World-wide Campaign Sheds New Light on Nature's "LHC"
id="attachment_59419" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 590px">href="http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/blazar-jet-e1268344202169.jpg">src="http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/blazar-jet-e1268344202169.jpg" alt="" title="Blazar jet" width="580" height="589" class="size-full wp-image-59419" />class="wp-caption-text">Recent observations of blazar jets require researchers to look deeper into whether current theories about jet formation and motion require refinement. This simulation, courtesy of Jonathan McKinney (KIPAC), shows a black hole pulling in nearby matter (yellow) and spraying energy back out into the universe in a jet (blue and red) that is held together by magnetic field lines (green).
/> In a manner somewhat like the formation of an alliance to defeat Darth Vader's Death
href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/stars/" class="alinks_links" title="" rel="external">Star, more than a decade ago astronomers formed
href="http://www.oato.inaf.it/blazars/webt/">the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope consortium to understand Nature's Death Ray Gun (a.k.a.
href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/galaxies/blazars/" class="alinks_links" title="" rel="external">blazars). And contrary to its at-death's-door sounding name,
href="http://www.oato.inaf.it/blazars/webt/">the GASP has proved crucial to unraveling the secrets of how Nature's "LHC" works.
"As href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/the-universe/" class="alinks_links" title="" rel="external">the universe's biggest accelerators, href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/galaxies/blazars/" class="alinks_links" title="" rel="external">blazar jets are important to understand," said Kavli Institute for Particle href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/astronomy/astrophysics/" class="alinks_links" title="" rel="external">Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) Research Fellow Masaaki Hayashida, corresponding author on the recent paper presenting the new results with KIPAC Astrophysicist Greg Madejski. "But how they are produced and how they are structured is not well understood. We're still looking to understand the basics."
Blazars dominate the gamma-ray sky, discrete spots on the dark backdrop href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/the-universe/" class="alinks_links" title="" rel="external">of the universe. As nearby matter falls into the href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/black-holes/supermassive-black-hole/" class="alinks_links" title="" rel="external">supermassive black hole at the center of a blazar, "feeding" the href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/black-holes/black-hole/" class="alinks_links" title="" rel="external">black hole, it sprays some of this energy back out into the href="http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/the-universe/" class="alinks_links" title="" rel="external">universe as a jet of particles./> (...)
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© Jean Tate for href="http://www.universetoday.com">Universe Today, 2010. | href="http://www.universetoday.com/2010/03/11/world-wide-campaign-sheds-new-light-on-natures-lhc/">Permalink | href="http://www.universetoday.com/2010/03/11/world-wide-campaign-sheds-new-light-on-natures-lhc/#comments">28 comments |
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