Download or read book Measuring the Angular Momentum of Supermassive Black Holes written by Laura Brenneman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Measuring the spin distribution of supermassive black holes is of critical importance for understanding how these black holes and their host galaxies form and evolve over time, yet this type of study is only in its infancy. This brief describes how astronomers measure spin in supermassive black holes using X-ray spectroscopy. It also reviews the constraints that have been placed on the spin distribution in local, bright active galaxies over the past six years, and the cosmological implications of these constraints. Finally, it summarizes the open questions that remain in this exciting new field of research and points toward future discoveries soon to be made by the next generation of space-based observatories.
Download or read book The Galactic Supermassive Black Hole written by Fulvio Melia and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book The Galactic Supermassive Black Hole written by Fulvio Melia and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, one of the world's leading astrophysicists provides the first comprehensive and logically structured overview of the many ideas and discoveries pertaining to the supermassive black hole at the galactic center known as Sagittarius A*. By far the closest galactic nucleus in the universe, Sagittarius A* alone can provide us with a realistic expectation of learning about the physics of strong gravitational fields, and the impact of such fields on the behavior of matter and radiation under severe physical conditions. Its proximity may even provide the opportunity to directly test one of general relativity's most enigmatic predictions--the existence of closed pockets of space-time hidden behind an event horizon. The plethora of research on Sagittarius A* since its discovery in 1974 has long seemed an interwoven pattern of loose threads. No one has successfully synthesized this growing body of work into a manageable, coherent book both for professional researchers and for students taking courses focusing on black holes and galactic nuclei--until now. With Fulvio Melia's The Galactic Supermassive Black Hole, readers finally have at their disposal a one-volume crucible of essential ideas, logically streamlined but with thorough references for those wishing to explore the various topics in greater depth.
Download or read book Light in the Darkness written by Heino Falcke and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Bestseller On April 10, 2019, award-winning astrophysicist Heino Falcke presented the first image ever captured of a black hole at an international press conference—a turning point in astronomy that Science magazine called the scientific breakthrough of the year. That photo was captured with the unthinkable commitment of an intercontinental team of astronomers who transformed the world into a global telescope. While this image achieved Falcke’s goal in making a black hole “visible” for the first time, he recognizes that the photo itself asks more questions for humanity than it answers. Light in the Darkness takes us on Falcke’s extraordinary journey to the darkest corners of the universe. From the first humans looking up at the night sky to modern astrophysics, from the study of black holes to the still-unsolved mysteries of the universe, Falcke asks, in even the greatest triumphs of science, is there room for doubts, faith, and a God? A plea for curiosity and humility, Light in the Darkness sees one of the great minds shaping the world today as he ponders the big, pressing questions that present themselves when we look up at the stars.
Download or read book Quasars and Black Holes written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An introduction to quasars and black holes with information about their formation and characteristics. Includes diagrams, fun facts, a glossary, a resource list, and an index"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Black Hole Survival Guide written by Janna Levin and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space—an authoritative and accessible guide to the most alluring and challenging phenomena of contemporary science. "[Levin will] take you on a safe black hole trip, an exciting travel story enjoyed from your chair’s event horizon.” —Boston Globe Through her writing, astrophysicist Janna Levin has focused on making the science she studies not just comprehensible but also, and perhaps more important, intriguing to the nonscientist. In this book, she helps us to understand and find delight in the black hole—perhaps the most opaque theoretical construct ever imagined by physicists—illustrated with original artwork by American painter and photographer Lia Halloran. Levin takes us on an evocative exploration of black holes, provoking us to imagine the visceral experience of a black hole encounter. She reveals the influence of black holes as they populate the universe, sculpt galaxies, and even infuse the whole expanse of reality that we inhabit. Lively, engaging, and utterly unique, Black Hole Survival Guide is not just informative—it is, as well, a wonderful read from first to last.
Download or read book Supermassive Black Holes in the Distant Universe written by A.J. Barger and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-09 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quasars, and the menagerie of other galaxies with "unusual nuclei", now collectively known as Active Galactic Nuclei or AGN, have, in one form or another, sparked the interest of astronomers for over 60 years. The only known mechanism that can explain the staggering amounts of energy emitted by the innermost regions of these systems is gravitational energy release by matter falling towards a supermassive black hole --- a black hole whose mass is millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. AGN emit radiation at all wavelengths. X-rays originating at a distance of a few times the event horizon of the black hole are the emissions closest to the black hole that we can detect; thus, X-rays directly reveal the presence of active supermassive black holes. Oftentimes, however, the supermassive black holes that lie at the centers of AGN are cocooned in gas and dust that absorb the emitted low energy X-rays and the optical and ultraviolet light, hiding the black hole from view at these wavelengths. Until recently, this low-energy absorption presented a major obstacle in observational efforts to map the accretion history of the universe. In 1999 and 2000, the launches of the Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray Observatories finally broke the impasse. The impact of these observatories on X-ray astronomy is similar to the impact that the Hubble Space Telescope had on optical astronomy. The astounding new data from these observatories have enabled astronomers to make enormous advances in their understanding of when accretion occurs.
