An artist’s portrayal of the IC 10 X-1 system shows a black hole at the upper left and its companion star is on the right. Ultra-high energy cosmic rays -- particles that pack the punch of a rifle shot -- make their way to Earth from massive black holes in nearby galaxies, scientists said on Thursday, in a finding that may solve a mystery that has puzzled physicists for decades.
Photograph by : Aurore Simonnet/NASA
"This is a fundamental discovery," said Nobel laureate James Cronin, the University Professor Emeritus in Physics at the University of Chicago. "The age of cosmic-ray astronomy has arrived. In the next few years, our data will permit us to identify the exact sources of these cosmic rays and how they accelerate these particles."
British-led scientists now believe the fast-moving particles that bombard the atmosphere are blasted across space from massive black holes at the centre of active galaxies.
Cosmic rays, discovered in 1912, are fast-moving subatomic particles that include the nuclei of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and iron atoms. Evidence suggests they may increase the risk of cancer in pilots and air crews on long-haul flights.
Medium-energy cosmic rays are known to come from exploding stars, while the Sun and other stars emit lower energy cosmic rays. But the source of ultra-high energy rays, which are 100 million times more energetic than anything produced by the most powerful atom smashers, has remained unexplained.
Suggested sources have included giant black holes, noisy radio galaxies, shock waves from colliding galaxies, echoes of the "Big Bang", and bizarre theoretical objects called "cosmic strings".
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1 comment:
The idea that Black holes (whose existence has not been absolutely proven anyway) produce energy in the form of Hawking radiation is something predicted by quantum mechanics. Very large black holes are likely (the keyword) to be surrounded by a ring of hot gases. This is assuming that the BH is spinning (another possibility). This ring would be the source of very high energy photons producing cosmic rays. Anyway since black holes are (or would be...depending on who you believe) not really a thing in the same sense as a star or planet but a very warped region of space and time the only way to be really sure if something is really happening as per conjecture is to measure some 'event" which is made of the same stuff. Gravitational waves are predicted by Einstein by way of General Relativity. Detecting those gravity waves is part of current research in physics.
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