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Selected Chandra Articles & Media HighlightsThis is a sample of the news coverage the Chandra X-ray Observatory has received during this quarter. To read the story and learn about copyright policies, please visit the individual publication's website or your local library.December 2002
Headline: Shedding Light on Dark Matter, NASA'S Chandra X-ray Observatory Reveal the Invisible Stuff that Makes Up Our universe Byline: Philip Plait Selected Text: The black hole at the center of our Galaxy is spewing out blasts of X-rays unlike anything we've seen before. The strange emissions may be a clue to how the monster is feeding. NASA's Chandra X-ray satellite was trained on the galactic center for several days last year. When astronomers led by Frederick Baganoff of MIT analyzed the data, they saw several sharp bursts from the central source, Sagittarius A, where the black hole lurks. The flares, which throw out energy at about the same rate as the Sun, last an hour or less and happen about once a day.
Headline: Discovery May Change Conception of Galaxies Byline: Dan Klepal Selected Text: Astronomers at Ohio University have made a discovery that could force scientists to recalculate how much mass - stars, planets and other matter - is in millions of galaxies in the universe. Using the Chandra X-ray Observatory in orbit above Earth, professors Tom Statler and Brian McNamara identified the largest disk of hot, X-ray emitting gas ever discovered. It's located in galaxy some 160 million light years away. But the size of the gas disk isn't as important as its rotation. Because the gas has movement - something long theorized but never before proven - it has the potential of throwing off calculations of the amount of cosmic stuff in elliptical galaxies throughout space. The next step, said Mr. Statler, is to see if gas disks in other such galaxies also move. November 2002
Headline: Astronomers Foresee Enormous Collision of Two Black Holes Byline: Warren E. Leary Selected Text: Two giant black holes have been found at the center of a galaxy born from the joining of two smaller galaxies and are drifting toward a cataclysmic collision that will send ripples throughout the universe many millions of years from now, scientists said today. The detection of the supermassive black holes -- collapsing objects so dense that their gravity draws in all material around them, including light -- is the first definitive evidence that two of them can exist in the same galaxy. These particular black holes, found by a team of researchers using the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory, are circling each other in a Mephisto waltz that will lead to their merging in several hundred million years. That joining, astronomers said, will result in a monumental release of radiation and gravitational waves that should stretch across the universe. move. Publication: The Christian Science Monitor (November 20, 2002, p. 02) Headline: A Megamerger in Space: Two Black Holes Collide Byline: Peter N. Spotts Selected Text: Like a pair of cosmic sumo wrestlers, two supermassive black holes in a galaxy 4 million light years away are warily approaching each other in preparation for a titanic collision that will shake the very fabric of space-time. And Gunther Hasinger has a front-row seat. Using the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Dr. Hasinger and his colleagues have collected images of the pair, the first such images of galactic black holes merging. The merger is the result of a collision between two large galaxies, identified collectively as NGC6240. The Chandra observation could help astronomers account for the presence of massive black holes at the center of many galaxies, including our own Milky Way. It also provides a window on how galaxies have formed and evolved over the past 15 billion years. move. October 2002
Headline: They Eat Stars for Breakfast. They Flout the Laws of Physics. But Do Black Holes Really Exist and What Would You See if You Fell into One? Byline: Hazel Muir Selected Text: The case for black holes may become stronger with the help of the latest orbiting X-ray observatories: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched in July 1999, and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton, launched in December of the same year. These satellites can measure the detailed patterns of X-ray wavelengths emitted by accretion discs. Already they have found evidence that the strong gravity just outside the event horizon of a supermassive black hole saps energy from light, just as general relativity predicts it should.
Headline: Former Harvard researcher awarded physics Nobel Prize Byline: Jules Crittenden Selected Text: A visionary in astrophysics whose work in Cambridge helped reveal some of the mysteries of black holes, distant galaxy clusters, quasars and supernova remnants was one of three scientists awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics yesterday ... His research laid the foundation for X-ray astronomy, which has led to the discovery of black holes and allowed researchers to peer deep into the hearts of the dusty young galaxies where stars are born. "It changed the whole field," said Leon van Speybroeck, a CfA astrophysicist who worked with Giacconi in the 1970s. Van Speybroeck said X-ray astronomy was once considered a "peculiar" field, but Giacconi's work in developing telescopes that could focus diffuse X-rays produced images of previously unseen objects. When we look now at a cluster of galaxies, most of the mass we are able to detect is through X-rays," van Speybroeck said. He credits Giacconi with helping to develop the original proposal for NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, based in Cambridge, with CfA astrophysicist Harvey Tananbaum.
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Revised: February 20, 2008
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