NASA MEDIA ADVISORY May 7, 2008: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008..._Advisory.html

Ooh, ooh... What is it? What is it?

An object? An extremely dense kind of object maybe? With a mass of millions of Suns, perhaps?
I'm oozing with curiosity about this!

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For those who like a taste of what lies at the other end of a link:

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A supermassive black hole? Sgr A*?


This makes me very curious indeed!

No doubt.

Anyone know what kind of object astronomers have been looking for for 50yrs?

It couldn't be planet X since they've been looking for it for almost 100yrs!

Or could it?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Maybe a visual observation? They've seen the X-rays for some time.

Hints:
1) Object hunted for more than [thanks, AndreasJ below] 50 years.
2) In our galaxy.
3) Combined X-ray (Chandra) and ground-based observations.

What did they start looking for in before 1958?

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It does say more than 50 years.

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According to Wikipedia in 1958 David Finkelstein described event horizon mathematically using Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates. His work turned black holes from speculation into possibility.

Heh, in 1950 Enrico Fermi asked "where are they"?

[Thanks. I'll alter my list of hints above.]

50 years of spaceflight-enabled hunting?

Pure speculation: this older 2005 article about almost nailing the Milky Way's supermassive black hole might suggest a final bit of news has done it: National Geographic: Supermassive Black Hole at Center of Milky Way, Study Hints (page 2):

Or has it been so nailed before this?

Edit: Later. Eh... I'm less fond of that idea now. The press release heads-up comes from NASA and Chandra at Harvard (and Marshall Spaceflight Center where that's managed). That makes it sound like a NASA finding, from Chandra data -- recently combined with existing ground-based observation.

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I dunno what it is, but I'd like to find out!

Maybe an positive ID of an isolated neutron star?

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"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report

A galaxy that has no Starbuck's Coffee outlets?

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In 1958 David Finkelstein described event horizon mathematically using Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates. This brought black holes from the realm of speculation into a possibility and into a theory.

AFAIK not yet, I think observations of Sgr A* have been more or less indirect so far. Sgr A* is fainter than expected in X-ray and Chandra needs to have a long exposure time to image it. Chandra took a 164-hour exposure of the area few years ago. Maybe this time they have imaged it with an ultra-long exposure time?

This is pure speculation of course, but all in all this sounds like the news could be a black hole. And Sgr A* being a probable candidate, because AFAIK other classes of BHs have already been found in Milky Way (stellar & intermediate).

But but... it could as well be something completely different.

bmpbmp already opened a thread about this subject.

Moderator merge, please?

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Nope: SgrA* has been imaged in X-rays on several occasions with Chandra previously. It was also observed in both X-rays and IR simultaneously, and the flares were correlated. Though SgrA* is not as bright as we initially expected, it has definitely been seen at numerous wavelengths.

I think I'll retract my isolated neutron star guess, because of the >50 years comment in the press release. But I'm not convinced it is SgrA*: the case for that being a black hole is iron clad at this point, spanning many wavelengths. Intermediate black holes are a lot more hard to find, so that'd be my new prediction. There have been a number of observations that have hinted at the existence of an event horizon in various objects, but none have been definitive. So the ">50 years" + 1958 Finkelstein event horizon paper make me definitely lean towards a new observation of an event horizon in some black hole.

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"What do you care what other people think?" -- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report

One way to "cheat" would be to look at previous Chandra proposals that might be relevant. Cycles 8 and 9 were the most recent observations...

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"What do you care what other people think?" -- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report

A press release announcement this far in advance is unusual.

I don't have a clue, but more possibilities, include:

Population III stars.

First earth-sized extrasolar planet (I don't know what Chandra would have to do with that)

A black oblisk

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jwj

If you always believe what you already know, you can't learn anything - Liz

Maybe the progenitor remnant of the supernova that created the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula is known to be the result of a supernova 5-10 thousand years ago, but no neutron star or black hole has ever been found.

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Or it's the typical circa-7-day lead time for an alert for a media teleconference announcement:

04.17.06 - Black Holes Found to be "Green"
Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory will hold a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Monday, April 24

04.11.06 - Black Hole Merger Breakt