14 DAY TRIAL // Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have identified the source of a mysterious blue light surrounding a super-massive black hole in our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy (M31). For more than a decade, astronomers have been puzzled by the strange light.
The blue light is coming from a disk of hot, young stars whipping around the black hole in much the same way as planets in our solar system are revolving around the sun. Astronomers are perplexed about how the pancake- shaped disk of stars could form so close to a giant black hole. In such a hostile environment, the black hole's tidal forces should tear matter apart, making it difficult for gas and dust to collapse and form stars. These observations, astronomers say, may provide clues to the activities in the cores of more distant galaxies.
By finding the disk of stars astronomers have collected what they say is ironclad evidence for the existence of the super-massive black hole. The evidence has helped astronomers rule out all alternative theories for the dark mass in Andromeda's core, which scientists have long suspected was a black hole.
"Now that we have proven that the black hole is at the center of the disk of blue stars, the formation of these stars becomes hard to understand," said Ralph Bender of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. "Gas that might form stars must spin around the black hole so quickly that star formation looks almost impossible. But the stars are there," he added.
The astronomers also used STIS to measure the velocities of those stars. They obtained the stars' speeds by calculating how much their light waves are stretched and compressed as they travel around the black hole. Under the black hole's gravitational grip, the stars are traveling very fast: 2.2 million miles an hour. They are moving so fast it would take the stars 40 seconds to circle the earth and only six minutes to arrive at the moon.
This week, Softpedia would like to know your opinion on gaming consoles. What is your favorite console you either own or you are planning to buy? Are you an Xbox fan or a Playstation fan? Has Xbox360 convinced you it's time to buy one? Or you'll wait for the PS3? Express your opinion here.