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The Milky Way’s Slumbering Giant Awakes

04.15.08

At the center of our Milky Way Galaxy lies a monster: a giant black hole that contains about 4 million times more material than our sun. Yet it’s a sleeping giant. Compared to the giant black holes in the centers of other galaxies, our black hole is strangely quiet.

But a team of Japanese astronomers may have helped solve the mystery. By using four satellites that catch X-rays from outer space, they have found evidence that our black hole wasn’t so quiet 300 years ago. They have shown that the black hole let loose a powerful outburst of X-ray light.

"We have wondered why the Milky Way’s black hole appears to be a slumbering giant," says team leader Tatsuya Inui of Kyoto University in Japan. "But now we realize that the black hole was far more active in the past. Perhaps it’s just resting after a major outburst."

The black hole itself is known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star"), for its location in the constellation Sagittarius. Normally, the black hole is quiet, producing billions of times less energy than giant black holes in other galaxies. But according to Inui and his colleagues, the black hole must have produced an incredible burst of X-ray light three centuries ago. They made this discovery by noticing a strange effect known as "light echoes."

Light echoes are similar to the sound echoes we hear when sound waves reverberate in a room or valley. In the case of light echoes, the X-rays produced by the giant outburst have been racing outward across trillions of miles of space at the speed of light. Three hundred years later, they have traveled far enough that they reach a giant gas cloud known as Sagittarius B2. Once they penetrate this cloud, they heat up the gas, and cause it to glow brightly in X-rays. But once the X-rays pass through the cloud, it cools down, and its brightness fades back to normal.
So Sagittarius B2 acts like a giant mirror. The light echoes inside the cloud give astronomers a record of the black hole’s energy output 300 years earlier.

By using Japan’s Suzaku and ASCA X-ray satellites, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory, Inui’s team could observe the behavior of the cloud between 1994 and 2005.

"By observing how this cloud lit up and faded over 10 years, we could trace back the black hole’s activity 300 years ago," says team member Katsuji Koyama of Kyoto University. "The black hole was a million times brighter three centuries ago. It must have unleashed an incredibly powerful flare."

It takes light from the Milky Way Galaxy’s center about 26,000 years to reach Earth, so when astronomers observe the black hole and the gas cloud, they are actually seeing events that took place 26,000 years ago. At that time, Earth was still plunged in the last ice age, and humans were living in caves.

Astronomers don’t know why Sagittarius A* produced such a powerful flare three centuries ago. One possibility, says Koyama, is that a giant star exploded. The blast wave from the explosion plowed up gas and swept it into the black hole, leading to a temporary feeding frenzy that awoke the black hole from its slumber and produced the giant flare.

Launched in 2005, Suzaku is the fifth in a series of Japanese satellites devoted to studying celestial X-ray sources and is managed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. This mission is a collaborative effort between Japanese universities and institutions and NASA Goddard. Robert Naeye
Goddard Space Flight Center

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NASA Spacecraft Tracks Raging Saturn Storm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2008) — As a powerful electrical storm rages on Saturn with lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than those found on Earth, the Cassini spacecraft continues its five-month watch over the dramatic events.

Scientists with NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission have been tracking the visibly bright, lightning-generating storm--the longest continually observed electrical storm ever monitored by Cassini.

