Black hole seeds key to galaxies behemoths
Early Universe explosion sheds light on elusive black hole
2021-03-29
(Press-News.org) A new black hole breaks the record -- not for being the smallest or the biggest -- but for being right in the middle.
The recently discovered 'Goldilocks' black hole is part of a missing link between two populations of black holes: small black holes made from stars and supermassive giants in the nucleus of most galaxies.
In a joint effort, researchers from the University of Melbourne and Monash University have uncovered a black hole approximately 55,000 times the mass of the sun, a fabled "intermediate-mass" black hole.
The discovery was published today in the paper Evidence for an intermediate mass black hole from a gravitationally lensed gamma-ray burst in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Lead author and University of Melbourne PhD student, James Paynter, said the latest discovery sheds new light on how supermassive black holes form. "While we know that these supermassive black holes lurk in the cores of most, if not all galaxies, we don't understand how these behemoths are able to grow so large within the age of the Universe," he said.
The new black hole was found through the detection of a gravitationally lensed gamma-ray burst.
The gamma-ray burst, a half-second flash of high-energy light emitted by a pair of merging stars, was observed to have a tell-tale 'echo'. This echo is caused by the intervening intermediate-mass black hole, which bends the path of the light on its way to Earth, so that astronomers see the same flash twice.
Powerful software developed to detect black holes from gravitational waves was adapted to establish that the two flashes are images of the same object.
"This newly discovered black hole could be an ancient relic -- a primordial black hole -- created in the early Universe before the first stars and galaxies formed," said study co-author, Professor Eric Thrane from the Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy and Chief Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).
"These early black holes may be the seeds of the supermassive black holes that live in the hearts of galaxies today."
Paper co-author, gravitational lensing pioneer, Professor Rachel Webster from the University of Melbourne, said the findings have the potential to help scientists make even greater strides.
"Using this new black hole candidate, we can estimate the total number of these objects in the Universe. We predicted that this might be possible 30 years ago, and it is exciting to have discovered a strong example."
The researchers estimate that some 46,000 intermediate mass black holes are in the vicinity of our Milky Way galaxy.
INFORMATION:
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-03-29
In the last few years, as climate changes continues to become more severe, there has been a growing push for rich countries to pay poorer ones to preserve and protect rain forests and other tropical forests. However, according to a new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, RIHN Associate Professor Keiichiro Kanemoto and Senior Researcher Nguyen Tien Hoang show that other financial motives, namely international trade, with these same rich countries have actually encouraged poorer countries to increase their annual deforestation levels from 2001 to 2015.
Every year ...
2021-03-29
CAMBRIDGE, MA - Using an ordinary light microscope, MIT engineers have devised a technique for imaging biological samples with accuracy at the scale of 10 nanometers -- which should enable them to image viruses and potentially even single biomolecules, the researchers say.
The new technique builds on expansion microscopy, an approach that involves embedding biological samples in a hydrogel and then expanding them before imaging them with a microscope. For the latest version of the technique, the researchers developed a new type of hydrogel that maintains a more uniform configuration, allowing for greater accuracy in imaging tiny structures.
This degree of accuracy ...
2021-03-29
Simulating the interactions between atoms and molecules is important for many scientific studies. However, accurate simulations can take a long time, which limits their use. To speed up simulations without sacrificing too much detail, Siewert-Jan Marrink, Professor of Molecular Dynamics at the University of Groningen, designed a set of parameters that allow fast but accurate coarse-grained simulations. In a paper that was published on 29 March in Nature Methods, Marrink and his co-workers present a third release of what is known as the Martini forcefield.
'Our Martini forcefield typically combines four heavy atoms and any attached protons into ...
2021-03-29
New research reveals how cancer cells endure stress and survive. Publishing in Molecular Cell, an international research team identified mechanisms that human and mouse cells use to survive heat shock and resume their original function - and even pass the memory of the experience of stress down to their daughter cells.
Lead author Anniina Vihervaara, Assistant Professor in Gene Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, says the results provide insight into the mechanisms that coordinate transcription in cells, which potentially could make a vital contribution in disease research.
The researchers examined how embryonic fibroblast ...
2021-03-29
The permanent rise of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere, which fundamentally changed the subsequent nature of Earth's habitability, occurred much later than thought, according to new research.
And the study, from an international team led by the University of Leeds and including researchers from the University of California-Riverside, Harvard University, the University of Southern Denmark and the University of St Andrews, also provides an explanation for some of the most extreme climate episodes to have affected the Earth, when the planet was repeatedly covered with ice.
The first time oxygen was significantly present in the atmosphere was about ...
2021-03-29
A team of researchers led by Aarhus University and including experts from universities and knowledge institutions in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia has published an article in the prestigious scientific journal Joule confirming that the role of solar photovoltaic installations in future green energy systems ought to be significantly upgraded.
Solar photovoltaic technology has undergone dramatic development over the past 14 years causing the technology to be cheaper already today than has otherwise been assumed in the models that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses for its 2050 scenarios.
"And ...
2021-03-29
The B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants of SARS-CoV-2 were first detected in the UK and South Africa respectively, and have since spread to many other countries. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur joined forces with Orléans Regional Hospital, Tours University Hospital, Créteil Intercommunal Hospital, Strasbourg University Hospital and Georges Pompidou European Hospital to study the sensitivity of these two variants to neutralizing antibodies present in the serum samples of people who have been vaccinated or previously infected with SARS-CoV-2. They compared this sensitivity with that of the reference virus (D614G), which was until recently the most widespread strain in France. The scientists demonstrated that the UK variant is neutralized to the ...
2021-03-29
Until now, historians have treated accounts of extreme weather events that might indicate climate change, or more specifically an increase in rainfall, with suspicion. Too many purely cultural factors, they argue, might have influenced one author or another to write about rains, droughts or floods. A new interdisciplinary study lead by researchers from the University of Pisa and the University of Warsaw, together with an international team of collaborators, links data indicating increased precipitation in northern and central Italy during the 6th century CE to historical accounts contained in contemporaneous texts about the lives and miracles of saints. The paper successfully integrates palaeoclimate proxies with historical ...
2021-03-29
Researchers from Skoltech have developed an early prototype of a medical imaging system that uses neural networks to analyze near-infrared images of veins and project a venous pattern onto a patient's body - this may make blood draws much easier and less of a nuisance for patients with difficult access to veins. The paper was published in the proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV).
According to data cited in the paper, out of approximately 20 million blood tests performed globally every day, almost 45% are estimated to involve some degree of discomfort for the patient whose ...
2021-03-29
(Boston)--Pregnancy complications affect up to one in three pregnancies and are increasingly linked to future chronic disease. For example, preeclampsia is associated with a doubled risk of cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S., and gestational diabetes is associated with a seven-fold increased risk of type 2 diabetes. While guidelines recommend preventive care starting within the first postpartum year to address such pregnancy-related health risks, the connections between pregnancy health and future health are often neglected.
In ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Black hole seeds key to galaxies behemoths
Early Universe explosion sheds light on elusive black hole
