June 6, 2012

Good Morning,

A black hole that dwarfs the mass of our sun is apparently speeding out of its galaxy at an astounding speed. Check out the details on this unique event in the third article.

Until Next Time,
Erin

Questions? Comments? Email me at: mailto:gizmo@gophercentral.com
Email your comments

P.S. You can discuss this issue or any other topic in the new
Gizmorama forum. Check it out here...
http://gizmorama.gophercentral.com
------------------------------------------------------------

Tree rings suggest ancient cosmic event

NAGOYA, Japan - Japanese researchers say ancient tree ring data suggests Earth may have been the target of an unusual cosmic ray bombardment 1,200 years ago. When cosmic rays -- subatomic particles traveling through space -- reach Earth they react with the atmosphere, producing new particles, including carbon-14 that is taken up by trees during photosynthesis and is "fixed" in the tree's annual growth ring. Researchers at Nagoya University examined the carbon-14 content of two Japanese cedar trees and found an unusually high amount of the isotope between A.D. 774 and 775, NewScientist.com reported Sunday. A similar increase has been found in the carbon-14 record of North American trees of the time, they said. It is unclear what caused the sudden increase in cosmic rays, researcher Fusa Miyake said. A supernova would account for it, but such an event would have left a visible trace in today's sky, he said, and while it could have been a solar flare, it would have to have been a far more energetic than any discovered so far. "I cannot imagine a single flare which would be so bright," said Igor Moskalenko, an astrophysicist at Stanford University, who was not involved in the study. "Rather, it may be a series of weaker flares over the period of one to three years." Researchers from Queen's University in Northern Ireland recently found an increase in carbon-14 in tree rings dating to the mid-770s, NewScientist.com said.


Physicists probe atomic mystery

PASADENA, Calif. - U.S. physicists say the most sensitive measurements yet in a hunt for a hypothetical atomic process could help solve some of the universe's biggest mysteries. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory say their experiment, involving the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei, could help scientists understand the fundamental laws of physics and why there is more matter than antimatter -- and therefore why regular matter like planets, stars and humans exists at all. The EXO-200 experiment has made the most sensitive measurements on the nature of a hypothetical so-called neutrinoless double beta decay, and has narrowed the range of possible masses for the neutrino -- a tiny uncharged particle that rarely interacts with anything -- passing through rock, people and planets as it zips along at nearly the speed of light, a Caltech release reported Monday. In a normal double beta decay, which was first observed in 1986, two neutrons in an unstable atomic nucleus turn into two protons. In the process, two electrons and two anti-neutrinos -- the antimatter counterparts of neutrinos -- are emitted. Physicists have suggested two neutrons could also decay into two protons by emitting two electrons without producing any anti-neutrinos if the two neutrinos produced could somehow cancel each other out. If this neutrinoless process does indeed exist, physicists would be forced to revise the Standard Model, the remarkably successful theory that describes how all elementary particles behave and interact, because the model does not predict a neutrino could act as its own antiparticle. "People have been looking for this process for a very long time," EXO-200 researcher Petr Vogel said. "It would be a very fundamental discovery if someone actually observes it."


Black hole 'evicted' from host galaxy?

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - U.S. astronomers say they've seen evidence a massive black hole is being ejected from its host galaxy at several million miles per hour. "It's hard to believe that a supermassive black hole weighing millions of times the mass of the sun could be moved at all, let alone kicked out of a galaxy at enormous speed," said Francesca Civano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who led the study. Observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest the black hole collided and merged with another black hole and received a powerful recoil kick from gravitational wave radiation resulting from the collision sufficient to push the merged black hole out of the galaxy. "[These] new data support the idea that gravitational waves -- ripples in the fabric of space first predicted by Albert Einstein but never detected directly -- can exert an extremely powerful force," Civano said in a release from the Chandra headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. The finding could mean there are giant black holes roaming undetected out in the vast spaces between galaxies, researchers said. "These black holes would be invisible to us," study co-author Laura Blecha said, "because they have consumed all of the gas surrounding them after being thrown out of their home galaxy."


Biofuel process said competetive with oil

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - U.S. researchers say they've developed a process for creating biofuels cost-effective enough to consider production-scale operations. An economic analysis by the Purdue University scientists behind the research shows the cost of their thermo-chemical H2Bioil method is competitive when crude oil is about $100 per barrel, and if a federal carbon tax were implemented the biofuel would become even more economical, a Purdue release reported Monday. H2Bioil is created by heating biomass such as switchgrass or corn leaves and stalks to about 900 degrees Fahrenheit in the presence of pressurized hydrogen and passing the resulting gases over catalysts to create carbon molecules high in energy content, similar to gasoline molecules. "The process is quite fast and converts entire biomass to liquid fuel," chemical engineering Professor Rakesh Agrawal said. "As a result, the yields are substantially higher. "Once the process is fully developed, due to the use of external hydrogen, the yield is expected to be two to three times that of the current competing technologies." The method's initial implementation has worked on a laboratory scale and is being refined so it would become effective on a commercial scale, he said. "This economic analysis shows us that the process is viable on a commercial scale," Agrawal said. "We can now go back to the lab and focus on refining and improving the process with confidence."

------------------------------------------------------------
Check out Viral Videos on the Net at EVTV1.com
http://www.evtv1.com/
EVTV1.com