Saturn's electrical storms resemble terrestrial thunderstorms, but on a much larger scale. Storms on Saturn have diameters of several thousand kilometers (thousands of miles), and radio signals produced by their lightning are thousands of times more powerful than those produced by terrestrial thunderstorms. Lightning flashes within the persistent storm produce radio waves called Saturn electrostatic discharges, which the radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected on Nov. 27, 2007. Cassini's imaging cameras monitored the position and appearance of the storm, first spotting it about a week later, on Dec. 6. "The electrostatic radio outbursts have waxed and waned in intensity for five months now," said Georg Fischer, an associate with the radio and plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "We saw similar storms in 2004 and 2006 that each lasted for nearly a month, but this storm is longer-lived by far. And it appeared after nearly two years during which we did not detect any electrical storm activity from Saturn." The new storm is located in Saturn's southern hemisphere--in a region nicknamed "Storm Alley" by mission scientists--where the previous lightning storms were observed by Cassini. "In order to see the storm, the imaging cameras have to be looking at the right place at the right time, and whenever our cameras see the storm, the radio outbursts are there," said Ulyana Dyudina, an associate of the Cassini imaging team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. Cassini's radio plasma wave instrument detects the storm every time it rotates into view, which happens every 10 hours and 40 minutes, the approximate length of a Saturn day. Every few seconds the storm gives off a radio pulse lasting for about a tenth of a second, which is typical of lightning bolts and other electrical discharges. These radio waves are detected even when the storm is over the horizon as viewed from Cassini, a result of the bending of radio waves by the planet's atmosphere. Amateur astronomers have kept track of the storm over its five-month lifetime. "Since Cassini's camera cannot track the storm every day, the amateur data are invaluable," said Fischer. "I am in continuous contact with astronomers from around the world." The long-lived storm will likely provide information on the processes powering Saturn's intense lightning activity. Cassini scientists will continue to monitor Storm Alley as the seasons change, bringing the onset of autumn to the planet’s southern hemisphere. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

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14-May-2008 -- Catholic News Agency

Believing in Aliens Not Opposed to Christianity, Vatican’s Top Astronomer Says

Vatican City, May 13, 2008 (CNA).- The Director of the Vatican's Observatory, Fr. José Gabriel Funes, said in an interview with the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, that believing in the possible existence of extraterrestrial life is not opposed to Catholic doctrine.The 45-year-old Argentinean priest heads the Vatican Observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII with offices at Castelgandolfo, near the Apostolic summer palace, and another in Tucson, Arizona. Fr. Funes has been in charge of the Observatory since August 2006.The astronomer began the interview titled, "The Alien is my Brother," by saying that, "Astronomy has a profound human value. It is a science that opens the heart and the mind. It helps us to put our lives, our hopes, our problems in the right perspective. In this regard, and here I speak as a priest and a Jesuit, it is an apostolic instrument that can bring us closer to God", said Fr. Funes in the interview. Regarding the beginning of the universe, Fr. Funes says that he personally believes that the "big bang" theory seems to him the most plausible, and that it does not contradict the Bible. "We cannot ask the Bible for a scientific answer here. At the same time, we don't know if in a near future the 'Big Bang' theory will be superseded by a more complete and precise explanation of the origin of the universe."When he was asked about the possibility of extraterrestrial life, the Director of the Vatican Observatory responded that "it is possible, even if until now, we have no proof. But certainly in such a big universe this hypothesis cannot be excluded." Asked is he sees a contradiction between the Catholic faith and believing in aliens, he said, "I think there isn't (a contradiction). Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures over the earth, so there could be other beings, even intelligent (beings), created by God. This is not in contradiction with our faith, because we cannot establish limits to God's creative freedom. To say it with St. Francis, if we can consider some earthly creatures as 'brothers' or 'sisters', why could we not speak of a 'brother alien'? He would also belong to the creation." Fr. Funes says that taking the image of the lost sheep in the Gospel, "we could think that in this universe there can be 100 sheep, equivalent to different kinds of creatures. We, belonging to human kind could be precisely the lost sheep, the sinners that need the shepherd. God became man in Jesus to save us. In that way, assuming that there would be other intelligent beings, we could not say that they need redemption . They could have remained in full friendship with the Creator.""But if they were sinners?" L'Osservatore's journalist asks. "Jesus became man once and for all. The Incarnation is a single and unique event. So I am sure that also they, in some way, would have the chance to enjoy God's mercy, just as it has happened with us human beings."
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May 28 2008, 1:29 AM EDT by workman34

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