random thoughts on the discovery that black hole outflows contain rubies and sapphires
Corundum grains are always nice, even a micron at a time.
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Spitzer has an interesting press release...
Dusty SN2003gd
The Spitzer infrared space observatory recently did followup imaging of a type II supernova in the nearby spiral galaxy M74.
Type II supernovae occur when a short lived massive star (> 8 times the mass of the Sun, or so) exhaust the…
Final day of the "A Universe of Black Holes" workshop with a session: "Modeling Black Hole Accretion and Outflows" - all MHD sims today...
Chris Reynolds (Univ. of Maryland) starts with - The temporal variability of model accretion disks
Had to miss this. Go check it online, Chis gives fab talks.…
Why are most stars in binary systems? New Spitzer results may help explain.
Stars form from cosmic dust accumulating in sufficient quantities to generate sufficient gravity to mush the atoms with sufficient compression to cause nuclear fusion. The dust initially gathers in a large formation long…
Awesome combined image from Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra, showing deep view of the centre of the Milky Way, in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy.
From Hubblesite.org
Annotated image (click for larger version)
Full image collection at Hubblesite.org
Tricolore (click for larger…
Interesting...intergalactic gemology? I suppose we can take the proposed output of rubies and sapphires and convert it to a monetary equivalent. Data mining, indeed.
Once upon a time, the rainbow's end
Is where a leprechaun would hide his gold
Then Newton showed us how a glass would bend
A beam of light--a rainbow we behold!
This bending light is what allows, today,
A view of distant galaxies and more
The start of time itself is on display
And lifetimes' worth of treasures to explore.
These treasures, it now seems, include real jewels
When quasar jets spit rubies and sapphires;
From Newton's prism, oh what wondrous tools
Expose a treasure passing all desires
The rainbow's gold's forgotten; this is real:
A myth discarded, treasures may reveal!
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2007/10/rainbows-and-rubies.html