Invading Black Holes Explain Cosmic Flashes

[steven johnson]

In the center of a swirling whirlpool of hot gas is likely a beast that has never been seen directly: a black hole which is creating a gamma ray burst.

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2009) — Black holes are invading stars, providing a radical explanation to bright flashes in the universe that are one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy today.

The flashes, known as gamma ray bursts, are beams of high energy radiation – similar to the radiation emitted by explosions of nuclear weapons – produced by jets of plasma from massive dying stars.

But mathematicians at the University of Leeds have come up with a different explanation: the jets come directly from black holes, which can dive into nearby massive stars and devour them.

One particularly peculiar way of creating the right conditions involves not a collapsing star but a star invaded by its black hole companion in a binary system. The black hole acts like a parasite, diving into the normal star, spinning it with gravitational forces on its way to the star's centre, and finally eating it from the inside.


Invading Black Holes Explain Cosmic Flashes

[Speck Tater]

1. Very Cool! Like a worm hollowing out an apple from the inside. nt

[Aragorn]

2. more like

water swirling down a drain.

[Speck Tater]

3. Or like that little creature on Alien eating Kane from the inside. nt

[byronius]

4. Great artist's rendering. Wow.

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