Proposed mission to examine space-time around black holes.

Proposed mission to examine space-time around black holes.

www.universetoday.com

What do black holes, magnetars and supernovae have in common? They all emit X-rays. But it's difficult, if not impossible to study certain aspects of the X-ray emissions from these powerful objects. And there's much we don't understand about how black holes distort space-time around them, or how magnetars affect their surroundings, or how cosmic rays are accelerated by shocks in supernova remnants. A proposed new NASA mission called Gravity and Extreme Magnetism (GEMS), will use a new technique to study what has been unattainable until now. GEMS won't study the X-ray emission of these objects directly, but will build up a picture indirectly by measuring the polarization of X-rays emitted from these violent regions.

(visit the link for the full news article)








[edit on 7/2/2008 by jkrog08]

[edit on 7/2/2008 by jkrog08]

Wow,studying "gravity and extreme magnetism",I don't know about anyone else but this seems like a major step forward in astronomy and the understanding of space-time.

www.universetoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Great news even though blackholes etc are theories (good ones to be exact), im glad we are actually going to find out what they are made up of and if they really are the gravitational beasts of the universe, good post i love this sort of topic

[edit on 7/2/2008 by altered_states]

reply to post by altered_states

good post i love this sort of topic

Me too,I find this potentially useful for theoretic propulsion,especially if we can understand how and why extreme magnetism and gravity distort space.

I wonder when this mission will get the go ahead,I wonder how close they will get because the nearest blackhole is approx 10000ly (cygnus x-1) and 35000 ly(m15 cluster) it would take a very lond time to get near any of these.

[edit on 7/2/2008 by altered_states]

[edit on 7/2/2008 by altered_states]

Their not going to fly to a black hole,just accurately study the x-ray emissions from orbit.


www.universetoday.com...

[edit on 7/2/2008 by jkrog08]

I think really in my opinion that they should of studied this before they fired the big H collider up by the time we find out it mabe to late but that is only my opinion and a big mabe

Yea the possibilities of a black hole chain reacting are astronomical,and impossible IMHO.