Black holed

LOS ANGELES ­— Insights into a black hole paradox may come from a down-to-Earth source. Superconductors, materials through which electrons can move without freely without resistance, may share some of the physics of black holes, physicist Sreenath Kizhakkumpurath Manikandan of the University of Rochester in New York reported March 7 at a meeting of the American Physical Society. The analogy between the two objects could help scientists understand what happens to information that gets swallowed up in a black hole’s abyss. When a black hole gobbles up particles, information about the particles’ properties is seemingly trapped inside. According to quantum mechanics, such information cannot be destroyed. Physicist Stephen Hawking determined in 1974 that black holes slowly evaporate over time, emitting what’s known as Hawking radiation before eventually disappearing. That fact implies a conundrum known as the black hole information paradox (SN: 5/31/14, p. 16): … [Read more...] about Superconductors may shed light on the black hole information paradox

When a massive star explodes, one of two things happens. Its core compacts into a space no bigger than a city, creating an ultra-dense object called a neutron star, or it or collapses entirely into a black hole from which nothing can escape.The star's fate seemed like and either-or proposition. But maybe that's wrong, according to a group of Italian researchers who just published a Physical Review Letters paper. You can thank the weird world of quantum physics. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Neutron stars and black holes play by the rules of Einsteinian physics. For the most part they obey the laws of gravity it sets forth through the interactions of normal particles and matter—a neutron star, for instance, is called that because it's a thick plasma soup of neutron-based matter. But within each particle are subparticles called quarks, which is where things get weird at the subatomic level. Say you had a star that was just more than three times the mass of our sun. Here, … [Read more...] about Black Hole Sun: Scientists Theorize an Object That’s Part Neutron Star, Part Black Hole

S. SAKAI/A.GHEZ/W. M. KECK OBSERVATORY/ UCLA GALACTIC CENTER GROUP There is a small group of stars that orbit dangerously close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, Sagittarius A*. These S-stars, as they are called, get so close to the maw at the center of the Milky Way that the immense gravity slings them at velocities around 2.5 percent the speed of light, or almost 17 million miles per hour (27 million km/h). Advertisement - Continue Reading Below One of these stars, S0-2, will make its closest approach to the black hole at the center of our galaxy this spring. Sagittarius A*—the most massive object in the galaxy with more than 4 million times the mass of the sun—will warp the star and tug at its light, which astronomers can measure from Earth, about 26,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center where the supermassive black hole reigns.Astronomers have been waiting for the star, known as Source 2 (S2 or S0-2), to make its close pass to … [Read more...] about Einstein’s Theory of Gravity Is About to Get a Test From a Star Passing by Supermassive Black Hole