Visitor Locations
- Portrait of a Doomed Asteroid
A new study provides a possible explanation of mysterious X-ray flares detected by the Chandra K-ray Observatory for several years in the region of Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*. The study suggests a cloud around Sgr A*, a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, which contains hundreds of trillions of asteroids and comets that have been stripped from their parent stars. The flares occur when asteroids of six miles or larger in radius are consumed by the black hole. An asteroid that undergoes a close encounter with another object, such as a star or planet, can be thrown into an orbit headed towards Sgr A*. If the asteroid passes within about 100 million miles of the black hole, roughly the distance between the Earth and the sun, it is torn into pieces by the tidal forces from the black hole. These fragments would then be vaporized by friction as they pass through the hot, thin gas flowing onto Sgr A*, similar to a meteor heating up and glowing as it falls through Earth's atmosphere. A flare is produced and eventually the remains of the asteroid are swallowed by the black hole. Image Credit: Illustrations: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss
Read More
Daily Archives: August 26, 2007
Inspiration? Motivation?
Anyone that has found this blog, and follows it will likely have already seen the “meat” of this post. While I have never really found an attraction to “rap” this particular performance and message hits home for me. I have … Continue reading
Posted in Marine Sites
Leave a comment
Revamping the Site
Hang tight folks, I will likely have some remodeling taking place on this site over the next month of two. I need to figure out what I can and cannot do with both this host, and their version of wordpress. … Continue reading
Posted in Admin
Leave a comment
Missing Updates
I apologize to anyone following, or dropping into this blog looking for entries. As I implied in a couple of previous posts, life has been keeping me busy recently. Between the kids, work, building a new computer (and rebuilding the … Continue reading
Posted in Admin
Leave a comment
The Old Ways
So aside from being swamped and not having enough time to post to this blog as much as I would like, I have been following an interesting daily quote series over at Random Nuclear Strikes, excerpts from The Reagan Diaries. … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History
Leave a comment