A brutal and bizarre universe exposed by the astronomers
Jan 12th, 2008 by RedPepper
The deeper astronomers look into the cosmos, the more they discover it’s a bizarre and violent universe. The explore result from this week’s annual meeting of U.S. astronomers vary from blue orphaned baby stars to threatening “rogue” black holes that travel our galaxy, devouring any planets doomed to be within their limited reach.
It’s an odd universe we live in,” said Vanderbilt University astronomer Kelly Holley-Bockelmann. She presented her theory on rogue black holes at the American Astronomical Society’s meeting in Austin, Texas, earlier this week.
It should be noted that she’s not worried and you shouldn’t be either. The probability of one of these black holes swallowing up Earth or the sun or wreaking other disaster is somewhere around 1 in 10 quadrillion in any given year.
“This is the glory of the universe,” added J. Craig Wheeler, president of the astronomy association. “What is odd and what is normal is changing.”
Just five years ago, astronomers were gazing at a few thousand galaxies where stars formed in a bizarre and violent manner. Now the number is in the millions, thanks to more powerful telescopes and supercomputers to crunch the crucial numbers streaming in from space, said Wheeler, a University of Texas astronomer.
Source: Wired