NASA's Chandra Finds Youngest Nearby Black Hole

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory  have found evidence of the youngest black hole known to exist in our cosmic neighborhood. The 30-year-old black hole provides a unique opportunity to watch this type of object develop from infancy.

The black hole could help scientists better understand how massive stars explode, which ones leave behind black holes or neutron stars, and the number of black holes in our galaxy and others.

Generally Blackholes will be described in terms of Billions of years sounds crazy but this blackhole Is Just Formed 30 years ago making itself the youngest blackhole Ever found in the history of Astronmomy.

The 30-year-old object is a remnant of SN 1979C, a supernova in the galaxy M100 approximately 50 million light years from Earth. Data from Chandra, NASA's Swift satellite, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and the German ROSAT observatory revealed a bright source of X-rays that has remained steady during observation from 1995 to 2007. This suggests the object is a black hole being fed either by material falling into it from the supernova or a binary companion.

The scientists think SN 1979C, first discovered by an amateur astronomer in 1979, formed when a star about 20 times more massive than the sun collapsed. Many new black holes in the distant universe previously have been detected in the form of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).

This new black hole Proves adding more power to the long standng theory that black holes are created by the collapse of large stars and the belief that they continue to be fed by residue from the explosion.
This new  discovery may give scientists new possibilites to know:

*How Black holes Are Formed??

*Under What Cirucmstances star Dies

*And Why a dying Star will sometimes create either a neutron star or a black hole.

"This may be the first time the common way of making a black hole has been observed," said co-author Abraham Loeb, also of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "However, it is very difficult to detect this type of black hole birth because decades of X-ray observations are needed to make the case."

The idea of a black hole with an observed age of only about 30 years is consistent with recent theoretical work. In 2005, a theory was presented that the bright optical light of this supernova was powered by a jet from a black hole that was unable to penetrate the hydrogen envelope of the star to form a GRB. The results seen in the observations of SN 1979C fit this theory very well.

Although the evidence points to a newly formed black hole in SN 1979C, another intriguing possibility is that a young, rapidly spinning neutron star with a powerful wind of high energy particles
could be responsible for the X-ray emission.

This would make the object in SN 1979C the youngest and brightest example of such a "pulsar wind nebula" and the youngest known neutron star. The Crab pulsar, the best-known example of a bright pulsar wind nebula, is about 950 years old.

"It's very rewarding to see how the commitment of some of the most advanced telescopes in space, like Chandra, can help complete the story," said Jon Morse, head of the Astrophysics
Division at NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

The results will appear in the New Astronomy journal in a paper by Patnaude, Loeb, and Christine Jones of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge.


For more Info See nasa-Mission Chandra

Moon Crater Contains Usable Water, NASA Says

A image showing Altitude measurements of South pole of moon taken by Lcrosshe LOLA instrument aboard Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The crater known as Cabeus has been selected as The  LCROSS probe's target.OSS probe's target.

Suddenly moon is making head line and became exiting for all of us again as scientists confirmed that moon crater has more water than previously thought. Moon crater has more water ,if purified they can be used for drinking or broken apart into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel.the moon crater has locked plently of water in the form of ice in its south pole. Infact moon is suprisingly wet than any other place on earth.
Nearly one year back nasa discovered the existence of water molecules on man ,india's chandrayaan added more proof to it by its findings.Soon after in june,the $79 million lCross mission piggy backed no the lunar reconnaissance orbiter was launced to map the lunar surface.

Lcross steered the empty second stage of the rocket,which other wise would have just burned up in the atmosphere ,onto to a collison with the moon.

After slashing the surface of moon in october transmitted data to earth .in november last year the nasa reported that the impact had kicked up at least of 26 gallons of water confirming of ice in the craters. And in the new results increase the water estimate to about 40 gallons and by estimating the amount of dirt excavated by the impact, calculated the concentration of water for the first time.

