Sir William Herschel – one of the truly great astronomers – is little heard-of these days, but tales of his achievements were among the inspirations that led me upon my own path into archaeoastronomy. Much like the Glass Bead Game players in Hesse’s brilliant novel, Herschel approached the sciences and the arts through a combined interest – originally interested in music, its mathematical processions and order led him to study that subject, followed by optics and lenses in particular. This, naturally, led to his interest in astronomy, for which he is best known.
Although his most famous discovery is that of Uranus, this remarkable man also discovered binary and multiple star systems, using a ‘simple’ (by modern standards) optical telescope. His continual and precise observations enabled him to catalogue no fewer than eight hundred such arrangements, which has provided us with much of the background in our current understanding of multiple star systems.
More fascinating than his discoveries, however, is the origin of his interests mentioned in the opening paragraph. A man who can see beyond the raw details and the niches of his line of study can see more of the beauty inherent in the universe than those around him. For a man whose interest in the stars stems from a love of music, the harmonies must be remarkable.
Wednesday 20 April 2011
Wednesday 6 April 2011
The Death of a Star
In further news from NASA, their scientists believe they have discovered extremely strong evidence for the existence of supermassive black holes – by observing a star being torn apart. Although the light that allows us to observe this is now four billion years old, the event was one trillion times brighter than our own sun.
Black holes exert extraordinary gravity, as is relatively common knowledge, but – like all sources of gravity – it grows weaker with distance. A star passing close to a black hole finds itself falling gradually within the black hole’s sphere of influence. Being potentially millions of kilometers across, however, the star’s own gravity is capable of maintaining itself for a time. Rather than being instantly destroyed, it instead warps and stretches, being pulled out of shape towards the black hole.
As the star observed by NASA moved slowly closer to the black hole, the force pulling at it grew stronger, until the black hole’s gravity exceeded the star’s ability to hold itself together. At this moment, the star’s mass was torn from it, being wrenched into the black hole and quite literally torn apart.
The light we observe is caused by the enormous energies exciting the star’s atoms, throwing off vast quantities of light throughout the visible and invisible spectra – truly, this must be one of the most dazzling displays the universe has to offer us.
Black holes exert extraordinary gravity, as is relatively common knowledge, but – like all sources of gravity – it grows weaker with distance. A star passing close to a black hole finds itself falling gradually within the black hole’s sphere of influence. Being potentially millions of kilometers across, however, the star’s own gravity is capable of maintaining itself for a time. Rather than being instantly destroyed, it instead warps and stretches, being pulled out of shape towards the black hole.
As the star observed by NASA moved slowly closer to the black hole, the force pulling at it grew stronger, until the black hole’s gravity exceeded the star’s ability to hold itself together. At this moment, the star’s mass was torn from it, being wrenched into the black hole and quite literally torn apart.
The light we observe is caused by the enormous energies exciting the star’s atoms, throwing off vast quantities of light throughout the visible and invisible spectra – truly, this must be one of the most dazzling displays the universe has to offer us.
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