconds.

buddhabrand

w-r-o-u-g-h-t

rick and morty fans are so sensitive they’ll shit on anything that people say is better than their show

twalh

@w-r-o-u-g-h-t.

you don’t listen to people.

you don’t read what they write.

you don’t consider what they think. you only ever consider who they are, or who you think they are.

do you think I hate you because I like rick and morty? do you think I hate porky because people say he’s a pedophile? wrong. I hate you because that’s what you think. because all you can conceive of, when someone offers an opinion you dislike, is that they must hold it because they hold some other stupid opinion.

now comes the part where I defend my opinions and others’ and I hate this but PEOPLE LIKE YOU make me have to do it. I have never watched rick and morty. what few scenes I’ve seen from it from back when you liked it, have failed to amuse me in any way, so you probably do happen to be right about that. but at the same time, I’ve seen XRA, I watched it because you liked it and you’re my friend and you have good tastes when you’re not circlejerking ad infinitum about things like this, and I had an open mind for all of this, I was favorable, and

XRA is shit.

it really is. there are a scant few scenes in the entire first season—I couldn’t even bring myself to watch the second—with amusing dialog. the bit about “love tokens”, the bit with the two xaviers, but the rest is shit with no redeeming qualities, not even aesthetically.

and this guy who you dismiss out of hand, not because you even bothered to read his arguments, but because he supports a show which you have turned your baleful gaze on, is essentially right in his criticism. some of his arguments are bad and poorly written, but he sure as hell isn’t the person at fault here.

maybe you could have at least read the first response to this post. the one that even disclaims any support of r&m. if that’s enough for you to take someone seriously. maybe you could have considered the way you shit on various media for weeks at a time, for reasons anywhere from the cartoon being actually bad to a few fans having political opinions you don’t like—maybe you could have considered this and realized how much of a problem this is.

and maybe you could have the presence of mind, if you’re not willing to put any effort into considering people’s thoughts, not to just find some way to use them to support the ones you already hold.