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SPACE WATCH
Pink Opaque
NASA – An extraordinary outburst produced by a black hole in a nearby galaxy has provided direct evidence for a population of old, volatile stellar black holes. The discovery, made by astronomers using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, provides new insight into the nature of a mysterious class of black holes that can produce as much energy in X-rays as a million suns radiate at all wavelengths.
Researchers used Chandra to discover a new ultraluminous X-ray source, or ULX. These objects give off more X-rays than most binary systems, in which a companion star orbits the remains of a collapsed star. These collapsed stars form either a dense core called a neutron star or a black hole. The extra X-ray emission suggests ULXs contain black holes that might be much more massive than the ones found elsewhere in our galaxy.
A paper describing these results will appear in the May 10, 2012, issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Curtin University/R. Soria et al., Optical: NASA/STScI/ Middlebury College/F. Winkler et al.
Reuters/EurActive.com – The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) – signed by 22 of the EU’s 27 countries, the US and Japan among others but not ratified by any of them – is one of several, including the US-based draft copyright bills SOPA and PIPA, to fall foul of public opinion.
FRANCE 24 – It was billed as “The Final Confrontation” and that’s exactly what millions of TV viewers across France got Wednesday night as incumbent French President Nicolas Sarkozy squared off against his Socialist challenger, François Hollande, in an intensely contested face-off, the only debate of the 2012 campaign.
R&D Mag – Scientists are reporting development and successful testing of the first self-propelled “microsubmarines” designed to pick up droplets of oil from contaminated waters and transport them to collection facilities.
By Chris Barton – [