That's the picture painted by six new studies that analyzed the intentional moon crash of a NASA spacecraft on Oct. 9, 2009. The agency's LCROSS probe was looking for signs of water when it smashed into Cabeus crater at the moon's south pole last year, and the spacecraft found plenty of it.
The new results expand on those original findings, revealing that Cabeus harbors many other compounds, too  stuff like carbon monoxide, ammonia, methane, mercury and silver.
Scientists also confirmed the water was in the form of mostly pure ice crystals in some places. The results are featured in six papers published in the October 22 issue of Science.
"NASA has convincingly confirmed the presence of water ice and characterised its patchy distribution in permanently shadowed regions of the moon," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The twin impacts of LCROSS and a companion rocket stage in the moon's Cabeus crater on October 9, 2009, lifted a plume of material that might not have seen direct sunlight for billions of years.
As the plume traveled nearly 10 miles above the rim of Cabeus, instruments aboard LCROSS and LRO made observations of the crater and debris and vapour clouds.
After the impacts, grains of mostly pure water ice were lofted into the sunlight in the vacuum of space, NASA said.
"Seeing mostly pure water ice grains in the plume means water ice was somehow delivered to the moon in the past, or chemical processes have been causing ice to accumulate in large quantities," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.
"Also, the diversity and abundance of certain materials called volatiles in the plume, suggest a variety of sources, like comets and asteroids, and an active water cycle within the lunar shadow," he said.
Volatiles are compounds that freeze and are trapped in the cold lunar craters and vaporise when warmed by the sun.
The existence of mostly pure water ice could mean future human explorers would not have to retrieve the water out of the soil in order to use it for valuable life support resources.
In addition, an abundant presence of hydrogen gas, ammonia and methane could be exploited to produce fuel, it said.
 

Mars carbon dioxide finding hints at ancient life

Mars the close associative of our earth was proved to be once rich in carbondioxide suggesting the life on the red planet in past,

wide spread deposits of carbonate rock are buried a few miles beneath the surface of mars,according to new research. If These deposits are abundant theywould have helped make it a much wetter and warmer place hundreds of millions of years ago.

These deposits were exposed by a massive meteorite impact ,the team believes there represent ancient sediments that were subsequently buried by volcanic activity from syrtis major.

Joseph michalski of the planetary science institute,arizona and paul niles of the nasa johnson space centre said the surface of mars is now cold,dry,acidic and inhospitable to life. Similar conditions may have persisted for billions of years suggesting for the best place to search for habitable environments is the sub surface .

The researchers said one hint of habitable conditions at depth is the presence of atmospheric methane which may have formed through hydrothermal process in the crust in the presence of carbondioxide.

Two Asteroids came close to Earth

Two Asteroids came close to earth on Atmosphere on Wednesday within short period of time ,Us space agency said.These arge asteroids have narrowly avoided the earth after the objects passed within the moon and our planet’s orbit, Nasa scientists said.If those asteroids would hit the earth then That collision promises to create more damage than that of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.Thank god we had a narrow escape
Nasa said the asteroids were discovered on sunday and they passed closer than the moon's distance to earth .
The first asteroid was named as 2010 Rx30 whihc measures 10 t0 20 meters and the second one called 2010 RF12, was roughly two-thirds the size of its big brother and estimated to pass within just 49,088 miles of Earth hours later.

Galaxy Facts-nearest and brightest galaxy

A galaxy is a system of stars, dust, and gas held together by gravity.Galaxies are groups of billions of stars that are held together by the force of gravity.
most of the galaxies are ellipitical in shape,some of them are irregular.our solar system is in a galaxy called the Milky Way.

above is a pic of milky way galaxy
milky consits of nearly 100-200 billion stats ,our relatively small solar system is one of them.
our solar system take about 200,000,000 years to complete one revolution.


Nearest galaxy

Andromeda galaxy in ultraviolet

The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2,500,000 light-years (1.58×1011 AU ---- 1AU==149598000 km) away in the constellation Andromeda. It is also known as Messier31,M31,or NGC224

Brightest Galaxy

large megellanic cloud
the large Megellanic cloud hich is visible only in southern hemisphere which is 170000 light years from earth and 39000 light years in diameters(1 light year==9.4605284×10^5meters)