#blazars

the lance forms within her grasp at the last moment, blocking a strike from a blade she knows all too well– one that was always wielded next to her, never against. anger flashes across her features as she pushed back, kicking up dust as a strike is launched back against the imposter– because that's what he is.

he isn't her partner, her fellow Deliverer, the one trusting her to reach the end of the story. this was nothing more than a what-if, twisted and malformed by machinations beyond even that of Lygus. this was not the Phainon she knew. but, a part of her whispers, it's what could have been. had she not ever agreed to join the Express, had she become only a researcher, then the cycles would continue. and Phainon would be left to wait endlessly, that pale dawn never coming, until the Lord Ravager was born and that boy from the country ceased to exist.

living proof of what would happen if she failed.

and then, fear settles in her heart. she knows that the original can't kill these twisted copies (oh how she has tried) but it wasn't the same in reverse– where.....was the Phainon she knew? on instinct does her gaze quickly flit about, as if she'll see his crumpled form atop the many ruins of Yesteryear, striking blue & white dyed with crimson. Dawnmaker doesn't lie embedded into crumbling brick either or slashed in half. that's a good sign. she chooses to see that as a good sign. maybe it means Phainon is somewhere else, being the hero he is, and doesn't have to witness this.

good.

Stelle grips the lance tighter, flames swirling and sparking around the tip. Her gaze never leaves the face of the Lord Ravager. those eyes are cold– empty. there's nothing like the smile he gave her last as the Vortex crumbled around them and she was sent back to the beginning. no emotion. nothing.

" Please. " she speaks firmly, voice refusing to shake and waver. it's pointless, talking will get her nowhere, but Stelle has to make the effort. "Don't make this harder than it has to be. " but he will, because Ravager or not, when has Phainon ever went down without a fight?

HI MR HANSUM MY NAME IS MARY SUE

IM SINGLE AND READY TO MINGLE AND

ALSO I THINK UR JUST MY TYPE

"Black Hole Suddenly Changes Direction; Aims at Earth"

Well, these at least were how an interesting observation got picked up by some of the worlds media, but no, there isn't a black hole heading for Earth (not that we can see at least), but rather, a supermassive black hole at the heart of a galaxy some 630 million light years from us, suddenly became a Blazar.

So what is a Blazar ? An active black hole, one that is busy consuming matter is a bit of a messy eater, a lot of the material falling in gets mashed up and expelled at near the speed of light along the poles.

Above is M87, you can actually see the beam as it interacts with matter and slowly begins to dissipate as it leaves the galaxy. M87 is a monster of a supermassive black hole, but the universe is filled with many such monsters, and many far larger.

If the beam happens to come towards us directly, then we call that galaxy a Blazar.

So what really happened ?

A previously catalogued distant radio galaxy PBC J2333.9-2343, suddenly appeared to change and become a Blazar. A radio galaxy simply means these jets (similar to M87 image above) have been interacting with the surrounding medium and creating huge amounts of radio waves, but now suddenly, the jets have shifted and are pointing straight towards us, something not witnessed previously.

The real interest here is, what could have caused a supermassive black hole to suddenly tip it's polar regions to now face towards us ? Bottom line is, we really don't know, it could have been a merger of a smaller black hole, or maybe something about this one lets it shift about.

Either way, despite the tabloid obsession with it's new direction, it's not any danger to us, and by there's a number of MUCH closer supermassive black holes that face us, including our very own Sag A*, yet .. Starbucks is still open and your cat will return home after a night out.

Superbright Blazars Reveal Monster Black Holes Roamed the Early Universe

The discovery of so many supermassive black holes existing when the universe was only 1.4 billion years old adds to the mystery of how the biggest black holes evolved.

The early universe may be filled with black holes a billion times bigger than the sun, though how they managed to grow so large so quickly remains a mystery.

Astronomers using NASA's Fermi gamma ray observatory found five bright objects known as blazars whose light has been traveling through space for some 13 billion years, making them the most distant blazars found yet.

Blazars occur when the jet of a supermassive black hole is pointing toward Earth. They are among the most energetic objects in the universe and prized by black hole hunters, who have to resort to surreptitious means to find their prey.

