July 27th, 2011 at 4:07PM
Science is bumming me out today: First I’m psyched cause I learn the universe’s largest water supply is 8 billion light years away, hovers around a black hole and contains 120 trillion times the water found on Earth. This is very cool. Then reality hits when I learn that researchers in Hong Kong have demonstrated that time travel is impossible so we’ll never get to go swimming in this intergalactic ocean. this is a buzz kill. Image: This artist’s concept illustrates a quasar, or feeding black hole, similar to APM 08279+5255, where astronomers discovered huge amounts of water vapor. Gas and dust likely form a torus around the central black hole, with clouds of charged gas above and below. X-rays emerge from the very central region, while thermal infrared radiation is emitted by dust throughout most of the torus. While this figure shows the quasar’s torus approximately edge-on, the torus around APM 08279+5255 is likely positioned face-on from our point of view. (Source: NASA/ESA)

Science is bumming me out today:

  • First I’m psyched cause I learn the universe’s largest water supply is 8 billion light years away, hovers around a black hole and contains 120 trillion times the water found on Earth. This is very cool.
  • Then reality hits when I learn that researchers in Hong Kong have demonstrated that time travel is impossible so we’ll never get to go swimming in this intergalactic ocean. this is a buzz kill.

Image: This artist’s concept illustrates a quasar, or feeding black hole, similar to APM 08279+5255, where astronomers discovered huge amounts of water vapor. Gas and dust likely form a torus around the central black hole, with clouds of charged gas above and below. X-rays emerge from the very central region, while thermal infrared radiation is emitted by dust throughout most of the torus. While this figure shows the quasar’s torus approximately edge-on, the torus around APM 08279+5255 is likely positioned face-on from our point of view. (Source: NASA/ESA)

4 notes #science#astronomy#black holes#time travel