SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Black Hole Conditions, Right Here on Earth
from ScienceNOW Daily News
A team of researchers has created conditions analogous to those found outside of a black hole by blasting a plastic pellet with high-energy laser beams. The advance should sharpen insights into the behavior of matter and energy in extreme conditions.
Astronomers can't observe black holes directly because their immense gravity won't let light escape. Instead, they have focused on what they can see, namely, the surrounding cloud of swirling matter, known as an accretion disk.
When crunched and heated by the black hole's gravitational energy, these disks glow in x-ray light. Analyzing the spectra of these x-rays gives researchers clues about the physics of the black hole.
Read more...
Click here to listen to podcasts of American Scientist Pizza Lunches, informal lectures where scientists present new research to non-scientists. Originally intended for science communicators in the Research Triangle Park region of North Carolina, the audio slideshows are now available to anyone online. New talks are posted periodically during the academic year.
Science in the Media
Newspapers:
Magazines and Web Sites:
The Science-Media Intersection:
Subscribe to Our Content!
Visit our RSS Feeds page to choose among 13 customized feeds, or create a free My AmSci account to request an email notice whenever a specified author, department or discipline appears online.