Black holes are objects so dense with matter than not even light can escape their gravitational fists. But as a black hole feeds, material swirling toward the event horizon (the point of no escape) spews telltale radiation, revealing its approximate size and location.

Some black holes also create jets of gas that shoot off from opposite sides of their cores. When a jet faces Earth, that's a blazar.

Jedidah Isler - astrophysicist

Today is International Day of Women and Girls in Science, and what better way to celebrate than by honoring a kickass woman who divides her time between studying black holes and helping diversify science!

Jedidah Isler knew she wanted to be an astrophysicist when she was 12 years old. She was looking at a list of careers, trying to decide what she wanted to do when she grew up, and saw "astrophysicist" and it was a done deal. She'd always had a love of watching the stars, and when she realized she could do that as a job, she did everything in her power to make it happen.

She took all the right math and science classes though high school, earned her bachelor's in Physics, graduating Magna Cum Laude, from Norfolk State University in Virginia, and then she earned her master's in physics at Fisk University in Nashville. And finally, she earned her Ph.D. in physics from Yale, becoming the first African American woman to do so.

Now, to the delight of her inner 12-year-old, she studies blazars or "blazing quasars" - supermassive hyperactive black holes spewing an enormous energy jet directed straight at the Earth.

In 2015, she was selected as a TED Fellow. And she even applied to the astronaut program at NASA, who should be announcing their newest class of astronaut trainees very soon.

Aside from her work studying space, she's also devoted to pressing matters her on Earth, showing "how STEM can be a tool for global leadership and social change. I want to build partnerships that, in turn, trigger a tsunami of STEM practitioners from underrepresented backgrounds." As part of her mission, she is a tireless advocate of inclusion and empowerment across racial and gender lines in STEM.

"Women of color face unique barriers because of their position at the intersection of race and gender, not to mention class and socioeconomic status. Sometimes racial and gender discrimination is overt; other times, it’s not. Either way, it's harmful. Addressing these issues is just as important as the astrophysical work I do."

And she knows what she's talking about. Throughout her academic career she faced plenty of discrimination. While in her first year at Yale, she went out to dinner with some of her classmates. At the end of the dinner, one guy gathered up all the plates and handed them to her saying, "Here, now go and do what you're really here to do." She says that it's incidents like these (some might call them microaggressions) that make it difficult for women and minorities to react. They have to strike a delicate balance between getting angry and ignoring it. "If I get really mad, then I'm the angry black woman. But if I give too much concession, then I'm sort of too conciliatory, and it was just weird. It let me know that this is not a safe space for me."

She eventually figured out her own way past these kinds of situations, and now works to make sure others don't have to go it alone. "Whether I like it or not, I'm one of only a few women of color in this position. Addressing these larger issues of access to education and career exploration are just as important as the astrophysical work that I do.

+ + +

Watch her TED talk

Read a great interview with her talking about science and natural hair

Read a recent story about her from Vanderbilt, where she's a post-doc candidate

Listen to an NPR Code Switch story about her work to improve diversity in science while at Yale

Read more about other amazing women in science

The Shocking Truth About Active Galaxies

Supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies can be fairly quiet, like Sag A* at our centre, it fairly silently goes on about it's business without much ado, while other galaxies are significantly more active.

One of the interesting features about very active galaxies is the jet of particles sped to near the speed of light that emits from the poles of the black hole.

But what causes these jets ?

There are two potential theories, either the black hole behaves similar to our own Sun, where magnetic connections and disconnections fire out plasma, or a shock wave fires out particles at the speed of light.

Thankfully we don't need to visit a black hole to find out, IXPE is in orbit and has been busy looking at these jets in detail to see what is making them.

As particles hit the shockwave and are sped up to near the speed of light, they move from a turbulent magnetic field into a more ordered one, and start by emitting X-Rays, further along the beam, visible light is emitted, finally as the beam breaks down (which you can see in the above image of M87), infrared and radio waves.

If the shockwave theory is correct, we should see polarization not present in the later light, and that's exactly what IXPE has found, confirming that a shock wave at the polar regions is responsible for the firing of these jets.

What the scientists are not so sure about yet, is what exactly is causing the shock wave in the first instance.

Source :