Download or read book Supermassive Black Holes written by Andrew King and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-31 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an international leader in the field, this is a coherent and accessible account of the concepts that are now vital for understanding cutting-edge work on supermassive black holes. These include accretion disc misalignment, disc breaking and tearing, chaotic accretion, the merging of binary supermassive holes, the demographics of supermassive black holes, and the defining effects of feedback on their host galaxies. The treatment is largely analytic and gives in-depth discussions of the underlying physics, including gas dynamics, ideal and non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics, force-free electrodynamics, accretion disc physics, and the properties of the Kerr metric. It stresses aspects where conventional assumptions may be inappropriate and encourages the reader to think critically about current models. This volume will be useful for graduate or Masters courses in astrophysics, and as a handbook for active researchers in the field. eBook formats include colour figures while print formats are greyscale only.
Download or read book The Tidal Disruption of Stars by Massive Black Holes written by Peter G. Jonker and published by Springer. This book was released on 2021-11-19 with total page 589 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides an overview of the fast-developing field of tidal disruption events. For several decades, astronomers speculated that a hapless star could wander too close to a massive black hole and be torn apart by tidal forces. Yet it is only with the recent advent of wide-field transient surveys that such events have been detected. Written by a team of prominent researchers, the chapters detail the discoveries made so far in this burgeoning field of study across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from gamma-rays through X-rays, ultra-violet, optical, infrared, and radio. In addition, they show how tidal disruption events can be used to study the properties of otherwise undetectable supermassive black holes; the populations and dynamics of stars in galactic nuclei; the physics of black hole accretion, including the potential to detect relativistic effects near a SMBH; and the physics of (radio) jet formation and evolution in a pristine environment. Finally, the book outlines important outstanding questions about TDEs. With more than 100 color images, the volume will be useful to researchers and others interested in learning more about this promising area of astrophysics. Previously published in Space Science Reviews in the Topical Collection “The Tidal Disruption of Stars by Massive Black Holes”
Download or read book Gravity s Engines written by Caleb Scharf and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offering a sweeping tour of fantastic physics and cosmic history, a view of the most fearsome places in the universe that finally asks what it will take to see the event horizon of a black hole.
Download or read book The X ray Background written by Xavier Barcons and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-07-31 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A review of the current observational knowledge and understanding of the cosmic X-ray background.
Download or read book Death By Black Hole written by Neil deGrasse Tyson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-01-16 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays on the cosmos, written by an American Museum of Natural History astrophysicist, includes "Holy Wars," "Ends of the World," and "Hollywood Nights."
Download or read book Supermassive Black Hole written by Celestial Angell and published by Dedona Publishing. This book was released on with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A black hole is a region in space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape from it. This occurs when a massive amount of matter is compressed into a very small area, creating a powerful gravitational field. Black holes form through various processes that involve the collapse of massive astronomical objects and the merging of smaller black holes. One primary method is the stellar collapse. Stars, during their lifecycle, fuse hydrogen into helium in their cores. When the hydrogen is depleted, they begin fusing heavier elements until iron is produced. For stars more than 20 times the mass of the Sun, the end of this fusion process leads to a supernova explosion. The core of the star collapses rapidly due to gravity, and if the core's mass is sufficiently large (typically more than about three times the mass of the Sun), it will continue collapsing into a singularity, forming a stellar-mass black hole. Another way black holes can form is through accretion and growth. A compact object like a neutron star or a white dwarf can accumulate matter from a companion star or its surroundings. As this matter accumulates, the mass of the compact object increases, and it may eventually reach a critical mass where it collapses into a black hole.
Download or read book The Edge of Infinity written by Fulvio Melia and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-04 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past, they were recognized as the most destructive force in nature. Now, following a cascade of astonishing discoveries, supermassive black holes have undergone a dramatic shift in paradigm. Astronomers are finding out that these objects may have been critical to the formation of structure in the early universe, spawning bursts of star formation, planets, and even life itself. They may have contributed as much as half of all the radiation produced after the Big Bang, and as many as 200 million of them may now be lurking through the vast expanses of the observable cosmos. In this elegant, non-technical account, Melia conveys for the general reader the excitement generated by the quest to expose what these giant distortions in the fabric of space and time have to say about our origin and ultimate destiny.
Download or read book Space 10 Things You Should Know written by Rebecca Smethurst and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Bite-sized, cutting edge science delivered with enormous enthusiasm - all you need to travel the cosmos' CHRIS LINTOTT 'A lot of astrophysics is packed into this neat little book . . . I guarantee you will come away knowing your dark matter from your supermassive black holes' JIM AL-KHALILI This book is for anyone who wants to easily understand the mind-blowing fundamentals of our extraordinary, expanding universe. Written by Oxford astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst and composed of ten captivating, simple essays, it guides you swiftly through the galaxies, explaining the mysteries of black holes, dark matter and what existed before the Big Bang, presenting the evidence as to whether we really are alone, illuminating what we still don't know, and much more besides. If you have big questions about Space, this book will provide you with the answers in an engaging and succinct way.
Download or read book Formation Of The First Black Holes written by Muhammad Latif and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2019-04-26 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The formation of the first supermassive black holes is one of the main open questions in our understanding of high-redshift structure formation. In this book, we aim to provide a summary of state-of-the-art modern research on this topic, exploring the formation of massive black holes from a fluid-dynamical, stellar-dynamical and chemical perspective. The book thus presents a solid theoretical foundation, a comparison with current observations and future observational perspectives with upcoming missions such as the Square Kilometre Array, the European Extremely Large Telescope, the Euclid satellite as well as possible detections via gravitational waves.
Download or read book Astroquizzical the Illustrated Edition written by Jillian Scudder and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
